Study Shows that there are more than 3,000 Sunday Schools in Russia, 93 Percent are Orthodox

Moscow, 29 August 2008 (Interfax):

Throughout Russia, there are more than 3,000 Sunday Schools involved in religious formation according to data collected by the Ministry of Education in 79 different parts of the RF. The conclusions of the study, received by Interfax-Religion on Friday, indicate that the vast majority of such facilities are Orthodox, that is, 2,876 schools, or 93 percent of the total number. The areas with the largest number of Orthodox schools are:

1. Moscow oblast (625)
2. St Petersburg (376)
3. Kemerovo oblast (210)
4. Stavropol krai (190)
5. Voronezh oblast (120)
6. Bashkiriya (95)
7. Yaroslavl oblast (75)
8. Samara oblast (70)
9. Belgorod oblast (64)
10. Vladimir oblast (61)
11. Novosibirsk oblast (60)
12. Smolensk oblast (55)
13. Omsk oblast (50)

There were 107 Islamic schools in the areas under study:

1. Samara oblast (50)
2. Karabindo-Balkarsk republic (20)
3. Tatarstan (17)
4. Rostov oblast (15)
5. Chelyabinsk oblast (5)

Protestant Sunday Schools are third-largest in number, 78 in total, and are most numerous in the Far Eastern and Northern parts of Russia. The largest number of Protestant schools is in Murmansk oblast, where there are 39, and they make up 73.6 percent of all Sunday Schools. Sakhalin oblast has 10 Protestant schools and the Chukotka autonomous district has 5.

Amongst other bodies enumerated in the study, there are 11 Jewish, 14 Roman Catholic, 1 Buddhist, and 1 Armenian Apostolic schools.

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=26253 (in Russian)