Matthew Laferty serves as chaplain of Moscow Protes- tant Chaplaincy, an ELCA-supported ecumenical ministry in Moscow. He says many MPC members “are confronted daily with the problem of racism.”
lain Matthew Laferty. “There is shame involved in being gullible and having wasted one’s own resources and those of other family members back home,” he explained. Repatriation is only one of the chaplaincy’s min- istries. It offers ecumenical worship services at St. Andrew’s, a mile west of the Kremlin. And Laferty, a United Methodist pastor from Ohio, said 75 percent of MPC’s budget is spent on social programs. At a recent gala for Western expatriates, MPC raised $75,000 for its programs, yet “our funding never suffices for all the needs we face,” he said.
Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy
Assisting people of African descent
Text and photo by William Yoder T
he ELCA-supported Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy, an ecumenical ministry based out of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church and St. Peter and Paul Lutheran Church in Moscow, specializes in sending people home. Russia’s capital is bursting at the seams with 16 mil-
lion legal and illegal residents. Yet the country’s traffick- ing mafia lures more people to Moscow with ads placed in sub-Saharan newspapers. The ads promise lucrative jobs and ready access to western Europe. When the newcomers arrive at the airport on a 30-day tourist visa, greeters relieve them of their documents and cash and rush them off to their new “jobs” as prostitutes or unpaid laborers. They have joined the millions of people worldwide who are trafficked. Those who protest this arrangement find themselves on the streets without passports or money. This, along with their foreign appearance, makes trafficked people from Africa prime candidates for interrogation and arrest—far from the employment and security they had hoped to find. Since 2011, Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy has
worked with international nongovernmental organiza- tions to repatriate the misled would-be immigrants. Already they have paid for 16 of Africa’s deceived to return to their homelands. Yet not all seek repatriation help, said MPC chap-
38 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
Those needs include a food bank, a clothing attic, two soup kitchens and a medical clinic for displaced people who lack insurance. The clinic also employs foreigners with medical training. In a variety of ways, the chaplaincy helps people who
face racial discrimination in Moscow. Its Métis program provides support for biracial children of African descent, who are often ostracized in schools and public life in general. At MPC’s “Parish Center” these children find a library, computers, fellowship and a safe haven. On the chaplaincy’s website (
www.mpcrussia.org),
its “Task Force on Racial Violence and Harassment” documents racially motivated crimes, which seem to peak around Adolf Hitler’s birthday (April 20). Efforts are under way to have this website appear in Russian. As an English-speaking ministry, MPC has at times
been relatively isolated from mainstream Moscow society, yet its leaders are committed to raising national awareness of issues facing people of color who live in the capital. In January 2012, MPC helped Baptists in the city lead a first-ever Russian-language Protestant wor- ship service to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The chaplaincy has come a long way since the
National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. founded it in 1962 to serve Moscow’s expatriate com- munity. Today its member churches and groups repre- sent 30 countries and more than 20 Christian traditions. It is supported by five U.S. denominations: the ELCA, the United Methodist Church, the Reformed Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the American Baptist Churches. As a worshiping community the MPC’s ethnic and
social diversity is unique: the rich and the penniless and those with and without diplomatic passes sit in the same rows. And as a social services provider, it works to bring together the haves and have-nots of Russian society.
Yoder is a freelance writer living in Belarus and working in Moscow.
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