Yuri Reshetnikov
Editor’s note: The East-West Church and Ministry Report 21 (Fall 2013) carried critiques and analyses of 2001-2010 post-Soviet church statistics published in the four issues of the EWC&M Report Vol. 21.
Political changes in the former socialist countries of Eastern and Central Europe heralded significant changes in church-state relations, associated primarily with the desire for real freedom of conscience. Religious freedom led to a substantial increase in both the number of believers in these countries and the number of religious organizations. Another consequence of religious freedom has been increased religious diversity in these countries. However, one should take into account that the greatest growth of religious organizations occurred in the period 1991-2000, whereas in the subsequent decade of 2001-2010, growth was less dramatic, and in some cases religious organizations encountered slight decreases.
At the same time, calculating precise increases in the number of Orthodox and Catholic believers is difficult because only Protestant churches have fixed membership. Sociological surveys can also help highlight dominant religious groups in a country, but survey data are not suitable for an accurate determination of church membership.
Estimating the number of a church’s nonmember “supporters” (affiliated regular attendees) is even more difficult. Some of Operation World statistics require refinement. For example, it is doubtful that Kazakhstan has 95 Ukrainian Orthodox churches and 206 Russian Orthodox churches. Note that in Ukraine the number of parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate is more than twice the total number of other Ukrainian Orthodox churches (Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kyiv Patriarchate and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church). Speaking of Ukraine, it should be noted that the cited data for 2010 do not quite correspond with the official statistics of the State Committee of Ukraine for Nationalities and Religions. Thus, Operation World cites 11,300 parishes for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, while the official figure was 11,952. Also, significantly underreported are the number of religious organizations of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Pentecostals, and others. For unknown reasons, Operation World completely omitted one of the dominant religions in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kyiv Patriarchate with 4,508 parishes in 2010. Finally, I believe the Belarus government’s hostility toward unregistered religious organizations has led to a significant underreporting of the number of unregistered Pentecostal groups in this country.
Yuri Reshetnikov, Ph.D., is deputy chairman of the Public Council for Cooperation with Churches and Religious Organizations of the Ministry of Education and Sciences of Ukraine.