Mormon 'missionaries' disrupt Orthodox Church service

[Catharsis]

Mormons Rush into Orthodox Church in Bulgaria's Burgas, Interrupt Service

5 June 2008, Thursday
novinite

Two mormon preachers rushed Thursday into "Saints Cyril and Methodius" orthodox church in Bulgaria's coastal city of Burgas to interrupt the morning service, held to mark the Ascension of Jesus.

The missionaries entered the temple and announced in Bulgarian before the people inside they were going to preach.

The young men refused to leave even after priest Zahari asked them to. The scandal lasted for about half an hour before the mormons were taken out of the church almost by force.

"Such an incident happened for the first time and that aggressive behaviour was a precedent," father Zahari said.

"I have ceased all responsible institutions and will insist on removing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Bulgaria's creed register as well as extraditing of its missionaries," he added.



Christian Orthodox priests want Mormons out of Bulgaria - report
16:00 Fri 06 Jun 2008 - Petar Kostadinov
sofiaecho


Bulgarian Orthodox Church priests from the town of Bourgas on the Black Sea have asked the authorities to extradite a number of Mormon ministers, all of whom are foreign citizens.

According to local-based website bourgasinfo.com, the Orthodox priests from SS Cyril and Methodius church in Bourgas wanted the state to ban the preaching of the Mormon religion in Bulgaria.

These requests follow the June 5 2008 incident that happened at the church. During the service for Spassov Den (the day of the Ascension of Christ the Saviour, celebrated on the fortieth day after Easter), the Mormons entered the church and interrupted the service by talking to people, according to the priests.

“This is inadmissible. They started walking around the church talking to people. They have crossed all boundaries because that way they infringed our religious freedom as Orthodox Christians. It was an act of religious hostility,� father Zahari Dachev told Bourgasinfo.com.

“We have sent a letter to the state institutions and to the US embassy asking them if this is how their citizens live in our country by breaking our rights and freedoms,� he said. “Bulgarians' tolerance is being taking advantage of.�

Dachev entered into an argument with the Mormons, who were physically removed out of the church in the end, reports in Bulgarian media said. Dachev has filed a complaint with the police.

According to him, this was not the first time that the Mormons have come to the church. At Tsvetnitsa (Palm Sunday), they were handing out flyers about Mormon religion to9 people waiting to enter the church.

[Kuan]

I agree with the above statement. Is there any proof that they were LDS or did they just claim to be? I haven't heard of this incident and it definitely is not part of our beliefs to be so dishonorable.

[fredonly]

How is it much different from

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.
And He said to them, "It is written, 'MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER'; but you are making it a ROBBERS' DEN."

Good point but there's a significant difference in the two scenarios that could invalidate your analogy: those Mormons and Orthodox fought over beliefs whereas Jesus fought to rid the temple of salesmen.

Also, I was going to say that Jesus is an exception because He alone is worthy to judge but that logic doesn't work because only the Father can judge, not the Son, I think.

Hotheads who believe that they have the divine message from God have felt that they have the right to illegally disrupt the believers of falsehoods for a long time now.

This only applies to those Mormons, not Jesus, because Jesus wasn't "disrupting the believers of falsehoods."

I disagree; these Mormons were behaving a lot like Jesus. The moneychangers in the Jerusalem temple had sanctioned, legitimate business to perform: foreign exchange so that Jews from outside of Jerusalem could purchase lambs for their Passover sacrifice. Jesus was an outsider who came in and briefly disrupted this practice, antagonizing the Jewish priests. The animosity this engendered may have been a factor in his eventual execution.

[Kuan]

I did some more research and I dont mean to be rude but this sounds fake. It is the exact opposite of missionary actions that my religion takes and I could only find one article about it and the article was somewhat incomplete.