A release of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian
Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. May be published freely. Release
#08-43, 600 words.

Truly a Great Meeting

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After seven years, interconfessional committee meets again

M o s c o w — Following a hiatus lasting nearly seven years, the "Christian
Inter-Confessional Advisory Committee for the CIS-Countries and Baltics"
(CIAC) consisting of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants reconvened in
Moscow’s Orthodox Pilgrims’ Centre on 2 October. The sessions were entitled:
"Christianity in the Contemporary World – National and Global". Vitaly
Vlasenko (Moscow), Director of External Church Relations for the Russian
Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (RUECB) and Protestant representive
on the three-man leadership team, enthused: "It was truly a great meeting."
He was surprised and pleased by the honesty and candidness expressed by the
25 church leaders from Armenia, Latvia, Belarus and Russia during the
non-public, five-hour-long segment of the discussions.

The Baptist pastor reported after the sessions on the pain and offence
Russians feel regarding the fact that their nation as a whole is blamed for
the short-comings and crimes of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Josef Stalin was
a Georgian with an Ossetian mother, his long-time secret police chief,
Lavrenti Beria, was a Mingrelian from Abkhazia. Cheka-founder Felix
Dzerzhinsky was a Pole from Belarus. Nikita Khrushchev, party head from 1953
to 1964, was from Ukraine. Only half of the Soviet Union’s citizens were
ethnic Russians; Pastor Vlasenko noted that millions of Russians also
suffered or died at the hands of the Soviet state.

Vlasenko appreciated the comment from the Armenian Orthodox representative
who asked: "Do we ever say thank you for the good our peoples did for each
other? The Soviet government rebuilt very many houses and factories
following WW II." Vlasenko added: "Many of us former Soviet citizens want to
remain friends, but it is our governments who drive us apart. Governments
tend to place all the blame on another nation; small nations claim to have
been misused by larger ones." He believes many Ukrainians have been unjust
in only stressing negative aspects of the Russian nation.

It was agreed at the meeting on 2 October to form a secretariat responsible
for planning and scheduling the CIAC’s future work. The secretariat will be
located in offices of the Moscow Patriarchy. Probably most active within the
secretariat will be Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin and Father Igor Vyzhanov
from the Patriarchy’s Department of External Church Relations. Besides
Vlasenko, the other two members of CIAC leadership are Kirill, Metropolitan
of Smolensk and Kaliningrad and head of Orthodox external relations, and
Pavel Pezzi, the Roman-Catholic Archbishop of Moscow Diocese – Russia’s
leading Catholic.

At Moscow consultations with the Geneva-based "Conference of European
Churches" (CEC) in February 2007, the decision had been made to resuscitate
CIAC. The CIAC, created in 1993 to ease communication between churches in
the countries of the former USSR, held major conferences in 1994, 1996 and
1999. It even organised a major youth conference in 2001. Yet its activity
was suspended by the Orthodox in February 2002 after the Vatican
surprisingly decided to upgrade its non-regional "apostolic administrations"
within Russia to four regionally-organised "diocese". The Orthodox view this
as serious breach of Russian canonical law. Regarding the CIAC-breakthrough,
Metropolitan Kirill stated at the closing press conference on 2 October: "I
cannot claim that all matters of dispute have been resolved and that all has
been absolutely normalised. But it is a fact that we are moving actively
towards overcoming these difficulties."

Pastor Vlasenko commented later: "I want to emphasize that these sessions
are not a part of the Ecumenical movement. The CIAC is simply an important
platform for interdenominational dialogue about our past and future."
Prominent dignitaries at this meeting included Edmund Ratz, Petersburg-based
Archbishop of the "Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan and Central Asia". Protestants were in the majority at the
sessions on 2 October.

William Yoder, Ph.D.
Department for External Church Relations, RUECB
Moscow, 06 October 2008
baptistrelations@yandex.ru

Tel/fax: 007-495-954-9231