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Registering A Church Under The New Law On Religion. Last Updated 1/18/2008 |
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The new law puts those wanting to plant new churches in a catch 22 in one sense. Under the new law those wanting to plant a church must be invited by an existing church in the same oblast (the equivalent of a state in the US). Planting a church in an oblast that has no church is legally impossible. The good news is that there are already Russian Baptist and Russian Orthodox churches in every oblast. The bad news is that they would not sponsor an Evangelical Christian. We are left with doing friendship evangelism until we have gathered enough believers to register a new church. This is what we have done in Kalkaman
According to the new law, the definition of "missionary activity" (M.A.) is as follows: "preaching and spreading any religious teaching which is not stipulated in the charter of the religious association that conducts its activities on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, by means of performing religious enlightening activity."
Does this mean that activity is "missionary" only if what is being taught is not already found in the charter of a registered church? If that is the case then all Protestant activity is not "missionary" activity because there are registered Protestant churches here. Under this interpretation, what we are doing is not M.A.. Or does this mean that activity is "missionary" if anything being taught is not found in the charter of a registered church? There may be slight differences in teaching even among Protestant churches. Under this interpretation, what we are doing is M.A.. The text of the law and what our legal advisors have said about how the law will be enforced are sometimes poles apart. It we judge that what we are doing would be considered M.A. then we begin with step 1 below. If we judge that what we are doing would not be considered M.A. then we could still begin with step 1 or we could begin with step 4.
Based on that assessment here are the steps to registration. 1) obtain an invitation from a local church. 2) register locally as a missionary. This process includes yearly re-registration and may be denied. It also involves submitting all of your teaching materials for approval. 3) visit the local mayor and inform Him that you have a small-group which is meeting but is not yet registered as a church. 4) as soon as your small-group has 10 citizens whose documents are in order (that's about 50% of the people we know here.) begin the church registration process. |
The following is a summary of the new law that appeared on the internet in July. 15 July 2005 KAZAKHSTAN: UNREGISTERED RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY NOW BANNED, MISSIONARY ACTIVITY RESTRICTED. For full article see: http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=608. New national security amendments signed by President Nursultan Nazarbayev on 8 July have brought in tight new restrictions on religious activity that violate Kazakhstan's international human rights commitments. All unregistered religious activity is now illegal and those leading or taking part in unregistered religious meetings can be fined. Missionary activity by local people and foreigners is illegal unless missionaries are from a registered religious organization and have individual registration from the authorities of the local area where they operate. Literature for use by missionaries requires prior censorship from local authorities. The OSCE had urged that the ban on unregistered religious activity should be excluded from the law. "Unfortunately this was not done," an official of the OSCE mission in Almaty told Forum 18 News Service. The OSCE is preparing a detailed critique of the "overly restrictive" new law. To read the complete article on the New Law click here: Complete Article.
To see what is supposedly the FULL TEXT of the law in English click here: | |