Story number 2 for 8 Dec 2000

Meanwhile, there’s a new trend happening in Russia when it comes to church registration. According to evangelical leaders there, local government officials are making that process difficult. Russian Ministries’ Andrew Semenchuk says re-registration is presenting a problem for some groups. “The Salvation Army had to re-register and the reason for the rejection as the fact that they are a military type of an organization (laughter). For the organizations who have already been registered we are non sensing any difficulties.” Semenchuk says the re-registration trouble is a surprise to many evangelicals because of President Vladimir Putin stance on Christianity. “As in many cases Putin may not know what’s really going on, but many of the old government officials are still former Communists. And, they don’t want the church and religion to grow in their country.”