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The mass media inform us that an upcoming session of the esteemed United Nations will deliberate on the matter of removing discriminatory clauses against persons and organisations practicing or espousing non-traditional sexual orientation. |
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Dmitry Pitirimov, a Baptist lay pastor and computer programmer by trade, believes it takes a miracle to be a successful Christian businessman in today’s Uzbekistan. In a conversation in Berlin in early December he stated: “Without miracles, business success is not possible. But we are believers, and believers believe in miracles, right? If we attempt something in faith, then all is possible.” |
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Despite the grievous social and economic problems facing their society, Dr. Denton Lotz, the retired General-Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, is optimistic about the future of Baptists in Russia. |
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Baptist World Alliance General Secretary Neville Callam has sent a letter of condolence to the Russian Orthodox Church upon the death of Alexy II, the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow and All of Russia. |
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Rev. Yuri Sipko, President of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, and Rev. Vitaly Vlasenko, this Union’s Director of External Church Relations, were among the roughly 500 invited guests who participated in the funeral procession of Alexei II, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, in Moscow on a rainy 9 December 2008. |
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Within hours after the death of Alexei II, the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia on 5 December, a letter of condolence appeared on the website of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. In it, the Union’s President Yuri Sipko praises the Patriarch’s “massive, unifying role in the creation of peace and consensus during the travail of Russian society in the 1990’s." |
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Surprisingly, Baptist relations with the government are better in Transnistria –
a narrow, 202-kilometre-long stretch of land which broke off from Moldova in 1990 – than in Moldova proper. Transnistria, squeezed in between Moldova and Ukraine, is a close ally of Russia. |
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Baptists in the city of Lipetsk, Russia, claim local authorities are using bureaucratic methods to restrict their activity. |
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