Source: Mission Network News, June 30, 2016<\/p>\n
\u201cPreaching to the choir\u201d is an idiom which means you are trying to make believers out of people who already believe, or convince people who are already convinced. When the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia\u2019s parliament, approved a package of anti-terror bills this week, that is what could become the reality for gospel work in Russia.<\/p>\n
Slavic Gospel Association\u2019s Joel Griffith says, \u201cFrom what we\u2019re able to understand from all the sources, if the bill is signed and it stands as is without change, it looks like missionary activity would be off-limits to anybody but representatives of the registered organizations or groups, or individuals who have entered into formal agreements with such bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plus, the new anti-terror legislation cracks down on anything that is interpreted as a violation of public security and order\u2014extremist actions, coercion into ruining families, and encroachments on the freedom of the person and the rights and freedoms of citizens.<\/p>\n
One way that could be read, explains Griffith, is \u201cthey\u2019re saying every missionary has to carry documents with specific information proving their connection to a registered religious group, and it looks like they\u2019re wanting to try to ban any missionary activity in residential areas except for certain things like prayer services or ceremonies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb See additional coverage<\/a> from Forum18 News Service, which specializes in coverage of religious freedom issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia, and Belarus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Mission Network News, June 30, 2016 \u201cPreaching to the choir\u201d is an idiom which means you are trying to make believers out of people who already believe, or convince people who are already convinced. When the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia\u2019s parliament, approved a package of anti-terror bills this week, that is … Continue reading RUSSIA: Law Would Curtail Evangelism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6499,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6498\/revisions\/6499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}