COURT
REVOKES LICENSE OF MOSCOW THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF EVANGELICAL
CHRISTIANS-BAPTISTS
Invictory.org,
28
February 2020
An
arbitration court revoked the license of the Moscow Theological
Seminary of
Evangelical Christians-Baptists.
On
27 February, the lawsuit of Rosobrnadzor [Russian Educational
Supervision
Service] for the revocation of the license was granted by a
court, the
Christian megaportal Invictory.com reports.
This
was reported by the vice-rector for academic affairs of the
seminary, Aleksei
Markevich. The main reason for such harsh measures was the
inconsistency
between forms of one of the internal documents, although the
form itself, by
law, is legally established by the educational organization.
"Today
the judge of the arbitration court of the city of Moscow granted
the lawsuit of
Rosobrnadzor for revocation of the license from the Moscow
Theological Seminary.
And although the seminary provided responses to all of the
bureaucratic
complaints, the judge decided not to take that into account. For
example: the
main complaint of a "violation" of licensing requirements was
the
"incorrect" form of a document describing the teaching load,
although
this form was developed in accordance with the law and was
approved by the
educational organization. In fact we developed our form on the
basis of a
similar form of another educational institution," Aleksei
Markevich,
M.Th., wrote on his Facebook page. "Revocation of a license is
an extreme
measure, which the government uses when an organization, by its
activity,
grossly violates the law and threatens society, the state, or
citizens.
Evidently the judge saw in our seminary such a threat. Many ask
what is the
reason for such a decision. I see that it as a carte blanche
that is given to
the Russian bureaucracy and the lack of independent judicial
procedures. But
that is my personal opinion, a person who has tried for a year
and a half to do
everything to satisfy this bureaucracy, which turned out to be
impossible."
As
project VoSvete notes, the predecessor of the seminary were the
Bible courses
whose production began back in the 1920s, and the first decision
about the
necessity to organize such a seminary was first made back at the
first congress
of the World Baptist Alliance in 1905. At that congress, a
special prayer for
the opening of an evangelical seminary in Russia was made.
In
1909, the issue of the founding of such a seminary in Moscow was
discussed at
the All-Russian Congress of Baptists. A collection of donations
for the needs
of the new educational institution was begun. In 1911, thanks to
a collection
by participants in the second World Baptist Congress, a
sufficient amount of
money was collected, but because of the tensions of
international circumstances
and the introduction of new laws, the opening of the seminary
did not occur at
that time.
Only
in 1968 did ministers of the evangelical confession get the
possibility of
studying the Bible and biblical disciplines systematically. It
was in this year
that the correspondence Bible courses of the All-Union Council
of Evangelical
Christians-Baptists were opened.
And
in October 1993, finally, the Moscow Theological Seminary of
E.Kh.B. was
organized and opened.
The
first decision was made on 27 December 2018 when the Perov
district court of
the city of Moscow issued a decision to suspend the activity of
the Moscow Theological
Seminary of Evangelical Christians-Baptists for 60 days. The
decision was made
on the basis of an inspection that was conducted in the seminary
on 16-18
October for the Federal Supervision Service in the Sphere of
Education and Science
(Rosobrnadzor). The inspection was conducted by a commission of
five persons:
two representatives of the service and three experts. On the
basis of its
results, instructions for removing violations were drawn up.
(tr. by PDS,
posted 29 February 2020)
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