– Missionary Activity is carried out directly by the religious association and/or authorized persons and organizations. The spread of one’s personal faith cannot be automatically attributed to the missionary work.
– Missionary activity is aimed at those who are not yet a follower of a religious association; therefore, talking about faith among fellow believers is not missionary activity.
– The purpose of missionary activity is recruiting people to join a religious association. If you’re just talking about your faith without reference to a particular religious group, it is not missionary work.
– Missionary activity is carried out in public. Talking about one’s faith at home is not a public activity.
As noted in a letter written by the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, missionary activity is characterized by the totality of the above characteristics. The activity of a religious association, which does not contain all four characteristics, cannot be regarded as a missionary activity. Therefore, these activities are not subject to restrictions set by the Federal Law against missionary activity.
Personal testimony about one’s faith is not marked by the above characteristics; therefore, it cannot be regarded as missionary activity.
It is important to understand that the modern version of the law does not consider the activities of individuals (Russian citizens and other persons legally residing in the territory of Russia) as missionary. Such cases are covered by Article 28 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. There are certain restrictions on religious and missionary activity for foreigners. These will be discussed in a separate chapter.
What does this mean?
If friends come to your house to visit, or you are visiting someone, and you’ve decided to talk about your faith and convictions, you are fully within your rights to do so. This basic right is guaranteed by the Russian Constitution.
Based on the postulate that missionary activity is characterized by the totality of the characteristics contained in the legal definition, we can conclude that an individual citizen engaged in the distribution of opinions on the street, with a public audience including non believers, with the intention to recruit people into a religious organization, but