
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 25, 1993                   TAG: 9307250021
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

MASS BAPTISM ATTRACTS THOUSANDS IN MOSCOW

Parliament's efforts to ban foreign proselytizing seemed a distant concern Saturday as about 3,000 smiling Russians in swimming suits were dunked in aluminum pools and baptized as Jehovah's Witnesses.

Foreigners are still crusading in Russia, despite a vote by the Supreme Soviet legislature to ban foreign missionaries. The proposal, which has provoked outcries from foreign religious and political leaders, still needs to win approval from President Boris Yeltsin.

"We can't change the laws that governments form, but we were existing here before when everything was under ban," said Tom Edur, a Canadian Jehovah's Witness who is a missionary in the former Soviet republic of Estonia. "We will continue to function, and we hope there will be freedom."

Missionaries from Mormons to Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church have set up shop in Russia, prompting the Russian Orthodox church to push for the ban. The church represents more than 60 million believers in the former Soviet Union.

Foreign religious groups carried out their activities as usual Saturday.

U.S. evangelist Jimmy Swaggart appeared on Russia's educational channel, and more than 25,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, only half of them Russian, showed up to give support at the mass baptism, said organizer Martti Kainen.

The Lokomotiv Stadium in northeastern Moscow was crowded with people clapping and singing "We Are Jehovah's Witnesses" in several languages as they watched the full-body immersions from bright blue bleachers.

Jehovah's Witnesses refuse to salute flags, carry firearms or participate in government.

It isn't clear whether the ban would affect the sect, which officially registered as a Russian organization with the Justice Ministry in 1991, said a spokesman for the group, Vadim Pavlov.

The Jehovah's Witnesses claim about 40,000 members in Russia, with congregations in most major cities, Pavlov said. Last year, about 3,200 Russians were baptized in St. Petersburg.

Svetlana Tsipichkina, 24, traveled to Moscow from the northern city of Syktyvkar to be baptized. She said she never heard of the proposed ban.

"It's possible that we would be returning to a totalitarian regime if the ban is adopted, but Jehovah wouldn't let that happen," she said.

by CNB