Study On The History And Current State Of Christianity In Kazakhstan

The Christian religion is one of the three major religions of the world,with 2.3 billion followers,about 32%of the world’s population.Since its founding in the 1st century AD,the religion has been divided into many branches.The mainstream ones are Catholicism,Orthodoxy and Protestantism.Protestantism includes Lutheran,Baptism and many other denominations.Since its birth,the Christian religion has been spreading outward,gradually spreading to Europe,Asia,Africa,America and other parts of the world,including Kazakhstan.Kazakhstan,located in Central Asia,is the largest landlocked country in the world.In this vast land,missionaries of every branch of the Christian religion(Nestorian,Catholic,Orthodoxy and Protestant)have come to this country to carry out their missionary work.It is documented that in the 5th century Nestorianism spread to the cultural areas of eastern Iran,with bishops in Sistan,Merv,and Herat,etc.In 893,Elias,the archbishop of Damascus(the present-day capital of Syria,Damascus),wrote a table of Nestorian bishops,from which it is clear that Nestorianism had spread as far east as Samarkand in Uzbekistan.After the Mongol invaded Central Asia in the 13 th century,Nestorianism in Central Asia developed further.At that time there were four archdioceses in Central Asia,namely Khoransan(at the border of present-day northeastern Iran,southeastern Turkmenistan,and northwestern Afghanistan),Herat(in present-day Herat,northwestern Afghanistan),Samarkand,and Balkh(in present-day Balkh,northern Afghanistan).In addition to the documentary evidence,recently new discoveries of Nestorian relics in the village of Usharal in Alakol,Almaty,Kazakhstan,confirm that Nestorianism once spread in Kazakhstan.From 2015 to 2020,more than 40 Nestorian relics with crosses or Syro-Turkic inscriptions have been unearthed in this area.The analysis and examination of the relics have led experts to believe that a Nestorian community existed in this area in the 13 th and 14 th centuries.In 1278,Catholic Pope Nicolaus PP.III tried unsuccessfully to establish an ecclesiastical system in the Caucasus and Central Asia under the jurisdiction of the Golden Horde.At the beginning of the 14 th century,Pope Le Clement V established the Khanbalik Archdiocese(in Beijing)and the Almalik Catholic Diocese(in the village of Khorgos,Zharkent District,Almaty Oblast,Kazakhstan).At the end of the 14 th century,the khan of the Chaghatai Khanate began to believe and practice Islam.The development of Catholicism in Central Asia faced difficulties and gradually tended to decline.In the second half of the 18 th century,a large number of Catholics were exiled by the Tsarist government to the north and east of Kazakhstan as a result of their participation in the Confederation of Bar and the Polish uprising led by Tadeusz Ko?ciuszko.Thus only in the second half of the 18 th century did Catholics resume their activities in Kazakhstan.In late 1773,Tsar Catherine II decreed the establishment of the Magilov Patriarchate,which included Kazakhstan,and in 1917,when Kazakhstan joined the Soviet Union,the Catholic Church in Kazakhstan again faced great difficulties due to the Soviet Union’s strict religious control policy.However,at the same time,the number of Catholics in Kazakhstan increased dramatically due to the forced relocation of the Catholic population to Kazakhstan executed by Soviet Union.In the 1950 s,the Soviet authorities relaxed their policy of religious control due to the active contribution of religious believers in the Patriotic War,and one after another Catholic clergy restarted missionary activities in the territory of Kazakhstan.After the independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan,the Catholic Church developed further and now there are about 112,000 believers in its territory,with three dioceses and two apostolic administrations.In the 17 th and 18 th centuries,with the successive incorporation of the Kazakh Small,Middle and Large Yuzi into the Russian Empire,Orthodox Christianity began to spread in the territories of the Kazakh tribes.The development of Orthodox Christianity in Kazakhstan during the Soviet period was inseparable from the religious policy introduced by the Soviet authorities.In the early establishment of the Soviet Union,the Orthodox Church in Central Asia went through a stable period.After 1929,with the tightening of religious policy,a large number of Orthodox Christians were "purged".After the outbreak of the Patriotic War,the religious policy was relaxed because of the great contribution of the Orthodox Church in the war against German fascism.Under Khrushchev’s rule,the Orthodox Church suffered another blow.It was not until Brezhnev and Gorbachev came to power that religious policy was again relatively liberal and the Orthodox Church was able to recuperate.After the independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan,the Orthodox Church entered a period of great development.By 2015,there were about 4.24 million orthodox believers in Kazakhstan,with 9 dioceses.The main Protestant Christian denominations in Kazakhstan today are Lutheran,Baptist,Seventh Day Adventists,Mennonite,Presbyterian,Methodist,and Jehovah’s Witness.Protestants make up a very small percentage of the population of Kazakhstan,about 0.5%.The introduction of Lutheran in Kazakhstan originated with the Russian garrison in Kazakhstan during the Soviet period(1922-1991).At that time the believers were mainly military officers,doctors,engineers,and teachers,as well as some artisans and farmers.Currently there are eight Lutheran parishes in Kazakhstan with about 15-17 thousand believers.The introduction of Baptists into Kazakhstan began in 1917,when eight Ukrainian families belonging to Baptist churches moved to Almaty,Kazakhstan.After more than 90 years of development,as of 2006 there were about 290 Baptist organizations with about 11,000 believers in Kazakhstan.The history of Seventh-day Adventists in Kazakhstan dates back to the end of the 19 th century,when Germans from the Volga region(the first group of Seventh-day Adventists)migrated to the village of Konstantinovka(today’s village of Derbyshek in the Chimkent region)in southern Kazakhstan.At present there are 43 Seventh-day Adventist groups in Kazakhstan with 2,351 members and 19 church enterprises.The history of Mennonites in Kazakhstan began in the late 19 th century when some Mennonites migrated to Syr Darya in Uzbekistan and to Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan,where they established agricultural settlements.Currently,about 40,000 Mennonites,comprising different ethnic groups,live in Kazakhstan.Since Kazakhstan’s independence,facing the domestic situation of multi-ethnic and multi religious coexistence,the Kazakh government began to explore how to formulate religious laws and regulations to strengthen the supervision of the religious field.From the promulgation of the law on freedom of religious belief and religious organizations in December 1992 to the promulgation of the law on religious activities and religious organizations in October 2011,after nearly two decades of exploration,the Kazakh government has basically formulated and completed relevant laws that can adapt to its national conditions and effectively manage domestic religious affairs.