An Interview with Anatoly Kisel

The editor of the East-West Church Report interviewed Anatoly Kisel, a Pentecostal, in the Belarusian capital Minsk back in 2010. The meeting occurred amidst a general mood of fear and dismay. Three days earlier riot police brutally dispersed a large peaceful demonstration on a central Minsk square. Its participants had gathered to protest the official result of the 19 December 2010 presidential election, which gave authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko a fourth consecutive term. 

Among the eight candidates then running against Lukashenko was Vital Rymasheuski, an Orthodox Christian representing the Belarusian Christian Democracy Party. Under Belarusian law, presidential hopefuls nominate multiple trustees to represent their candidacy. Anatoly Kisel was one of 15 chosen by Rymasheuski, who at the time of this interview was in KGB detention. (In Belarus, the KGB security police retains its title and has made no attempt to distance itself from its Soviet past.)

 Immediately prior to this portion of the interview, Kisel described how he first took an interest in Christian involvement in politics due to the example of his friend Heorhi Dzmitruk. A Pentecostal whose Soviet-era upbringing was in the underground church, Dzmitruk is now a leading figure in the Belarusian Christian Democracy Party. Here, Kisel provides profound insight into the course of spiritual reflection that led him and other Belarusian Christians to engage with political developments in their country. His account thus remains highly relevant to the political crisis of 2020-21, in which Christians have been involved on a broader scale. The original conversation took place in Russian. Other than several brief quotations, it has not been published previously.

How have events in Belarus affected your view of Christian involvement in the political sphere? 

I do not consider myself a person actively involved in politics. However, I think that God is directing people with clean hands and hearts to enter this sphere of life today and, if I can play some kind of role in this, then it is my duty to do so. Even in the 2000 elections [in which Kisel’s friend Heorhi Dzmitruk ran for local office] God began to reveal how strongly lawlessness was striving to get established in our country. There was such blatant falsification and pressure that I began to feel pain as a believer. On the one hand, I saw God, and the desire and will that He might be glorified on earth so that, as the Bible says, “truth does not stumble in the streets”—so that truth is triumphant. And then there was this [political corruption]. In the elections that followed in 2004 I also ran for our parliament. [Editor’s note: Here Kisel gives a lengthy and detailed account of how he was ultimately disqualified when a local electoral commission representative pressured three out of over a thousand people who had endorsed his candidacy—a requirement of Belarusian electoral legislation—into amending their signatures. The representative did this by falsely claiming that Kisel would not be able to run if the signatures remained unaltered. Kisel further described how, after he discovered this ruse, Lidia Yermoshina—now Belarus’ top electoral commissioner—contemptuously refused to consider his formal complaint.] 

After that experience I became convinced that, while God cannot stand falsehood, the idea that He is a conjuror and will suddenly produce freedom for us out of a hat is an illusion. Following the 2004 election, Heorhi Dzmitruk, Pavel Seviarynets, Vital Rymasheuski, and others realized that we had to work together through some kind of structure, through Christian solidarity. We could see that Christians were willing to participate in the political sphere. God brought us together and simply placed in our hearts the idea to found a Christian party. At that time I was used to a passive position—I was going to a church where they constantly preached about meekness and subordination to the authorities. Yet these guys [Dzmitruk et al.] were not aggressive or radical in any way. They had a firm, godly position, and I could see that God was really working through each of them. At the founding congress necessary to register our party with the Ministry of Justice, I sensed that people could not drive this movement on their own, which meant that God must truly be with them. 

Has Belarus therefore reached a point where Christians can no longer hold to a position of meekness and subordination, as this amounts to complicity with lawlessness?

That moment came only three days ago [i.e. the police crackdown on peaceful protesters in central Minsk on 19 December 2010]. The seeds [of greater Christian political engagement] were sown perhaps six years ago, but they were not visible. The first shoots appeared in 2006. God was cultivating them, and we watered them with our prayers. Initial discussions began inside churches, but they resulted in sharp division. Most churches adopted a purely “religious” position. They took verses from the Bible out of context, such as Romans 13:1, where it says that all power comes from God [“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.”] Also Daniel 2:21, which says that God appoints kings. [“He deposes kings and raises up others.”]

 If you do not regard God as someone who wishes to give you something concrete today, then you can justify anything in life. The Pharisees justified themselves their whole lives, even though they prayed and sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their clothes. But Jesus said in the New Testament that if you do not surpass the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, then you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Is this not a harsh sentence for us, if all we are doing is praying and seeking justification? Saying that there is no authority except from God and reasoning that, if God allows whatever happens, we will not do anything? 

So, around 2006 this sharp division came about. Unfortunately, the majority got carried away with this “religious” idea that we must not participate in politics. Fortunately, however, there were also many pastors who took the opposite position—but pastors also feel responsible for their flock and do not want to appear to be revolutionaries. So, the personal position of pastors began to change rapidly —I could see how they were becoming stronger as citizens— but this was not encouraged by ordinary people in their congregations. That has been going on for the past four years. But what has happened in these last few days is a breakthrough. Even if a pastor does not speak openly to the church about his civil position, his preaching cannot help but indicate to people that he has his own opinion, that he does not accept falsehood, and so on. And what has just happened [the violent crackdown by police] was seen by very many people. 

I can give a concrete example. Yesterday I was with a prayer group where there are two sisters who always used to get into discussions with me: When one found out I had begun to support Rymasheuski, she aggressively argued that it was not God’s will, and so on. But during yesterday’s meeting a pastor prayed openly against this lawlessness. He said that the authorities have now destroyed all ways of approaching God and of assuming their God-given role of serving the people; that is, the authorities have renounced their calling completely. He recommended not watching Belarusian television, saying that it was a poison infecting people’s minds and could not be believed. One of these women then said: “Nobody believes it, not even my acquaintances who are not Christian.” 

This regime has supposedly now shown the whole world by its strength that any attempt to change its status will be suppressed. But I have seen the opposite—that by this latest action members of the regime have deprived themselves of all  possibility of remaining the authorities in this country. The authorities have by this ceased, from God’s perspective, to be the authorities. In the verse I mentioned, the Prophet Daniel says that God “deposes kings.” But that is only one half of the verse. “Religious” people forget that the full verse is: “He deposes kings and raises up others.” So a person has a choice. God didn’t create kings and then the people, he created mankind in his image and likeness, and when mankind in the Old Testament said, “Please give us a king,” He didn’t want that, but He let them have a king. God said that it is not quite right—He wanted to be their king—but that He created them to be free, not slaves, so if they wish… What does the Bible say? “Choose from among you.” [Acts 6:3] 

We can argue about the places in the Bible concerning kings and government and subordination, but if we return to the root of this problem, to when kingship arose, God placed the will of the people higher. And when the people chose their king, then maybe—the Bible does not say this, but this is what I think—maybe God was not always in agreement, maybe God looked and thought, “Guys, you have not chosen the right one. But you are the people, and if that’s what you want, I’ll raise him up.” So for me, the primary reason why God raises up kings is the will of the people. And on this point the first part of Daniel’s verse [“He deposes kings”] also has foundation—if the people say they don’t like a king, then God removes him. God doesn’t listen to kings.

People from different churches in Belarus work together in the Christian democracy movement. What accounts for this rarity, do you think? 

If we start to adopt a “religious” position and not see God personally, His will for us, then of course we will not find any points of contact. We will only look for what divides us. But when people begin to sense that God wants to use us for a particular purpose, then in order for us to carry out that purpose… there is an expression by a famous preacher on this topic: “In essentials unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, love.” [Editor’s note: The provenance of this quotation is uncertain.] We always used to focus upon what was secondary, because we did not see the goal. Our goals were so small: to have our own church building, our own piece of land, healthy finances, music and equipment. But when the authorities begin to squeeze, and you have no building—not only that, but they take your building away, do not let you gather due to the law On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations… If we were to read the Bible together now, a neighbor could report it, and we could be arrested—and there have been such cases. Some people will argue that while this is in the law, they have not arrested everybody. They haven’t, that is true. But why should I rejoice about the fact that we have not been arrested? It is still a violation of God’s will. 

Whenever a period of persecution starts, people begin to turn from what is secondary to what is most important—to look for what God wants. And when we are all searching for God, and we are all searching—Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox—I have no time to ask why my neighbor has not raised his hand like this [makes the sign of the cross], or why I praise God like this [raises his hands palms uppermost] while he does it like this [puts his palms together]. Because I am not looking at him, I am looking at God. God is speaking in his heart and mine. I cannot say precisely, but around 40 percent of those in Belarusian Christian Democracy are Orthodox, somewhat less than that are Catholic, and the rest are Protestants of different denominations. And the main thing is to find out what God wants, not only so that you change, but so that your people and your country change. If you have no aim—or if it is for another building or a larger congregation—then you will ask, “Why were the Orthodox given land and not us?” If it were not for the current situation in our country, we would be divided and looking at who worships God “rightly” and who “wrongly.”

How do you view the situation going forward? 

Superficially I do not feel despondent, but inside I am troubled by what is happening: people being imprisoned, summoned for questioning. Isaiah speaks about this situation [59:14-16]: “And righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene.” 

That is what I was talking about earlier. God is not a conjuror. He won’t say to you, “You need freedom? Okay, I’ll just move this piece,” as if this were a game of chess. He looks at us and He grieves—it even says that He “was displeased that there was no justice.” When we were “religious,” we got used to saying that we would pray to God and then see that He had performed something. No, “the Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice.” God won’t implant notions of what is just and unjust in our minds, if we don’t see it ourselves. If they repress us, won’t allow us to have a church building, take away our building, ban us from meeting, stop foreign missionaries from visiting, and so on, then where is justice? We ourselves must be able to judge, not in the sense of punishment, but in the sense of discernment. And this is beginning in churches. People are beginning to ask, “So where is truth?” 

So far, people are coming together not as churches, but in associations in which people first unite around a common goal. People of different confessions join in and there is no division at all. To be honest, I talk to many people in Belarusian Christian Democracy and I cannot tell you what church they belong to, because I do not know. I know about Vital [Rymasheuski], Pavel [Seviarynets], and Heorhi [Dzmitruk], but I do not know about the others. This is not because I am scared to ask—it is because I am not interested. I see their eyes and I see that God is there, the very same God Who is in me. So what difference does it make? 

I believe that today God is showing our churches—not through bishops or pastors, but through civil associations— that if we want to do something for God, we shouldn’t look at what confession a person belongs to or what is right or wrong there, as this is secondary. As I said, the main thing must be unity. Freedom comes second, and what is secondary must not arouse a lack of understanding among us: “Why do you do it like that?” In this we must be free. I feel I must worship God singing “Alleluia, alleluia!” while a grandmother in another church might feel she should worship on her knees. Earlier there was division over this. But today people have begun to understand that this is secondary, and that God wants to do something more important through us