This ministry aims to protect the freedom of the Christain chruch to gather, worsthip, and witness in the postcommunist Bulgarian environment .

Activities and projects

1. Freedom for All magazine;

2. Annual lawyer-pastor conference;

3. Litigation and counsel.

Freedom for All

We started this publication in December of 2004 to create a forum for the discussion of the freedom of conscience, religion and speech. The idea was to work on the level of discussion and education of the public about the value of respecting one’s conscience in their choice to worship God. The typical monolithic ideology which ruled the Bulgarian people during the time of communism turned out to be hard to crack. Regardless of the brief revival of Christian preaching and conversions to Christ, at the dawn of the new democratic political system, soon the culture rejected the preaching of the Gospel as a Western spiritual invasion. The old demons of anti-evangelical and anti-American feelings began to emerge soon after the initial years of enthusiasm of finding a plain message of God’s love and salvation. Political pluralism did not immediately translate into religious tolerance or respect for the evangelical message. Without overt and harsh persecution, by accepting religious freedom laws but not applying them, or renouncing them by lesser ordinances the actual freedom to believe and evangelize became yet again an unacceptable choice for the Bulgarian society.

The State initiated the Orthodox Church as its new partner for justifying an attempt to promote a state-sponsored ideology. The “free” media also brought up many reports which in the early nineties bordered on the ridiculous. As conditions improved slowly during the 20-year post communist period hostility against Christian witness and charity remained steady. For example, our ministry to state-run orphan homes had to be closed due to change of administration which requested that we abandon our religious message but continue to bring in donations of clothes and food to the orphanages.

In this context the discussion of issues on how the church must relate to the state, why the state has such a predominant presence in society even after the alleged collapse of totalitarianism what are the practical dimension of man’s freedom to believe and worship were a very poignant issue.

The online magazine offers 4 issues of 4 articles per year. In the first year we had about 15, 000 unique visits to our site. The last two years — 2009 and 2010 — the number has been steady at about 210,000 unique visits to our web site. All this we have been able to achieve by God’s grace and with a minimalistic budget and a very small team of, volunteers. The other aspect of this ministry has been the network of author contacts we were able to create. We have worked with over 50 authors throughout the years most of the believers.

We will continue to publish the magazine and strive to keep it as the top web publication for discussing and promoting the freedoms of religion, conscience and speech. We hope that In this discussion the Church of God will continue to be equipped in wisdom and boldness to worship and preach the Gospel in the public square.

Conference

Two Round Table talks were held in 2005 and 2008. Last year we held a pastors and lawyers conference “God and Caesar” attended by over 100 pastors, Christian lawyers, and theological and law students from around the nation. Viktor and his team and a Christian lawyer from the US partnered in organizing the event (Joel L. Pearce, Esq.) the goal of the conference is to equip pastors and Christian workers to network and work with Christian lawyers and professionals in engaging the culture at large with the Gospel and issues of the Kingdom of God.

Litigation

There are still situations in which media or the state violate the right to gather, worship and witness of evangelical and Bible-believing Christians in Bulgaria. We try to resolve these issues through negotiations and introducing the need to follow the right to freedom of belief and speech. However, as state officials often feel that they have the right to impede religious belief and specch, regardless of the law, we initiate legal action to uphold justice and the right of Christians to belief and preaching. You can read more about the specific cases in which Viktor acts as the counsel in the informational and newsletter section of our web site.

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