Baptist Pastor Helmut Beringer Expelled from Tavda, Russia, Following Residence Permit Revocation

Authorities in Russia have expelled a Baptist pastor from the town of Tawda in the Ural region, and the residence permit of an evangelist on Sakhalin has been revoked. According to the report, the expulsion of Pastor Helmut Beringer took place on 18 December on the basis of a court decision. The evangelist’s permit was also revoked, and the report says the FSB, the Federal Security Service, was involved in both cases.

Beringer first came to the Urals in the summer of 1994 with a humanitarian mission carrying medicine and clothing. He decided to stay, and in February 1995 he arrived in Tawda for the first time. About 70 ethnic German Evangelical Baptists were living there, and they offered him a church. He said he believed the Lord had brought him to the town.

In the mid-1990s, residents of the small city received no wages or pensions, and many relied on subsidiary farming. The report says Beringer bought livestock and land to feed his congregation. It also describes a local hydrolysis plant where workers were sometimes paid in alcohol instead of wages. The congregation opened a house of worship and a children’s canteen, where as many as 40 people came to eat. In 2000 Beringer bought a home in the village of Novoselovka, about 20 kilometres from Tawda, and set up a shelter there for people struggling with drug addiction.

Former parishioner Lyudmila and her brother Sergei describe the shelter’s work in their own words. Lyudmila said she came to the church seeking help for her daughter, who had been using drugs, and that the daughter’s drug use ended after she repented. Sergei, who was 23 at the time, said he had been using heroin and was looking for a way out. The report says that in two years, seven people went through the shelter, and three, including Sergei, became free of drugs. A fire in 2002 destroyed the estate, and the report says the shelter’s hay had to be sold when Beringer lost his residence permit.

The congregation in Tawda has shrunk considerably over the years. According to the report, six people remain, four of them members of the pastor’s family. The church building on Pushkin Street had to be returned to the city, and Beringer bought a house next door for worship. In recent years he has farmed and preached in prisons around Tawda.

The report says the FSB first drew attention to Beringer during the FM-2018 event, when a teenage member of his family distributed a brochure in Yekaterinburg about football and faith. He was fined 30,000 rubles for “illegal missionary activity.” He was later fined 10,000 rubles for holding a religious service in his own home. His lawyer, Vladimir Rakhovsky, said the land under the house had been allocated for residential construction rather than religious use, and that the rules on this point had been applied to him. Six months after the second fine, Beringer received notice that the Ministry of the Interior had revoked his residence permit on the order of the FSB.

Beringer challenged the decision in the Tavda city court. The report says the FSB submitted a statement to the court alleging that the pastor “calls on citizens to renounce civic duties and to oppose the Russian Orthodox Church, which poses a threat to the security of the Russian Federation.” The report states that the nature of the alleged threat could not be determined, because the FSB has classified it as a state secret.

Source: Read the original report (translated from Russian)