Source:  www.assistnews.net

Date:  September 26, 2007

By Jeremy Reynalds
Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

RUSSIA (ANS) -- Pastor Andrei Karchev of the Kingdom of God Pentecostal Church objects to the required Orthodox Culture classes which have just begun again for the second year in a row in schools in his home region of Belgorod.

"Religion should be a matter of conscience for each individual," Pastor Andrei Karchev of Kingdom of God Pentecostal Church in the town of Shebekino told Forum 18 News Service. While in favor of Christians being able to have a say in what is taught in state schools, he thought religion should not be a required subject.

Karchev said, "When only one confession is taught - when the textbook emphasizes that only Orthodox Christians are Christians while others are sects - in our opinion, this is bad. It is all presented as the state religion - if you are Russian you should be Orthodox. What will children who are taught this come to think about others who believe in the same God and read the same Bible?"

While instruction in the Orthodox Culture is a legal requirement in the Belgorod Region, Karchev told Forum 18 that parents are able to withdraw children from classes by submitting a written statement to the head teacher. His own three children have taken advantage of this.

Karchev said, "They either go to another lesson or sit in the school library, depending upon the situation."

Karchev told Forum 18 that while his children are the only three students in the school not to follow the Orthodox Culture, the teachers and other children do not victimize them for their belief system.

Karchev acknowledged to Forum 18 that the absence of a grade for the mandatory subject will influence his children's overall grades, but he was more concerned about its legal status. While the course is a legal requirement, he told Forum 18 that parents are able to withdraw their children only under an oral agreement.

"How will it be in a year or two?" Karchev said. "I would like to proceed in a civilized way and go to court with a view to making the subject elective. This should be fixed in law, not on oral promises."

Based in Belgorod city, Pastor Vladimir Rybant of New Life Pentecostal Church also told Forum 18 that in theory parents there may withdraw their children from Orthodox Culture classes. Highlighting the considerable variation in the way the subject is taught even within Belgorod Region, he said that his own nine-year-old son is taking the subject for the second year.

Rybant told Forum 18 that his son, "really likes it. There isn't anything particularly Orthodox about it; just emphasis on the need to be good. He also has to draw a lot - little houses and Orthodox churches - and he likes drawing."

The lack of detailed instruction, thought Rybant, was either a result of the students young age or because "the teachers themselves don't know anything. One said openly that she doesn't believe in God, but they've been told to teach the subject."

Rybant told Forum 18 that he and his wife are nevertheless monitoring what their son is taught. He said, "If we begin not to like it, we'll write and withdraw him from classes."

Both Pentecostal pastors confirmed to Forum 18 that the Orthodox Culture course sparked controversy when it was first introduced a year ago, but that they and other Protestant pastors have not heard of any recent problems in the region.

Forum 18 reported that Yeliseyeva, the regional educational authority official, told the news service that parents have been able to withdraw their children from the twice-weekly classes ever since their introduction. She also pointed out that only 60 students have been withdrawn so far.

However, the original intention appears to have been to introduce a mandatory course, Forum 18 reported. Soon after the course began on Sept. 1 2006, children at Belyanka village school in Shebekino district - including from Pastor Karchev's church - were forced to dig potatoes on the fields of a local Orthodox women's monastery, the Moscow-based Slavic Center for Law and Justice reported.

According to Forum 18, Belyanka pupils also began to call classmates whose parents attended the Kingdom of God Church "sectarians," according to church administrator Olga Zis. Regional teaching materials seen by Kommersant newspaper the same month recommended that pupils should know various Orthodox prayers by heart, as well as urging the opening of Orthodox prayer rooms in schools.

"During the study of the Foundations of Orthodox Culture our children and the children of our church members will be instilled with an Orthodox world view, and we are raising our children according to a different world view," a group of Protestant pastors from Belgorod Region wrote in a Sept. 2006 open letter to President Putin. "We are opposed to our children attending and studying the Foundations of Orthodox Culture, as study of this subject is not only about culture, but to a great extent about the religious traditions of the Orthodox Church."

The Foundations of Orthodox Culture course is secular, (culture-based) and gives pupils factual knowledge about Orthodoxy as "the traditional national culture," Forum 18 reported Aleksandr Sergeyev, Belgorod Region's assistant regional prosecutor, responded to the Protestants later in Sept. 2006.

Parents of Belyanka village pupils also leapt to the course's defense, Forum 18 reported.

A Sept. 2006 statement signed by 227 of them urged the regional authorities to ignore what it called "machinations by opponents of the rebirth of patriotism in future generations." The statement also suggested that it was beneficial for "pupils professing a different faith to know the culture of the country and the people among whom they are living." Published by Belgorod and Stary Oskol Orthodox diocese, Forum 18 reported the statement suggests that there is nothing improper about state school pupils digging potatoes for an Orthodox monastery.

"Why do you call the evangelical Kingdom of God Church 'opponents of the rebirth of patriotism in future generations?'" Forum 18 reported Belyanka's Protestant parents responded in their own Oct. 2006 open statement. "Do you think that people who have no connection with Orthodoxy cannot be patriots of their country?" They acknowledged that pupils of a different faith should know the culture of the country in which they live. "But, take note, we live not in the Orthodox Church, but in a multi confessional state."

For more background see Forum 18's Russia religious freedom survey at www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=947