evangelical 360°

Ep. 48 / From Soviet Shadows to a Young Multicultural Church ► Johannes Reimer

• Host Brian Stiller • Season 1 • Episode 48

Share episode

A story you think you know—Soviet oppression, majestic cathedrals, and a single, monolithic “Russian Church”—isn’t the story you’ll hear today. With theologian and practitioner Dr. Johannes Reimer, we pull back the curtain on a spiritual landscape where underground resilience meets minority-language revival. From Siberian deportation villages and labour camps to St. Petersburg lecture halls and citywide evangelistic campaigns, Reimer’s journey connects the dots between history, theology, and the lived realities of people finding faith in their mother tongue. 

In this episode we explore how forced unions and state oversight fractured evangelical life, why glasnost opened doors faster than churches could adapt, and how a strategic shift after 2000 moved mission beyond Russian-only congregations. Think Tatars worshiping in Tatar, Khanti reindeer herders singing in Khanti, and first-generation believers in Muslim-majority districts planting vibrant churches. 

Alongside that, we examine Orthodoxy’s complex ecosystem—monasteries, revivalist circles, and a state-facing Moscow Patriarchate—while weighing the “Russian world” narrative that frames Moscow as a new “Third Rome” with Kyiv as a spiritual keystone. What emerges through this conversation is a map of faith that’s younger, more multilingual, and more local than headlines suggest. Brian and Johannes talk candidly about the line between ministry freedom and political speech, the thinness behind some grand facades, and the unexpected vitality of congregations that honour culture and language. 

You can learn more about Dr. Reimer's work and find the published articles referenced in conversation on his website, and follow him through social media. 

And please don't forget to share this episode and join the conversation on YouTube!  

____________________

▶ Watch Interviews on YouTube

▶ Sign Up for FREE Dispatches From the Global Village

▶ Free Downloadable eBook "Here's Hope"

▶ More Info: evangelical360.com

#evangelical360


Brian Stiller:

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, Brian Stiller, and I'm pleased to share with you another conversation with leaders, change makers, and influencers impacting Christian life around the world. My guest today is Johannes Reimer. Born and raised in the former Soviet Union, Reimer is a German theologian and former senior staff member of the World Evangelical Alliance, whose unique life experience provides a timely perspective on the history of Christianity in Russia. From the impact and perseverance of the Evangelical Church in Russia to its often complicated relationship with the state-supported Orthodox Church to the ever-evolving influence of the evangelical witness in the surrounding countries of Central Asia. Johannes Reimer is sure to provide us with rare and important insights. Johannes Reimer, thank you for joining us on Evangelical 360.

Johannes Reimer:

Glad to be here.

Brian Stiller:

Johannes, the story of Christian faith in Russia is a story that continues to grab our attention. For me, it began back in the Stalin era when the church was very much under control of the state. And then, of course, that followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. And there seemed to be a flourishing, I know, of uh evangelicals who seem to be very active in Russia. And then the last 10 years, the uh the the Soviet, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it's brought an enormous number of changes. And so I want to get into that because you know that part of the world better than anybody else that I know of. But I'd like people to get to know who you are, your background, where you were born, and what your early years meant to you and to how you think and operate today.

Johannes Reimer:

Well, I was born to a German background family. My family uh was living in Russia in Russia for about 200 years in the Caucasian, Northern Caucasus Mountains. In 1941, they were deported to Kazakhstan, northern Kazakhstan or Siberia. I was born in one of those Siberian villages, deportation villages, and the day I was born, I was sentenced to 25 years of being deported. In uh 67, we were free to uh resettle and we settled to Estonia. My forefathers came from Königsberg or Eastern Prussia, Kalingrad today. We were not allowed to go back to Kalingrad, but we lived in Estonia, and here in Estonia I became a Christian through a miraculous intervention of God, um, and was very active in the underground church. We had a publishing operation in Latvia, and so we were distributing Bibles in the New Testament all over the country. To make story short, I was asked to leave the university, and uh at the age of 19, I was arrested and spent two years in a labor camp at the Volga River. And in 1976, coming back home, I decided there was very little health in me left, and I would die anyway, so I decided to sell my library and went to the North Caucasian mountains, going from town to town, evangelizing. Finally, KGB arrested me, brought me back to Estonia, and gave us a very short time to leave the country. So that was in 76, all the way. Then in the West, I studied theology here, became pastor and evangelist, studied in America, lived in Canada, uh, South Africa, and other places, but always tried to come back, somehow come back to the former Soviet Union. In 1985, we found that Logos International, Logos International was a ministry of education, and that ministry of education started a number of schools, like the Lithuanian Christian University, St. Petersburg Christian University, like schools known today as Odessa Theological Seminary, and you name it. So we were active in more than 25 cities of the former Soviet Union, all of this in the underground in those years. And all the way since I've been involved in evangelism, church planting, organizing mission agencies and helping the church to grow.

Brian Stiller:

Remarkable life history. Johannes, take us back into the time when the church was an underground church, whether that was evangelical churches or whether that was uh uh the Russian Orthodox Church. Walk us through those post-Second World War years up to the fall of the Soviet Empire and the role of the church within society at that time.

Johannes Reimer:

Well, we we had the very strong Orthodox uh reality because uh Stalin uh he made a deal with the Orthodox and also with some of the evangelical churches in 43 evangelical Christian and Baptist churches that were forced into one union. Pentecostals then had to join that union, and uh in the 50s, even Mennonites had to join. So there was this whole union council of evangelical Christian Baptist churches, which was quite closely connected to the governmental offices. And in 61, we had the first split in that union. So the underground church was formed. In those years, I was a young boy. When I became a Christian, I became a Christian in an underground church setting. So I came into a church which was already split. And the underground church is a very difficult chapter because the government did everything possible, in my eyes, to let the underground church stay alive, imprisoning pastors and evangelists, many of them, creating all kinds of persecution on the one hand. On the other hand, they let them live. And the basic idea was to foster disunity. And that actually functioned well, I would say. In Canada, in Winnipeg, we have the historic archive of the former Soviet Union in Russia, which I copied 1991 totally, and then give it to the Mennonites there in the Mennonite Heritage Center. And if you run through the documents of the 1950s, like 54, 55, up to 1960, you will see how strongly the Soviet system was trying to create this unity and at the end destroy the church, the evangelical church, of course. I have been a part of the evangelical church in my years in the former Soviet Union, and also after that, closely cooperating with those churches, regardless to which wing they belonged to, because we had compromises and state officials probably in every church in the former Soviet Union trying to destroy the congregations. And then, of course, in 1991, when the Soviet Union broke apart and some of the republics became independent states, things changed. But already before that, under Gorbachev, we had a very high level of freedom to preach the gospel wherever we wanted to. I would say 85, it started slowly, and it went up to the 2000th years. And yeah, and that process continues. Let me make one more comment. In those years, the church was quite clearly rusified. So in a country with 200 ethnic groups, and Siberia alone has 50 official languages, uh, to run everything, all evangelical activities in the state forced language, which is Russian, the lingua franca, which is Russian, doesn't make much sense because people would not find Jesus that way. This has changed, especially since the new openings after the fall of the Soviet Union, and is actually running strongly today. You have churches now in Tatar, in Chuvash, in Chechen, in you name it, in many, many languages, all over the place, and this is a beautiful development.

Brian Stiller:

During that time, what was the role of the Russian Orthodox Church and what permission did the state give the Russian Orthodox Church to operate during the time of the Stalin and during the Soviet era?

Johannes Reimer:

The problem, Brian, is the very term Russian Orthodox Church, because there has never been a unified Russian Orthodox Church. It only exists in the media of the West. But if you go into the Russian Orthodox Church, you will see that there are many, many divisions and parties, and so you had the official Moscow Patriarchate, and that system was quite uh closely dominated by the by the uh by the Soviet system regime. Um but in the Orthodox Church you had cloisters, monasteries, brotherhoods, revivalist movements, quite close to evangelicals. And yeah, like in the labor camp, I myself met Orthodox brothers, I would uh say very close to my heart. So you can't talk about the Orthodox. That is actually a nonsense.

Brian Stiller:

Okay, the Orthodox Church, though, in Russia, with its many manifestations, was it also controlled during the Soviet era?

Johannes Reimer:

Well, again, as I said, the Moscow center, the Moscow Patriarchate, so the official center of the Orthodox, so-called Russian Orthodox Church, was, in my view, completely under the control of the Soviet regime.

Brian Stiller:

And was it under Gorbachev that both the evangelical and the wider Orthodox communities were given more liberty?

Johannes Reimer:

That's right. Gorbachev pronounced his plan of perestroika restructuring and glassnost, and he actually expresses verbis, invited both the Orthodox and the evangelical circles to participate in that program. Sorry to say, Orthodox followed his appeal, the evangelicals never did. Gorbachev himself comes from a family which has a lot of evangelical believers.

Brian Stiller:

And after the fall of the Soviet Empire, there was an openness, as you've talked about, much church activity both within the traditional Russian communities and within the evangelicals as well.

Johannes Reimer:

Right. Right. Starting with 85, as I said already, we received easy access to the city halls, ran evangelisms, especially since 1989. Russia was celebrating a thousand years of Christianity on uh Russian soil, and there we received all kinds of permissions. So thousands and thousands of people would come to our evangelistic crusades. I need to say that very few of them stayed because the the churches, especially evangelical churches, they were not prepared to work with those people coming from the street and from society. They were far too conservative, evangelically speaking.

Brian Stiller:

Since the year 2000, when you have the basic uh control taken over by by Putin and his government, what has been the state of the church generally in Russia and the freedoms or curtailments of those freedoms?

Johannes Reimer:

All the way since uh 1991 and the creation of the so-called Russian world by Patriarch Kirill. It's the Orthodox idea of creating a end-time reality, blaming the Western Church for having become liberal and so on. So, all the way since the startings of the New World, Russian world, we had a quite great openness to evangelize, especially in Russian, even evangelical circles. The evangelicals tried to create a new political movement, arguing that the Byzantine system of the symphony between the church and the emperor, the church and the government needs to be ended. The last Congress of that movement took place in 2010, but that movement was actually more or less dismantled. All the way since the evangelicals in the Russian Federation start, well, stayed more or less politically quiet. But I need to say more or less, because a number of leaders of the evangelical church, for instance, the president of the Pentecostal Union, the Church of God Union of Russia, Mr. Rechovsky, he is a member of the Russian parliament. And I could name you a whole number of additional people who joined the political circles. And we even had some mayors of larger cities, evangelical mayors. This has softened down to a certain degree what they were against Ukraine, because the Russian evangelicals did not want to get involved into any whatsoever support of the governmental intervention in Ukraine. And even made very clear that they were against that war, which created for some of them political difficulties, but not in terms of evangelistic or church activity.

Brian Stiller:

What has been the growth then of the church in these last since since 2000, for example?

Johannes Reimer:

What happened again, uh, up to 2000, evangelism and church planting and church growth was usually done in the Russian language, creating churches, Russian-speaking churches, even if those churches were on territories of ethnic minorities. Pointing cases, for instance, Tatarstan. So all the churches in Tatarstan were having their services in Russian, even if people attending the church were Tatars. Now, since 2000, this changed. There is an awareness of their own nationality, ethnicity, and attempts to start churches in their language. And I would say the Ukrainian war has even intensified this because, you know, colonial empires, they tend to dominate their own population by introducing one language, one culture, you name it. But I just last year I went to the Khanti people. Khanti people are people in the in the in Siberian north. So they are reindeer pastures. So I was there, and the church, uh the Pentecostal church, I visited had about 500 members, but their language was Kant, and uh their singing was in Kant, their whole worship and their whole Christianity was all Kant, even if the missionary who started the church came from Ukraine, usually Ukrainian. And similar tendencies are now everywhere. So we the other day we counted that out of 200 minority groups in Russia, more than 100 and maybe 20 of them have already evangelistic activity and church plants going on in their own language and culture. And that is something completely new. It is something completely new and sometimes very successful. Again, give you an example from the Caucasian Mountains. In the Caucasus, we on the Russian side, the Russian Russian Federation side, we have about 100 language groups and ethnic groups living there, most of them traditionally Muslim. And uh uh well, about 10 years ago, the um uh churches of God, Church of God missionaries having done their seminary education in Moscow came to the region and started to reach out to those those Muslims, Muslim ethn groups. Today they have more than 45 churches, uh growing churches. About six weeks ago, we started the first theological seminary for Muslim converts, all of them first generation people. It is, of course, in times of war, and the world looks to the the worst situation, and while this happens and it's bad, and it's uh it's uh it is uh we don't have even to comment, it is no okay. But in while this happens, it seems to me that the Russian-dominated administration just overlooks reality in the ethnic groups and maybe even allows Christian activity with the hope that they may join the Russian Christian world. But that is probably never to be.

Brian Stiller:

Are there restrictions by pastors or schools or ministry initiatives in Russia? Or is there a is there open freedom to operate and to serve in their various rules?

Johannes Reimer:

Well, I would say to a great extent there's uh freedom. I I was for one year after the war started, I didn't receive any visa. Then they gave me a visa again. For instance, this time I have an annual visa. I come in and go out whenever I want to. It's a religious visa. And as long as I stick to a religious task, so I have to preach the gospel, teach people, evangelize. So as long as I do that, there has not been any restriction whatsoever. When I start to talk politically, then there will be warnings coming. And of course, they will probably never give me again any visa. But as long as we stick to our to the Great Commission, to a purely religious task, to church planting, evangelism, all the way through all the nations and ethnic groups, we are free to work as far as I see for today.

Brian Stiller:

How would you describe the strength of the church in Russia today?

Johannes Reimer:

Um, I would say uh this incredible opening towards the ethnic minorities, which needed to happen. You know, just take a city like Moscow, 22 million people officially live in Moscow. Only 40% of the Moscow population is still European background. In other words, Russian, Ukrainian, you name it. But the rest is all other nations, and most of those uh Russian nations, they are Buddhist or they traditionally Buddhist or traditionally Muslim, um, and they all live there. The four largest and four most prominent universities in Moscow are Islamic. So Moscow has become quite an uh international or intercultural and interreligious city. So the Russian church is never thought about evangelizing the other in their own language, in their own uh tradition. This has considerably changed. So you may come to Moscow, like I was in Moscow last year in a congregation. The pastor comes from Tajikistan, and uh they had about 250 people in attendance there in that service, and they told me 16 different ethnic groups gathered there, and the Russians were by far a minority.

Brian Stiller:

Where are pastors trained? Are there theological schools or Bible college in Russia that uh uh that serve their own community?

Johannes Reimer:

We have uh I myself started the St. Petersburg Christian University, which is one of the largest in the in the uh in Russia in St. Petersburg with hundreds of students studying there. It's an interdenominational school. We have a Pentecostal seminary in Moscow, we have an evangelical free seminary, the Pentecostal school, uh uh the Church of God school has hundreds, literally hundreds of students and also dependencies in all over the the Russian uh the Russian uh country. So there has been no uh restriction uh for them to work. They even received uh last year an official accreditation of their theological programs as Protestant theology, which has not been there either. It was it's a complete new development.

Brian Stiller:

And how is does the evangelical community relate to the broader Russian Orthodox and its various communities?

Johannes Reimer:

Well, this is another question. It is it is in my estimation, not only my estimation, it's actually data which were produced by the Moscow Institute of Sociological Studies. The population, the Russian population, the Russia's population, is has probably no more than 14% of the population belonging somehow to the Orthodox Church. Out of the 14%, only a small percentage is active. So the Russian Orthodox Church is literally a small reality. It has all kinds of symbolic power. So the government has built uh monasteries and churches and cathedrals, and so when you come in, you may see impressive cathedrals built by, for instance, the Putin regime. But uh that says nothing. If you look behind the scene, you find out that the congregational life of the Russian Orthodox Church is very weak, very, very weak. And um uh in uh the uh ethnic, in the non-Russian ethnic groups of Russia, you will find very few people stick people sticking to the Orthodox. A story may uh may just create a picture or an image of what's going on. In the 15th century, uh Ivan the Horrible, the Tsar Ivan the Horrible, he finally conquered Kazan and pushed the Tatars away. So it was a huge, huge victory for the Russian state. And they built in Kazan, in the city of Kazan, it's a million population city at the Volga River, they built there a Kremlin. Kremlin is a fortified city. In the middle of the Kremlin, there's a church, uh, Uspenska church, there were some buildings, official buildings, and so on. That Kazan Kremlin has always been a sign of Russian dominance over the Tatars. Now just imagine what the Tatars did a couple of years ago. They built the largest mosque in the Russian Federation in those years. Now they now there is a larger one in Grozny, Chechenia, but they built the largest mosque right in the middle of that Kremlin. So the mosque is about ten times as big as the Russian Orthodox Church. And for this, they had to destroy all the to the uh the historic buildings. As even they if as if they would say, you see, we are back. We are not the Russian Orthodox, and we are not the Russians, we are Tatars.

Brian Stiller:

It's been interesting to watch from my vantage point, it seems that Putin has associated himself with the with the with the Orthodox Church in ways that seem to be very much contrary to his his own Soviet communistic uh inclinations that at least were manifest earlier in his life. Is this a is this an authentic conversion? Is it showing his own support for the church, or what do you make of that?

Johannes Reimer:

Well, I didn't have any conversation with him. I would love to, but I didn't have. So Putin joined the so-called Russian world in 2007. So the the organization, the international foundation called Russian World, which is the orthodox Russian foundation aiming for the third Rome. They say, well, the first Rome was Rome in Italy, the second Rome was Rome in uh in the Byzantine Empire, all of them failed, and the third Rome was going to be established in Moscow. That's Patriarch Kirill's theory. So and uh and for that they created an international foundation with lots of money, and Putin joined that that that uh religious organization or foundation in 2007. I have commented the uh this reality in Evangelical Focus in a number of articles showing that uh what he says sounds very religious, but in how far he is orthodox, he has become orthodox, that I don't know. That idea of the Russian world follows an old prophecy coming out of the 16th century, and that orthodox prophecy given by a monk was used in the 19th century by the Slavophiles, creating a Slavic world or Slavic Empire, which was not successful, and it is now again on the table. Now the the prophecy says there will be a time coming where the Western church is going to end up in the horrible sin of Romans 1. So especially mentioning homosexuality and genderism and all of this. And when this takes place, then God is going to restore his church in Moscow. And the person who is going to do this will be an emperor, Vladimir. But he will have an anti-Christian uh counterplayer, and that will also be Vladimir, a Jew. And that person will be in Kyiv. And no, I'm not making it up. That's the that's the prophecy.

Brian Stiller:

And when was that read when was that written?

Johannes Reimer:

In the 16th century. And so the story is that uh Kyiv needs to be uh brought back to the Russian church because that's what uh Orthodox Christianity started. Kyiv is the mother of everything. So it uh taking in account the religious background of this, and Patriarch Kirill's idea of we have to be back in Kyiv, otherwise, this idea of Moscow becoming the third Rome is not going to work. Uh that background was was uh was discussed and implemented a number of times, and there is a whole world of literature by now in the Russian language. Fascinatingly enough, the Western media and press neglects it completely. The Western media creates a post-Soviet dictator by the name Vladimir Putin, and uh they like the idea, he is he is on the on his move to restore the former Soviet Union because this this is simple to understand. But you know, then the first year of the war in uh 2022 in Kyiv, we have all of a sudden all the spiritistically active Ukrainians gathering, thousands of them came to Kyiv trying to kill distantly Vladimir Putin. At the same time, they gathered in Moscow. Moscow, shamans, and you name it, and they were fighting now the Ukrainian shamans. Now tell me what kind of war is this? I wrote an article about uh about this the story because it was widely told in the Russian media, but again, the West was quiet about it. And then I sent my article to all leading media in Germany and and uh in Europe. You know what their reply was? Well, that is just a uh a story. It is it has nothing to do with the reality. Reality is political, and political reality is post-Soviet, and post-Soviet is is trying to restore the Soviet Empire.

Brian Stiller:

Johannes, we will we will put your we will put those articles in our footnotes of this of this podcast. Let me just ask you this this one question, though. So the Russian world, which you say was formed in 2007?

Johannes Reimer:

No, Putin joined the Russian world in 2007. It was formed as soon as Patriarch Kirill became the patriarch of Russia in the beginning of the 90s.

Brian Stiller:

And the objective or the and the expectation of this Russian world is to make Moscow the next Rome?

Johannes Reimer:

The next Rome, the third Rome. And by the way, they have been buying African churches back and forth everywhere. And they go to independent African churches, pay money, and they become Russian Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox Church, in terms of adding of missionary additions in Africa, is one of the mass of the fastest growing church in Africa.

Brian Stiller:

As you look at the future, given all of these realities that you've described, what do you see being the strength of the evangelical church today and over the years ahead?

Johannes Reimer:

Well, first of all, I'm glad the church has discovered the multi-ethnicity of its being in Russia. So personally, I don't believe that the Russian Empire is going to stay alive for very long. Because there is lots of dynamics, political dynamics, showing towards a very instable system. And the the biggest instability is the inability of the central government to uh to create a uh uh once more strong Russian language and Russian culture-based government or state. That society is not working any longer. And you see that everywhere in Siberia and the Caucasus and other places, you see how ethnic groups form their own realities, they form their own autonomous republics, they form their own governments, they form their own culture, they form their own universities and education, and so on. And this is a complete new development. You know, what happens to uh the Cherkes Republic, for instance, after they invited us to start an evangelical university there. You know, in order to register, officially register the Russian Evangelical Alliance, Brian, do you know how many years it took us? More than 20 years. We were registering, officially registering the Evangelical Alliance of Russia for more than 20 years. Finally, we managed just a couple of years ago. Uh, you know how long it took us to register the North uh Caucasian Evangelical Alliance in Russia?

Brian Stiller:

One week. Johannes, your life has spanned a number of decades, and you've watched the this great country, Russia, with it with an enormous history, move to a variety of eras. But as you look at the younger people in Moscow and the surrounding areas and the stands that you know so much about the countries that are surrounding Russia, how would you characterize young people, their attitudes, and their expectations?

Johannes Reimer:

There is a great spiritual opening, openness, even not only opening, openness towards spiritual reality, realities, and towards the gospel. Again, I gave you an example which is just fresh. Last year we founded the or re-founded the evangelical alliance in uh Kaliningrad, in Eastern Prussia. It was one of the first evangelical alliances ever established. But then in 1945, Kalingrad became Russia, was taken away from Germany, the Germans were settled away and deported, and all the way since we didn't have any evangelical alliance there. We only had a small Baptist and small Pentecostal church that was on paper. So when I uh suggested to the region, let's start an evangelical, regional evangelical alliance in Kalingrad. They were very happily inviting, so I went and so we started it. But just just imagine, we had 18 churches joining us, large churches, young churches, very young churches, uh so with young people all over the place, very active uh churches. It was beautiful. Or another example, you go to Western Siberia, Tumen, where our gas came from. Yeah, so Tumen is one of the probably most beautiful cities today of Russia. In Tumen, we had a small, little, tiny Baptist church about 25-30 years ago. Now I visit visited the city and we started the West Siberian Evangelical Alliance. 34 congregations took place. And the largest congregation, the Pentecostal Church, has more than a thousand members. Just one shot. So it all happened now. And then if you look at the services and languages, they run their services in, like I told you, the Khanti, for instance, they are not Russians. And the uh Tatar, the Siberian Tatar, they're not Russians. And the Komi, they are not Russians. They never be Russians, uh, but they find Jesus. And especially young people are driving the story. It's wonderful.

Brian Stiller:

Johannes Reimer, thank you so much for joining us on Evangelical 360. And just uh scratching the surface for us on the role of faith within the Russian community. Thanks again.

Johannes Reimer:

Yeah, thank you for inviting me and blessing.

Brian Stiller:

And thank you for being a part of the podcast. I'd be so grateful if you would subscribe and share this episode using hashtag evangelical360. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, be sure to check the show notes or description below. And if you haven't already received my free ebook and newsletter, just go to BrianStiller.com. Thank you. And until next time.