The placards held by the participants read: ‘The Lord protects the feelings of believers, not the Criminal Code’ and ‘A believer’s feelings cannot be offended.’ The name of the action goes back to the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians, which says that God is not mocked. The picketers used this formula as a direct answer to the logic of a law that protects the feelings of believers by criminal-law means.
The immediate cause of the action was a case in Moscow, where two defenders of Torfyanka Park were charged under Article 148. They had opposed the construction of a church on the park grounds. Disputes over building on green spaces in Russian cities at that time often turned into a conflict between local residents and parishes seeking sites for new churches. In such a situation, a charge under the religious article became for many observers a sign that a public argument about church construction was moving into the legal sphere.
Article 148 of the Criminal Code concerns public actions that express clear disrespect for society and offend the feelings of believers. The norm has existed in Russian law for a relatively short time, and its application has sparked debate among lawyers, human-rights defenders and religious organisations themselves. Some saw in it a way to protect religious peace from mockery and provocation. Others believed that the vagueness of its wording allowed any criticism of the church, any statement about religion or any inconvenient public action to be interpreted as falling under it.
In conversation with Novaya Gazeta columnist Boris Vishnevsky, Mikhnóv-Vaiténko stated his position directly. ‘From a Christian point of view, such a law has no right to exist,’ the bishop explained. According to him, Article 148 ‘goes beyond any common sense’ and contradicts the commandment to love one’s enemies. The argument is theological, not legal: his focus is not on procedural errors or sentences but on the very idea of state protection of religious feeling from words.
The organiser of the picket is himself a notable figure both in church circles and among St Petersburg activists. The son of Alexander Galich, in 2014 he was still serving as a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church and announced the excommunication from communion of those involved in the war in Ukraine. In 2015 Mikhnóv-Vaiténko moved to the Apostolic Orthodox Church and was later consecrated Bishop of Varangia and the Baltic. He served in Staraya Russa. The Apostolic Orthodox Church is a small jurisdiction that exists outside the Russian Orthodox Church, so its clergy often act independently in public disputes and do not wait for decisions from a large church structure.
This status determined the form of protest. One-man pickets in Russia do not require prior notification of the authorities, unlike mass rallies and marches. Therefore the police, as participants reported, took down the details of those standing with placards but did not stop the action or obstruct it. The format allowed the issue to be discussed publicly without bringing large numbers of people onto the street and without seeking approval, which in the case of defending freedom of conscience the authorities might not have granted.
The outcome of the November 2016 action was modest in numbers but notable in content: a bishop of a jurisdiction that had separated from the Russian Orthodox Church and his colleagues publicly spoke out against a criminal norm that church structures more often defend. Article 148 itself continued to be in force, and the case of the Torfyanka defenders remained under investigation. A one-man picket, unlike a rally, did not require approval, so the police only recorded the participants’ details.
1
