When the Iron Curtain fell, American fundamentalists rushed in with biased Bibles and zealous missionaries to spread their backward and hateful versions of religion. The cumulative effect is that today Russia is more superstitious and anti-gay — even proposing outrageous laws designed to silence and intimidate the LGBT community.
What role did American Hate Exporting Movements (AHEMs) play in this travesty?
I was doing some research this morning for our Center Against Radical Extremism (TWOCARE) and reading the American Family Association’s AFA Journal November/December 1995. There was a full-page ad in this publication headlined: “You can send 1000 beautiful illustrated Russian New Testaments.”
The group behind the ad explained:
“Truckloads of Bibles bound at East European Harvest are going to Russia. East European Harvest, Inc., is a nonprofit, non-denominational Christian Corporation. Its sole purpose is to take the Word of God to the world. The organization is nine years old and fundamental in doctrine and beliefs. This shipment of 25,000 New Testaments is now common.“
The organization framed the issue this way:
RUSSIA’S DILEMMA
The nation is falling apart. Crime and drug traffic are rampant. Suicides are destroying a generation of young people. Economic and political chaos are out of control. Today’s children and young people will be tomorrow’s leaders who will have to rebuild the Russian nation. But without a moral and spiritual foundation Russia will doubtlessly return to a Godless police state. You can help today’s generation of youth discover God by sending a flood of these beautiful books to Russia and the republics. Many thousands have already been shipped to Russia, but we need to send many more thousands.
Has this really been good for Russian society? This one-time superpower is disintegrating into a superstitious country more concerned about angels than economics. Each day, for example, tens of thousands of Russians stand in line for up to 12 hours in frigid weather to kiss a glass covered case that they believe holds the Virgin Mary’s belt.
Fundamentalism is never the answer. Take a look at this 1995 ad to see how American organizations have been working overtime to replace the Iron Curtain, with their very own “Iron Curtain of Intolerance.”
Don’t be naive — there is a reason we are seeing an uptick in anti-gay activity throughout the world. It is because Christian colonialists have targeted vulnerable nations for conversion to fundamentalism.
The sorry results in Russia now speak for themselves.
Wow! How gullible do you have to be to think that there is actually a 2000 year old belt from a person whose very existence has no evidence?
Did it have a name tag on it? Is there a chain of evidence? Did this phantom person even wear a belt? Was it leather or metal – I don’t think leather would last that long without proper handling? If so, did she take it off for sex [either with her first lover (god) or her adulterous relationship with her second lover (joseph)]?. Come on.
And for that matter, why would the so-called gospel of Mark (I think it was that one) go to all the trouble to show joseph’s ancestry back to king david to show that jesus was an ancestor of david, as prophesied, when it’s pretty common knowledge that joseph was not the father of this supposed child?
Typical. They swoop in the first chance they get, like the predators they are, to push their swill on vulnerable people.
“Each day, for example, tens of thousands of Russians stand in line for up to 12 hours in frigid weather to kiss a glass covered case that they believe holds the Virgin Mary’s belt.”
They were actually better off when they lined up in the frigid weather to get bread. Bread has a useful function.
@Qwerty — Regarding your #3, there’s this thing called “adoption”.
A staple of religion has always been the exploitation of desperate and thus vulnerable people for their own gain.
And I imagine that Russians, in general, assume the United States is the most prosperous country on earth, and thus they may believe that the Bible crap coming from the US is something that helps lead a nation to prosperity. They don’t realize that the millions of religious fanatics in the US are retarding our progress.
So yeah, I love it how the one thing that enabled Russians to learn about the West, the Fall of the Iron Curtain, is also somehow a bad thing in this article.
Remember, when you silence one idea and replace it with another, it’s called CENSORSHIP. Just because Christianity disagrees with the GLBT movement, it doesn’t need to be silenced. I’m a Christian, but I don’t think there is any constitutional basis for the GLBT movement to be silenced, even though I disagree with it.
If someone is silenced…modern Russia would return to being Soviet Russia. Get it?
Richard, you don’t get to “disagree” with whether people deserve to live their lives in equality and peace. How could you even think that you do? What an utterly bizarre thing to say.
Remember, when you silence one idea (communism) and replace it with another (fundamentalist whacko religion) it’s called… well, it’s not called “CENSORSHIP”, that’s just stupid. Seriously, look up that word in the dictionary. How could you not know what the definition of “censorship” is? And no need for caps, thanks.
But what it is called is just another form of oppression and propaganda. Just more lies meant to deprive people of freedom and individuality.
And guess what? You do get to disagree with depriving people of freedom. You do get to disagree with lying to people. You do get to disagree with spreading religious hate to every last corner of the world.
So if you really want to disagree with something, you can start there. But, really, “I disagree with your right to exist”? Who in the world do you think you are?
Richard said “Just because Christianity disagrees with the GLBT movement, it doesn’t need to be silenced.”.
Speak for yourself, bigot – much of christianity, perhaps the majority of it, is fully supportive of LGBT people. No one is silencing your bigotry, we’re just criticizing it. You have no right to be free from criticism.
Richard, what exactly to you mean when you say you disagree with the “GLBT movement?” Do you disagree with people being gay? – which would be the same as disagreeing with people being tall or short. Or do you disagree with a movement to achieve equal status? Do you believe that gay people are inferior, and therefore they should “know their place” and not have the audacity to create a movement to achieve equal status with you superior folks? Please clarify.
Richard,
You are crazy first of all.
Secondly, do you believe you have a right to criticize people that are left handed? When I was a child in Minnesota many years ago, people DID and forced their left handed kids to use their right hand! It, too, caused mental problems, as does trying to force gays to become straight.
Thirdly, the fundamentalist wackos did exactly the same thing in South Korea after the war there. I was there and attended their meetings before I saw the light and kicked religion out of my life once and for all.
Jerry
Disclaimer: I’ve no doubt that “The Virgin Mary’s Belt” is hooey.
That said, I would caution people to focus on the ACTUAL anti-LGBT propaganda (of US Fundamentalist Protestants!) that the 1995 story talks about, and not get caught up in popular religiosity about a relic.
Whatever this thing is, IT isn’t itself anti-LGBT. Devotion to the Virgin Mary isn’t intrinsically anti-LGBT.
In other words, don’t make ALL religion the enemy. Homophobia is the enemy! Bigotry is the enemy!
Varying cosmologies (“How It All Began/What It All Means” belief-systems) just are. Like opinions and @ssholes, everybody’s got one! But belief-systems that are about BEING an @sshole: THAT is the issue. In Russia and everywhere else.
The veneration of the belt of the virgin is hardly a evangelical fundamentalist thing to do. They would consider it idolatry. It is very much in keeping with Russian Orthodoxy though. So why is this used as an example of the influence of American fundamentalist on Russia. Wayne, I think you are slanting a story to serve your purposes and it is misinformed and misleading. If you are going to give me an example of American evangelical influence on Russia, give me an example of that, not an example of Russian Orthodoxy. The influence of the Russian Orthodox church goes back more than a thousand years, not to the 1990′s and some bible shipments.
Bryan, there’s been a huge increase in the number of christians in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union when the vast majority of Russians were atheists. A thousand years of the Russian orthodox church had very little affect on Russian religiosity in recent times.
HI Priya,
You may be right that there is a huge increase in the number of Christians in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Part of that increase is the very strong resurgence of the Russian Orthodox church as seen in the article that Wayne cited in his post. The adoration of the belt of the Virgin is a very Orthodox thing to do. Very, very few protestant Christians would kiss the belt of the Virgin. That would be idolatry in their mindset. Evangelical Christians from America would never advocate honoring/worshiping the Virgin Mary in that way.
Participation in the Russian Orthodox church has grown hugely since the fall of the USSR. This is the reality of post-soviet Russia. Homophobia in Russia is often spearheaded by the Orthodox churches. This homophobia is ancient. It is not something that is new and recently imported. Do get me wrong. I believe evangelical churches are growing very fast in Russia and are importing homophobia, but Wayne was off by using the example that he did. The Russian Orthodox church is homophobic and that homophobia in homegrown and not imported. To cite the huge turnout for a Russian Orthodox event as an example of American evangelical influence in Russia is very misleading and misinformed. The event has nothing to do with American Protestantism.
Bryan, you may or may not be right, but you haven’t convinced me.
Bryan:
Nice try, but utterly unconvincing and you seem a bit confused by my main point. To iignore the acceleration of fundamentalism in Russia as a result of American influence is to do so at your own peril. I don’t know how one can be so blind to the obvious.
You write: “To cite the huge turnout for a Russian Orthodox event as an example of American evangelical influence in Russia is very misleading and misinformed. The event has nothing to do with American Protestantism.”
What is misleading and misinformed is you grossly misstating my position.
I did not say that this specific event was caused by Americans. I could have said this, but I try not to waste words by stating the obvious. The only person who made this direct link was you. However, the general American influence on the religiosity of Russia no doubt has put superstitious beliefs in vogue. When such superstition is elevated and celebrated, you see mystical displays, like the one with the holy belt, cut across many religious denominations. It becomes a race to the bottom, in the same way the Roman Catholic Church has been emulating evangelical churches in America.
Wayne,
While I agree that fundagelical christianity has had a field day in Russia, that nation has a history of an uneducated and superstitious peasantry which Lenin & Stalin tried to crush, unfortunately by replacing orthodox christianity with their own cults of personality not unlike “Dear Leader” of N. Korea today. In an information vacuum, the Russian populace never really had a chance to develop the sophistication of being able to tease out crass superstition from more sophisticated religious thought. In reaction to the horrors of Soviet statism, many people embraced orthodox christianity as something new and a vital alternative. Of course it wasn’t and isn’t, but combine that with the grinding poverty and hopelessness you point out plus the fervor of fundagelical missionaries and the message of prosperity christianity, and you get the mess we see in the former Soviet Union nations we see today. I think it will get worse before it gets better.
Anyway, thanks for all you do in keeping us informed.
When the Iron Curtain fell, American fundamentalists rushed in with biased Bibles and zealous missionaries to spread their backward and hateful versions of religion.—-Wayne Besen
How were the bibles they sent biased? What specifically do you mean by “backward(s) and hateful versions of religion?
Right-wing Christian groups from the U.S. have quite a presence in Russia, and I’m glad TWO is bringing attention to it. For instance, Lou Engle has spoken at the Russian branch of IHOP, sharing his usual message.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eipU-M2RX0M
And of course, there was the 2011 Moscow Demographic Summit, in which several prominent U.S. Religious Right organizations participated.
http://www.worldcongress.org/Special/Moscow%20Demographic%20Summit%20June%202011%20English%20Apr.pdf
The Religious Right is not just an American problem, but a global problem.
The Russian Orthodox Church is plenty superstitious and plenty homophobic. Add to that the homohatred inculcated by Stalin and his minions and you have a fertile soil in which this fundamentalist crap is able to grow. Remember, infertile soil grows nothing.
EDH said “How were the bibles they sent biased? What specifically do you mean by “backward(s) and hateful versions of religion?”.
For one, passages that didn’t refer to gays were modified to refer to “homosexuals”, a word that didn’t exist until the late 1800′s to early 1900′s. Backwards and hateful versions of religion are those that claim innocent, harmless loving same sex relationships are wrongdoings and people deserve eternal torture for being in such a loving relationship.
It’s the same thing happening in Jamaica. They’ve started this year and next year we expect them to shift into high gear. I agree the fundamentalists are targeting nations that they can twist and turn around their fingers. I fear for the day this actually happens here, for there is violent homophobia already, imagine what will happen then?
I don’t know if this is allowed, but On Dec 10 the Lawyer Christian Fellowship held a symposium about human rights. It was quite disturbing to hear the statements coming from the panelists. I would like to share a post I did on it located here http://rantingsofalesbianchristian.blogspot.com/2011/12/rebuttal-of-foolishness-at-lawyers.html
Also Maurice Tomlinson an activist from Jamaica, wrote the following blog on the same symposium:
http://www.aidsfreeworld.org/Publications-Multimedia/Countdown-to-Tolerance/2011/December/Christian-fundamentalists-homophobia-on-display.aspx