Cultural Diversities

by Kathryn Donev

Upon arriving in a foreign country there are many things to which one will have to adjust. The first and most obvious is the language barrier. Yet, there are many other nonverbal forms of communication as well as common customs associated with everyday living that may seem peculiar when first encountered. The shock for some may be great, but take comfort in the existence of many universal elements that transcend cultures. In many ways, people are very much the same in the midst of their differences. It is possible for such divergences to be overcome one at a time, one day at a time. The following are some of the observations that I, from an American perspective, have experienced during my first ten days of being back in Bulgaria.

1. Even though automobile speedometers appear in kilometers, you should get worried when it surpasses 200.
2. When heading to a specific location you may end up stopping at up to five others before arriving at your final destination. So be prepared to enjoy the journey.
3. It is customary to let a woman with a child cut you in line.
4. Be advised that just because there is a pedestrian crosswalk you should not expect cars to stop for you when entering or much less to slow down if you are already in the crosswalk.
5. The person that is speaking that “funny” language and who is labeled “the foreigner” is now you.
6. You will no longer get ice in your beverage without asking and asking for ice is a sure give-away of your nationality.
7. If you do not manually open the door to the elevator once reaching your designated floor, it will start going back down. The doors are not automatic.
8. When visiting a restaurant, if ketchup is not already present on your table this is a good hint that you will likely have to pay for it.
9. When a cab driver says he will take a “short cut” you probably will end up paying a bit more than if you were to go the “long way.”
10. Energy usage charges vary according to the time of day. Therefore night energy is cheaper than energy used during peak daytime hours.
11. When the expiration date on your food appears as 02/08/05 and it is already July, don’t worry; dates are written with the day first and the month second.
12. Don’t get too excited when the price for diesel reads: 1.67. The price is per liter and if you multiple this number by about 4 you will get the price per gallon. Ouch!
13. When asking for an item at the market and the salesperson nods left to right, don’t leave. They do have what you are asking for. Bulgarians nod opposite than Americans.
14. If the price on a pack of batteries is marked one lev, you should not get carried away and stock up, the price is per battery.
15. When speaking in the native language, people will laugh, but not to worry they are simply surprised and delighted that you have done so.

To Be Continued …

When Two Cultures Collide

By Kathryn Donev

In general it is believed that when any two individuals come together, in the midst there will be some sort of tension. The coming together or collision consequences in tension that is the result of differing opinions and viewpoints. One major origin of such strain or confusion is due to misinterpretation. What is said is viewed erroneously and internalized or personalized in error. Furthermore, when this phenomenon occurs with two individuals from differing cultures, there is greater opportunity for misapprehension. It has been said that whatever is perceived by an individual is the true reality for that particular person. Meaning, how ever one views an event, even if falsely done, is what actually took place in that individual’s personalized world. It is such concept that must be taken to heart in order to genuinely be culturally sensitive. When two cultures collide there must be open-mindedness and understanding of another’s world view. Yet, the straightforward part is to understand this concept and the difficult part is to place such concept into actuality.

Haunted by Totalitarianism

By Viktor Kostov

Eleven years ago, it seemed that the beast of communism, which had set its face against the church of Jesus Christ, was dead in Eastern Europe. I remember the 200,000 Bulgarians with raised hands and open souls standing in Sofia’s downtown square in 1991. They gathered not to march in honor of the ruling party but to hear an overseas evangelist preach Christ and heal the sick. I was in the crowd, a graduating law student, a former anticommunist revolutionary, and a new Christian. I drank from the invigorating hope and joy that had descended from heaven on that warm summer night. A nation haunted by darkness for years was about to receive a new heart. But things did not go quite the way I hoped.

The beast of communism may have been mortally wounded, but it was not dead. In 1992 came significant reversals regarding religious liberty—the first sign that freedom had not fully arrived. Two years after the collapse of the regime, former communists emerged as socialist capitalists. Their former connections afforded them control of the economy and, with it, the most influential newspapers.

Reading the newspapers became torturous. I fumed at the sensationalistic articles, written like communist propaganda, and aimed at the new wave of American missionaries: Baptists were eating children; American missionaries were feeding drugs to youth in church meetings; Protestant pastors were signing up members of their congregations for ritual suicide ceremonies.

Such outrageous claims fed society’s skepticism toward evangelical churches. American evangelicals have worked among Bulgarians since the mid-19th century, but the memory of these missionary contributions was lost during the reign of the Communist Party. Exploiting a historical perception that Eastern Orthodoxy was key to the Bulgarian national identity, the new socialist capitalists used anti-evangelical rhetoric to stir up passions. Unfortunately, many Orthodox voices joined hard-core atheists in decrying “Western sects.” Bulgarians seemed to want a mix of Soviet spirituality and American prosperity.

Religious Police
I took this attitude personally. I had become a Christian thanks to the witness of American evangelical missionaries. The long history of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, or its contribution to the national spirit, meant little to me—she never cared enough for my soul to let me know about salvation in Christ. I found liberty because of people who left their country, came to Bulgaria, and answered the questions that had tormented me for years. I heard the clearly articulated gospel for the first time in English. My first Bible was also in English: an NIV New Testament.

While defending the legal rights of U.S. missionaries and Bulgarian Christians, I gladly vented my frustration at the injustice done to my fellow evangelicals. I took some high-profile cases that other lawyers had dropped. I filed lawsuits on behalf of slandered and harassed evangelicals—against police departments, newspapers, individuals, and organizations. I delighted in the astonishment of police officials, used to bossing citizens around, at the subpoenas I served them. But most of the time, that was all the reward I got for seeking justice for evangelicals in the courts. I lost 90 percent of the cases.

It soon became obvious that even the Parliament would defy the constitutional freedom of conscience and faith. A law passed in 1994 indirectly required government approval for the registration of Protestant churches.

In 1995 someone broke into my office and stole my computer with the records of my court cases. I was growing tired of meeting with “religious police” operatives who, using only code names, tried to persuade me to rat on my pastor-clients. I realized I needed a break. I wondered if I should again do “purely spiritual” work (I had been in church-planting teams since my conversion) or remain engaged in the battle for religious freedom. But going to court or pointing officials to the constitution made no difference. I felt like Moses, working in the flesh to liberate God’s people. After hearing that I was being “surveyed” by the police in Sofia, my American wife and I decided it was time to get out for a while. At the end of 1995, we left for the United States, where I ended up graduating from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Now I’m back in Bulgaria, where the freedom for evangelicals to conduct services and outreach is still limited. Last year the Parliament almost adopted a law that was “most probably. … the worst in all Eastern Europe,” according to an October 2000 press release of Tolerance Foundation, a Bulgarian human-rights group. Critics called the measure more restrictive than the law of 1949, which was used by the communist regime to end religious freedom in the nation. For example, the proposed law stipulated that people could not use their homes for religious meetings, and it imposed enormous fines for preaching without registering with the state. In other words, no expression of faith was allowed under this project unless the state had approved it. The restrictive draft was tabled only after the pro-Western government heard protests from human-rights groups, church leaders, and even U.S. politicians.

But hearts and minds, not laws, need to change. “The constitution provides freedom of religion; however, the government restricts this right in practice for some non-Orthodox religious groups,” says the 2000 Annual Report on Religious Freedom in Bulgaria prepared by the U.S. State Department. “This restriction is manifested primarily in a registration process that is selective, slow, and nontransparent.” The mentality is this: If a congregation is not registered, then the state hasn’t recognized it, which makes it an illegal sect. A process that should be just a formality ends up giving the government power to approve or disapprove of religious beliefs.

The Wind of Change
The dominant sentiment is that evangelicals had the most freedom under the government of the Union of Democratic Forces. (In 1997 the same union vetoed the embarrassing anti-religion bill and convinced Parliament to approve the status of the first evangelical seminary in the country since 1948.) This first post-communist coalition of democratic anti-Communist parties lost in this summer’s election to the party of the Bulgarian King Simeon II (a.k.a. Simeon Saxcoburggotski), who is now the prime minister.

But political trends are decided by political forces. Moral trends and worldviews, which fuel political forces, are decided by the spiritual climate. In the last several years, I have become convinced that the problem of liberty in Eastern Europe originates in the church. It’s not that evangelicals should be held responsible for a culture that has bred oppression for years—but not standing up to such a culture, and letting it shape the behavior of the church herself, allows oppression to thrive in Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations.

When the Iron Curtain fell and the gospel flooded the nations of the Eastern bloc, alongside the good news came its counterfeits. One of them was the prosperity gospel. Its message found a fertile soil among young, charismatic congregations. I was embarrassed for Bulgarian pastors as they imitated their favorite U.S. prosperity preachers, sometimes even speaking with a slight American accent. Many Bulgarian Christians, tired of the years of marginalization and poverty, allowed the health-and-wealth doctrine to seduce them.

Neediness, Control, and Fear
It was not just the Western prosperity preachers’ fault. Evangelicals in Bulgaria were accustomed to seeking foreign help—an understandable reflex after years of being second-class citizens in their own country. The church did not err in accepting help from American Christians; but the neediness of many Bulgarian evangelicals had distorted their view of American wealth. A leader of a Christian training school in Sofia once told me that his school was reluctant to hire Bulgarian theologians and teachers because they had to be paid. If American teachers were invited to teach, they paid their own way, did not receive any salary, and even brought gifts to the school. This conversation made me realize how difficult it is to break loose from the ruts of poverty.

Bulgarian evangelical Christians are a brutalized people. Stuck in a wounded culture, church leaders tend to multiply hurt and deny liberty, as if they took lessons from communist leaders. Their harsh authoritarianism cripples Christian witness and repels young and educated Christians.

Milena Michailova, a manager of a Christian bookstore in Sofia, had trouble finding a home church. The leaders of various congregations were threatened by this avid reader who asked questions. “The pastors I know don’t allow anyone or anything to challenge their authority,” she told me. “They treat people as if they don’t understand anything, and with an attitude of being irreplaceable.”

When traveling with her mobile bookstore, a bus loaded with Christian titles, she finds a lot of rivalry among local pastors. “They also seem to be threatened by [Christian booksellers], and we just want to sell literature that will help the believers,” she says.

Bulgarian evangelicals’ church leadership style—a mix of control and fear—reveals the need for spiritual mentoring that would liberate leaders from their insecurities. My brother, Yavor Kostov, pastor of four small congregations in the poorest, northwestern area of the country, thinks dictatorial church leadership inhibits church growth. “Pastors don’t lead people to Jesus but to themselves,” he says. “This means that no gifts, talents, or freedom can blossom in the church.” His primary church started after a dispute regarding leadership style.

It is hard for many new-generation believers to join churches that use methodologies reminiscent of the Communist Party. When Milena Eneva was considering attending a U.S. Bible college, her pastor bluntly told her that this was not God’s will and that she would lose the presence of the Holy Spirit in her life—not exactly the blessing she wanted. She is now a graduate of a U.S. Nazarene college.

Totalitarian harshness among evangelicals is not only a Bulgarian phenomenon. Many evangelical churches in other post-communist countries (such as Ukraine, Romania, and Poland) practice a legalism that defeats the Christian message. A missionary to Eastern Europe told me he once took a nonbelieving relative to a Ukrainian Pentecostal church. The church members looked at her makeup and fancy clothes with such obvious disapproval that she vowed never to return to church again.

Why would anyone, beat up by a hard life to begin with, want to come to church to be subject to the will and strife of insecure individuals? Didn’t Jesus say, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”?

Zeal, Vision
By now you may be asking, “Is there anything right with the post-communist church?” The zeal with which Eastern European believers kept the message during the communist era is an example of the church’s strength. Persecuted pastors put in hours of work, with minimal or no pay, and traveled miles to care for their brothers and sisters. Evangelicals were harassed, fired, detained, and interrogated for owning Bibles or just talking about their faith.

Haralan Popov spent 13 years in concentration camps, accused of spying for the United States and England. He was not a spy, but a pastor of the largest Pentecostal church in Bulgaria, when the communists took over in the 1940s. He not only did not renounce his faith amid torture, but he also shared the gospel and the love of Christ with his fellow prisoners. In 1972 he founded Door of Hope International, a U.S. mission agency that spread the news of the persecuted church in the West and helped underground churches behind the Iron Curtain. This past is the great spiritual inheritance of Eastern European Christians, one empowered by the freedom found only in Christ and displayed in the Book of Acts.

A new generation with a vision for change is emerging, too. Here are some of its leaders:

[] Michailova leads a missionary campaign with her bus, selling Christian books.
[] A missionary friend told me of a humble Bulgarian couple who minister to Bulgarian
[] Turks in southern Bulgaria, with the vision of raising missionaries to go to Turkey.
[] My brother’s primary church reaches out to institutionalized orphans, and his church’s rock band seeks to win young people’s souls.

All these hope-filled glimpses show that true freedom for a servant and visionary church is not that far away.

My wife and I have returned to Bulgaria as missionaries with Door of Hope to pursue “the Bulgarian dream,” as I often joke. But the dream is not a joke. The vision from that summer night of 1991—for a whole nation, a bride of darkness and hopelessness for decades, to find a better way, a way to truth, forgiveness, and liberty in Jesus Christ—is still very much alive in me. I think the same dream made the apostles follow Christ against all odds. It made the apostle Paul travel restlessly, building up churches. And it made missionaries go to foreign nations, reminding us over and over again that “for freedom Christ has set us free.”

Postcommunist Protestant Revival in Bulgaria

For those of us who lived through the last days of Communist Bulgaria, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a modern-day miracle. On 10 November 1989, the day after the border between East and West Berlin opened, Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s Communist leader of over 30 years, resigned. That same year, with the church no longer suppressed, evangelistic meetings began in many Bulgarian towns and villages. Despite pressure and constant media attacks, the Protestant movement grew rapidly. In the first five years of democracy, several Pentecostal churches in Bulgaria exceeded a membership of 1,000. Many Muslim and Roma communities were reached with the gospel. The Mission for Christian Upbringing alone reported ministering to over one million people across Bulgaria. In 2001, the Bulgarian Church of God counted 32,000 members with 250 ministers in some 400 congregations nationwide. In 2003, the Bulgarian Assemblies of God reported over 50,000 members with 150 national pastors in 550 churches, plus a Bible school with 173 students. Thus, the Protestant movement, which numbered approximately 13,000 members in 1975, grew to 55,000 in the 1980s, and to over 100,000 members by 2000, in a nation of eight million.

Dr. Stephen Penov, a professor at Sofia University and a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Science, serves as a parliamentary expert on human rights and faith confessions. In a recent interview he estimated that church membership in traditional Protestant churches in Bulgaria is over 60,000, while new Protestant denominations have a membership of approximately 50,000. Bulgaria is also home to approximately 70,000 Catholics, in contrast to the majority Eastern Orthodox who number 6,000,000.

The Confessions Act of 2002
In 2001-02, the Bulgarian Parliament considered three drafts of legislation to replace the Communist Law of Religion, which had been the single guideline for church–state relations since 1949. Attorney Borislav Tzekov, from the Novoto Vreme political movement, crafted the bill that received the most attention. In an interview for Sega newspaper, he defended his draft, declaring that it was only opposed by “approximately 50 people protesting in front of the Parliament and by a small group that was liberally financed by sects most hostile to Orthodoxy.”

On 12 December 2002, the Center for Religious Freedom in Bulgaria submitted a detailed analysis of the proposed legal modifications to the Bulgarian Parliament. The reaction of the Center represented the opinion of Bulgarian Evangelicals, the Bulgarian Orthodox Alternative Synod, and a number of other denominations and religious groups, supported by a membership which greatly exceeded the number quoted by Tzekov. In the analysis, Center Director Viktor Kostov indicated that the Tzekov bill “voided the right to freedom of religion, introduced religion-based discrimination, neglected the recommendations of Council of Europe experts, and proposed a discriminatory registration system.”

On 18 December 2002, 18 religious and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) submitted a petition to the president of Bulgaria insisting on “an emergency meeting, where we can express our critique, reservations, and recommendations, and request that you exercise your right of veto over the submitted draft, as we are convinced that the draft must be submitted to the Council of Europe for further analysis.” Such meeting never took place and on 20 December 2002, the Bulgarian Parliament passed the Tzekov bill. Regardless of all warnings, the law followed the lead of the 1997 Russian Law on Religion, declaring Orthodox Christianity to be Bulgaria’s “traditional religion.” The newly accepted law had been prepared, presented, and implemented in cooperation with the Bulgarian Directorate of Religious Affairs. In the words of its director, Dr. Ivan Zhelev, “the main goal was to defend the position of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and convince heretics to return to it.”

Religious Freedom and Human Rights Concerns, 2003-04
The 2002 Confessions Act designates the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as a traditional religious confession. The special privileges granted to this church establishes religious inequalities that contradict the Constitution of Bulgaria, Article Nine of the European Convention, as well as other international agreements. The Act does not address the religious needs of minority ethnic groups. All denominations, with the exception of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, must register with the Sofia Municipal Court, but the legislation does not specify the requirements for granting registration. Also, the law does not make provision for appeals in cases where the court fails to, or refuses to, register a religious group. This gives the court undefined control over the existence of religious confessions. The role of the Directorate of Religious Affairs in the registration process is mentioned, but not clearly defined. Furthermore, registration is granted only to organizations with a recognized, centralized structure, which is against the traditions and bylaws of many of the confessions in Bulgaria and creates new problems on the local level.

The very fact that the law purposes to solve the schism within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is based on the presumption that the church is not able to solve its own problems, and therefore, requires the assistance of the state. Public worship is prohibited without denominational registration. Also, no provisions are made for foreign missionaries, chaplains, or pastoral care in the army, prisons, hospitals, and elder care facilities. Regrettably, the Confessions Act fosters an atmosphere conducive to discrimination and harassment against “non-traditional” religious minorities. It neither defines procedures (delays, appeals, nature and role of the Directorate of Religions), nor substantive criteria for registration. It also fails to recognize freedom of conscience explicitly, as well as the right not to believe, and does not clarify the rights of believers within unregistered religious communities.

The Council of Europe insisted that the arguments in Article Seven for “national security” and “political goals” should be excluded from the text. It also regards the existence of a state church and the recognition of its “special role in the life of the state” as incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights. In addition, religious freedom and human rights advocates warned that attempts of the state to establish a totalitarian order in the church after 15 years of democratic transition were unacceptable tendencies that could fuel conflicts among denominations, the government, and NGOs. Unfortunately, the government ignored these warnings.

The Church in the Hands of an Angry State
On 21 July 2004, on orders of Bulgaria’s Chief Prosecutor, police stormed 250 churches affiliated with the Alternative Synod and detained its clergy. The purpose was to restore control of these sanctuaries to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church that enjoyed state recognition. Father Pissarov, priest at the Dormition of the Mother of God Orthodox Church in Sofia, locked the doors of his sanctuary to prevent police from entering. A special force’s team first scattered citizens who were protesting around the church and then pulled open the doors with the use of a vehicle. Although the priest was unarmed and did not resist arrest, five policemen held him on the ground directly under the crucifix while others kicked him in the face with their army boots. Father Pissarov was hospitalized with a serious concussion, broken teeth, and torso injuries.

The conflict followed a decade of schism within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church between the traditional Orthodox confession headed by Patriarch Maxim and an Alternative Synod headed by Metropolitan Pimen, who has accused the patriarch of having served the former Communist regime since his appointment in 1971. “This is not the way the unity of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church should be restored,” commented former president of Bulgaria Petar Stoyanov. Two Bulgarian ex-prime ministers, Phillip Dmitrov (1991-92) and Ivan Kostov (1997-2001), also stated that the actions of the state were in violation of basic human rights and religious freedoms. Kostov criticized the Confessions Act of 2002 for providing justification for such police action and called for its immediate revision.

Outside Bulgaria, United States Helsinki Commission Chairman, Representative Christopher Smith, charged that “Bulgarian authorities have abandoned neutrality and chosen sides, potentially endangering religious freedom.” He urged the Bulgarian government to “end this embarrassment, lead by example, and honor its OSCE human rights commitment toward religious freedom.” Luchezar Toshev, Director of the Confessions Commission, explained that the Confessions Act was not intended to solve the schism within the Orthodox Church and charged that the use of police in church business was incompatible with any style of European democracy.

In Summary
Unfortunately, the 2002 Confessions Act does not foster an atmosphere of religious freedom, pluralism, and tolerance. The question is: will Bulgaria be accepted into the European Union if the Confessions Act is not significantly amended? Its supporters argue that establishing a state religion has its precedents in Europe in both Catholic and Protestant states. However, none of the West European states passed through half a century of Communism where the role and function of the church were strictly regulated by the government. As a result, the church today has failed to recover and reclaim its biblical identity and is becoming simply a state institution with a predetermined interest in a strictly regulated sphere of social life. The government cannot and should not allow tradition to dictate special privileges for any denomination.

The struggles concerning the Bulgarian Confessions Act are not over. On 18 October 2004, after the unfortunate police actions of the previous July, opposition Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria presented Parliament with recommendations for changes in the law on religion. Less than a week later, perhaps in response, the government announced the formation of a new confessions commission, consisting of representatives from various government departments. This body strongly resembles the Kremlin’s Interreligious Council but, unfortunately, Bulgaria’s commission is not inclusive of all religious denominations. During the time of the development of this article, neither one of these motions had been finalized.

The time has come for the Bulgarian Church to rediscover its identity by revisiting its biblical theology. Common theological presuppositions presented within the faith of all Bulgarian Christians support religious tolerance. What is needed is a healthy environment for interdenominational partnership. The first step towards such a goal may have been a meeting of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant believers that occurred on 23 October 2004. In a roundtable discussion, Christians from various confessions explored the theme of the “Universal Character of the Christian Church.” Those present favored freedom of worship according to one’s religious convictions and freedom from fear.

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