CHAPTER 7 Defining Evangelizing - Evangelism Unlimited

Thomas P. Johnston 295
9. Evangelism as Proselytism:
A recent book, Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls, provided an
overview of religious rights in Russia emphasizing primarily the 20 th Century. 423 One of the major
emphases in this book is the tension between anti-proselytism, religious repression, and a totalitarian
religion (the Russian Orthodox) versus allowing evangelism, freedom of conscience, and the
existence of many faiths. This same tension is noted in virtually every century of the church!
The consideration of evangelism as proselytism is not new, nor are the various approaches
toward this topic…
1598 Non-Proselytism in the French “Edict of Nantes” (an edict by which Catholic politicians and
police were encouraged to “tolerate” the Huguenots):
“Not only was the Edict not a guarantee of religious tolerance (given the negative connotation of
tolerer in Early Modern France), but its 148 articles also introduced many barriers – religious, social, and
political – to divide the Catholic majority from the Protestant minority. Calvinists were quarantined in
‘safe zones’ (the places of refuge) like Jews isolated in urban ghettos; they could worship only in places
where their faith had been established by 1597. And they could not proselytize, publish, or promote
their faith freely.” 424
“‘MENTAL MANIPULATION’ MISDEMEANOR
“The socialists deputies plan also to create a ‘mental manipulation’ offence, which should allow to launch
more easily judicial suits against cults. It should apply to ‘important and reiterated pressures’ exerted against a person
‘in order to create and exploit a physical or psychological dependance’ state, by a ‘group having as purpose or as effect
to create or to exploit’ these dependances.
“The offence would be punished up to 200000 FF amend and two years jail, according to the text. The
punishment could amount to 5 years and 500000 FF if it was committed against specially vulnerable persons.
“A Congress source added that the text could allow to engage proceedings without having to ask if the person
having been victimized was agreeing or not.
“The struggle against cults should be the more easy by the fact that "for the first time, the legislator gives an
embryo of definition of what is a cult", has said the same source.
“The propositions of the socialist group should find a large agreement into the congress, as they take most of
the disposals from the RPR deputy Eric Doligé, author of a Bill on mental manipulation, or Jean Tiberi, Paris Mayor.
“Like M. Tiberi, socialists have proposed to forbid a cult having been already sentenced to install itself near a
school, an hospital, a dispensary or other institutions dealing with vulnerable persons.
“They suggest as well, as did M. Tiberi, to forbid advertisement toward young people, from a cult already
sentenced.
“Moreover, to facilitate the sentencing of cults by justice, the socialist deputies included also the senatorial bill
to extend the penal responsability of moral entities to some other offences: offence to impede assistance or to omit to
assist, provocation to suicide, family abandon complicity or complicity regarding cure deprival or food deprival to
minor of less than 15” (From: http://fr.news.yahoo.com/000611/121/g5hb.html; accessed: 3 Nov 2000; Internet). For a
paper describing a judicial process using this law, see http://www.cesnur.org/2006/sd_palmer.htm. For a French website
decrying this abridgement of civil liberties, see www.la-liste-noire.nouvelle-religion.fr. On 28 June 2006 a commission
of inquiry on “the influence of sects on minors” was established by the Assemblee Nationale to investigate
encroachments of the antisect law.
423 John Witte, Jr. explained the changes in Russia, “A decade ago, Russia embraced religious liberty for all.
President Mikhail Gorbachev’s revolutionary ideals of glasnost and perestroika broke from the harsh establishment of
Marxist-Leninist atheism, and awakened the sundry traditional faiths of Russia. … These favorable policies toward
religion were soon translated into strong legal terms. On October 1, 1990, Gorbachev signed a comprehensive new law,
“On the Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Organizations” for the USSR. … By far the greatest expressions of
concern, however, came from the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Already in 1991…. By 1993,
the Moscow Patriarchate’s resentment was directed more generally at all ‘well-organized and well-financed’ mission
groups, particularly from the West. Unwelcome ‘foreign proselytizing faiths’ now included various Roman Catholics,
mainline Protestants, and Western Evangelicals, alongside religious mavericks and totalitarian cults” (John Witte Jr.,
“Introduction,” in John Witte Jr. and Michael Boudreaux, eds., Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for
Souls [Maryknoll, NY; Orbis, 1999], 2, 6, 7).
424 Walter C. Utt and Brian E. Strayer, The Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson and Protestant Resistance to
Louis XIV, 1647-1698 (Brighton, Great Britain: University of Sussex, 2002), 5-6; noting Brian E. Strayer, Huguenots
and Camisards as Aliens in France (Lewiston: Mellin Press, 2001), 42-43, 69-80, 87-90.