MISSIONARIES MAY PREACH
OUTSIDE THE
LOCALITY OF A RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION—CONSTITUTIONAL COURT
by Mikhail Telekhov
Local religious
organizations that are
registered in a particular municipal entity may conduct
missionary activity
outside its borders, but within the borders of the constituent
entity (subject)
of the federation where the urban or rural settlement is
located, a new
determination of the Russian Constitutional Court, which was
published on its
website, states.
Denied in favor of the
complainant
By this determination the
court declined
to consider an appeal of the Reconciliation Church of
Evangelical
Christians-Baptists, registered in Yoshkar-Ola (republic of Mari
El), inasmuch
as for a resolution of the question posed by the complainant,
the issuance of a
final decision in the form of an order was not required.
The aforesaid church was
fined by a
magistrate court 50,000 rubles for the fact that its
missionaries (foreign
citizens) distributed a printed production and audio and video
materials in the
settlement of Paranga in the republic of Mari El, which is
located
approximately 100 kilometers from the city of Yoshkar-Ola, that
is, outside the
borders of the municipality where the religious organization is
registered.
Higher standing courts had left this decision unchanged.
The
legal positions
of the Constitutional Court recognized that the complaint was
justified and
that the decisions implementing the law were applied to the
church contrary to
the current sense of provisions of the federal law "On freedom
of
conscience and religious associations" that were being
challenged.
In
particular, the
Reconciliation Church challenged point 3 of article 24.2,
according to which
foreign citizens and persons without citizenship, who are on
Russian territory
legally, have the right to conduct missionary activity in the
name of a
religious organization only on the territory of the constituent
entity that is
the territorial scope of activity of said religious
organization.
Governments
and
courts had concluded that the territorial sphere of the activity
of the
Reconciliation Church was restricted to Yoshkar-Ola alone, where
it is
registered.
But the
Constitutional Court indicated that, according to the literal
sense, the sphere
of the missionary activity of religious associations, provided
by the law
"On freedom of conscience. . . ," is substantially wider than
the
territorial scope of their basic religious activity, such as
conducting worship
services, religious education, and charitable and cultural and
educational
activity.
Not
the spirit of
the law
"This
is
justified, inasmuch as it is the main goal of evangelism to
expand the
territorial scope of the activity of the religious organization.
At the same
time, an activity of religious devotion that is essential to
many confessions
that is formally beyond the boundaries of a restrictive
interpretation of the
term 'territorial sphere of activity of a religious association'
is
pilgrimage," the Constitutional Court's determination states.
In the
opinion of
the C.C., foreign citizens and persons without citizenship have
the right to
conduct missionary activity within the borders of the
constituent element
(subject) of the federation in which the urban or rural
settlement, where
members of the religious organization reside, is located.
"A
different
(restrictive) interpretation of this standard given to it by law
enforcement
agencies in the case of the complainant not only does not flow
from a literal
sense of the standards being challenged, and also from the
spirit of the
federal law 'On freedom of conscience and religious
associations,' but it also
leads to a violation of freedom of conscience not only of
religious
missionaries but also of all members of a religious
association," the C.C.
maintains, specifying that the application with respect to the
complainant of
the decision may be reconsidered using the mechanisms and
procedures provided
for correction of judicial mistakes, not excluding in particular
the
possibility of submission of a repeated appeal against a
decision that has
already taken legal effect. (tr. by PDS, posted 24 October 2019)
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