Emily B. Baran

For much of the twentieth century, white American Protestants were divided into two ideological camps. Evangelical Protestants resisted the civil rights movement, feminism, and religious and racial pluralism. Ecumenical Protestants, in contrast, welcomed these developments because they viewed ethnoreligious pluralism as a positive good.

This week the Russian Supreme Court declared the Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization. The ruling puts the Witnesses on par with ISIS and al-Qaida. The organization’s national center outside of St. Petersburg will be shuttered, and its members even more vulnerable to arrest simply for practicing their faith. If the idea of Jehovah’s Witnesses posing any serious threat to national security seems absurd, it is, but it also has long roots in Russian society.

The Supreme Court of Russia has a decision to make this week about whether to label the Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization and liquidate its assets. This act would transform the religious community into a criminal network, and make individual Witnesses vulnerable to arrest simply for speaking about their faith with others. While the court case has attracted recent media attention, this move is the culmination of two decades of increasing state hostility to Witnesses.