Trans World Radio, which recently began transmitting from Albania, has also signed an agreement with Radio Moscow to begin using a transmitter in Irkutsk, Russia. TWR plans to broadcast programs from the Russian transmitter in 11 languages and will target hard-to-reach countries including India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Tibet.
The United States Department of Agriculture and International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) signed an agreement in July 1993 to provide food commodities to the Russian Republic as part of a program of humanitarian assistance. The agreement, valued in excess of $15 million, will provide 10,700 metric tons of food to pensioners and other people in need.
Workers with Biblical Education by Extension in the former Soviet Union, formerly based in Vienna, report that their entire team will move in country by autumn 1994. A BEE spin-off church-planting ministry is reportedly starting a church in Moscow for Russian-speaking intellectuals.
The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) has reportedly received six million letters requesting additional information in response to its television broadcasts. Commenting on the estimates, John Robb of World Vision's Missions Advanced Research and Communications Center called for "effective nurture and discipling ministries carried out by people who know the language and culture."
A Russian Christian lawyer, Anatoly V. Pchelintsev, has formed a Moscow-based coalition to monitor and defend religious rights. He also offers foreign Christian workers help with registration and legal requirements for residency in Russia. For additional information, contact:
Patriarch Mstyslav (Skrypnyk), of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, died on June 11, 1993. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP) elected Mstyslav its first Patriarch of Kiev and All-Ukraine in 1991. Following Mstyslav's death, the UOC-KP called an All-Ukrainian Council for October 21, 1993.
Russians' Spiritual Values
Mark Rhodes
The Media and Opinion Research department of the RFE/RL Research Institute commissioned the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion to conduct a media and opinion survey in European Russia during April and May 1992. [From] 2,069 face-to-face interviews [pollsters] found a majority of respondents concerned about their political and economic future. Above all, however, there was a profound desire to find some spiritual or moral purpose to their lives....
There seems to be deep concern about a perceived lack of values and guidelines for approved behavior in the country today. There are indications that many Russian citizens, caught in a situation with little immediate prospect of material improvement and a society that only six percent of the survey's respondents believe is just, are turning inward and examining their own lives and personal behavior. The data show Russians expressing a growing need to shape their lives around some set of ethical principles to fill the void left by the destruction of the doctrine that had guided their lives in the past....While a majority of those interviewed (64 percent) considered themselves to be religious, there was no correlation between religiousness and the expression of a personal moral code....
The results of the survey, therefore, suggest that in the bleak material environment they find themselves in today, many Russians are seeking spiritual avenues for release and for guidance in turbulent times. Established religion may not offer the answer for a great number, who are still searching for the key.
Excerpted with permission from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Report 1 (16 October 1992), 64-65.
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© 1993 East-West Church and Ministry Report
ISSN 1069-5664