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Do not forget History!
CHRISTIAN COMMUNICATORS HAVE TO GO UNDERGROUND
(1979)
In the Soviet Union, Christian Communicators
Have to go Underground – a background news
story.
The Citizen
Ottawa, Ontario – August 15, 1979
Dissident ignored
The United States released two Soviet spies
recently in exchange for five jailed Russian
dissidents. Among these, Georgi Vins was the
most ignored in the news columns which reported
his name only. Not a word on the courageous
Baptist preacher’s years of suffering for his
faith! Serving a five-year prison sentence for
his religious beliefs, the church leader’s
condition had been deteriorating, according to
the frequent reports from his family. Vins’s
mother increasingly feared for her son’s life.
His wife and children, despite undergoing
persecution and suffering hardships of all kinds
– including loss of jobs and harassment by the
school authorities – never repudiated their
faith.
Vins’s recent release and coming to the West
will certainly publicize the plight of Soviet
Christians meeting in unregistered (illegal)
churches, which far exceed those in the
relatively few registered ones. They meet in
homes where legal churches are not permitted,
illegally teaching their children handwritten
Scriptures or Sunday school literature. They
keep their faith alive and pass it on to their
children, when by law they are forbidden to do
so.
The former chairman of the Soviet section of
Amnesty International has stated on many
occasions that the fate of Soviet dissidents
depends mainly on the attitude of the free world
concerning the human rights question. “If the
West reacts with leniency,” he says, “it would
mean that the Soviet civil rights fighters who
are still free will be persecuted sharply.”
Vins’s recent release from prison clearly shows
to Christians everywhere that prayers must be
followed by public pressure at the internacional
level until the goal is achieved.
Theresa Catharina de Góes Campos
Ottawa Citizen - Ottawa, Ontario - Canada,
August 1979. |
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