Members of the Riga-based Word of Faith church, which once praised Putin’s anti-LGBT agenda, have been arrested as “agents of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
by Massimo Introvigne
Mysterious explosions and sabotages in Russian-occupied Crimea and inside the Russian territory are becoming a daily occurrence as the Ukrainian war continues. Russian propaganda has been uncertain whether to call it mere “accidents” or blame Ukrainian saboteurs, admitting they are able to hit in Russia.
Russian “cult hunters” affiliated with the controversial European anti-cult federation FECRIS have now found a third solution, one embraced with enthusiasm by Russian propaganda. FECRIS board member and Russian leading anti-cultist Alexander Dvorkin and others have accused a Latvian “cult” of operating in Russia through “sleeping cells” now activated by the “Ukrainian Armed Forces,” and performing anti-Russian tasks assigned to it by Ukrainian intelligence.
The group is the New Generation church based in Riga, Latvia, where it was founded by Aleksey Ledyaev. He was born in 1956 in Soviet Kazakhstan and raised as a Baptist. In the 1980s, he moved to Riga, where he joined the Evangelical Christian Baptist Church and became a pastor. In Riga, however, he came under the influence of Swedish Word of Faith pastor Ulf Ekman, the founder of Uppsala megachurch Livets Ord (Word of Life), who later converted to Roman Catholicism.
Under the influence of Ekman, Ledyaev moved from the Baptists to the Pentecostals, then broke with other Latvian Pentecostals because of his emphasis on Word of Faith doctrines, which teach that believers can claim healing and prosperity through the power of faithful affirmations (“name it and claim it”). In 1989, he founded his independent New Generation Church. Eventually, despite being criticized by Ekman as too radical, New Generation became one of the most successful Word of Faith churches in Europe, with communities in fifteen European Nations and in the United States.
Ledyaev became controversial not only for its radical Word of Faith teachings but also for its extreme views on homosexuality. He taught that Western countries are engaged in a conspiracy to promote homosexuality throughout the world and called for laws criminalizing homosexuality altogether. Ledyaev also praised Vladimir Putin’s and Russian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Kyrill’s anti-homosexual attitudes and declarations. Delegations of the New Generation Church attended international pro-family events sponsored by Russian pro-government organizations.
Notwithstanding the common opposition to the LGBT rights, the Russian Orthodox Church considered that, while it expanded to Russia, New Generation had committed the unforgivable sin of converting Orthodox believers to its church. It thus mobilized its anti-cult operatives, and since at least 2005 Alexander Dvorkin, his deputy Alexander Novopashin, and the Russian branch of FECRIS have accused New Generation of being a “destructive cult.”
In 2021, New Generation has been declared “undesirable” in Russia. As a reaction, Ledyaev radically changed his attitude towards Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, and compared the Russian President to Emperor Nero of Rome, the great persecutor of early Christians. This was again paradoxical, considering that at the same time New Generation and Ledyaev were in trouble with Latvian authorities for their refusal to comply with health regulations about COVID-19 and campaigns against the vaccines—in which they were on the same side of several pro-Russian organizations.
Unlike the latter, New Generation resolutely condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and collected humanitarian aid. Dvorkin and Novopashin claim that in fact what New Generation is collecting is “money for the Nazi Azov Battalion.” Officers of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs accused New Generation of requesting from its Russian followers “unquestioning obedience and the fulfillment of various orders and tasks for the benefit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for the benefit of the Azov Battalion.”
Since New Generation has several churches in Ukraine, Novopashin accuses it of having participated in the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Euromaidan of 2014, together with other Pentecostal churches, and to be part of an American conspiracy. On August 16, Novopashin said in an interview about New Generation that “conferences of the leaders of this movement are constantly held on the territory of Ukraine. Politicians and political technologists from the United States came there, such calls were made: ‘We need to send as many missionaries to Russia as possible to reformat the consciousness of Russians under Euromaidan values and to promote the theology of Maidan.’ What kind of ‘Maidan theology’ is this, we see now in Ukraine.”
Novopashin also added that New Generation and other “Ukrainian” Pentecostal groups came to Russia for “collecting money for terrorist operations in Ukraine and recruited new mercenaries for the criminal nationalist battalions, which destroyed the civilian population of Donbass.”
On August 15, New Generation churches and private homes of members were raided by special forces in Chelyabinsk, Moscow, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, and Sochi. Dvorkin and Novopashin appeared on several TV programs to explain to the population that the “cult” operated pro-Ukrainian “cells” planning anti-Russian crimes. Several members were arrested.
New Generation is a controversial organization, mostly because of theories on LGBT rights and COVID-19 it shares with groups that actively support Russia in various countries. It is surely true that it actively seeks to convert Russian Orthodox believers (a crime in Russia). That it organizes sabotage activities in Russia on behalf of Ukraine and the Azov Battalion is, on the other hand, highly unlikely. Not without humor, Ledyaev answered the raids in Russia by playing in Riga the old Beatles song, “Back in the U.S.S.R.”
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
