Where Freedom Rings

As a young boy growing up in what is now Latvia, formerly of the Soviet Union, Oleg Zaonegin often witnessed clashes between religion and a repressive government. 
"I saw people suffer, people being imprisoned just for believing or reading some Christian books. The passion for religious liberty and personal freedom is in my blood. It's how I grew up," says Zaonegin, now a second-year doctoral student in Baylor's J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. 
Zaonegin became a Christian at age 13 after years of listening to his grandmother -- the only believer in the family -- read Scripture to him. In his teen years, he experienced the birthing pangs of freedom in his country. He is exactly the kind of student those who established the Dawson Institute must have imagined would attend their institute when it began in 1957. 
The J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies was founded in honor of Dawson, an outstanding alumnus, ardent advocate of religious liberty and a distinguished author of publications on church and state. It is the only program of its kind and has garnered domestic and international awards for its contributions to religious freedom around the world, according to Derek Davis, the institute's director. 
Davis knew that Zaonegin would be a natural for Baylor's program. "He comes from a background where he lived in the former Soviet Union," Davis says. "He's very familiar with the role of orthodoxy within the former Soviet system and the current system in Russia, yet he counterbalances that with his own commitment to the Seventh-day Adventist tradition. He knows firsthand about politically strong, majority religions, but also about potentially weak, minority religions."
Zaonegin's educational pedigree is long and impressive, and despite offers from many Ivy League doctoral programs, he is pleased with his decision to study at Baylor. "I have no doubt I made the right choice. The program itself, the student body, small classes, interaction, readings and the classes are very educational," he says. 
Zaonegin's higher education began in 1991 -- the year that Latvia became independent -- at Zaokski Theological Seminary, a Seventh-day Adventist school and Russia's first Protestant seminary. While attending classes, he worked as a pastor in the capital city of Riga, as vice president of a Latvian Christian charity with which he still works. He also worked in the first Protestant publishing house in Moscow, The Source of Life. 
In addition to his time at Zaokski, he studied religion for two years at Spicer Memorial College in India on a scholarship from the Australian government. He then studied theology for two years at Helderberg College in South Africa, completing an undergraduate degree in political theology with honors in 1998. While there, he listened to Desmond Tutu, Nobel Prize winner and former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, and became more interested in religious and church-state issues. "It was postapartheid time in South Africa. The most influential man for me was Desmond Tutu. I heard him many times, and he came and visited at the college when I was studying," Zaonegin says.
In 1998, Zaonegin and his wife, Julia, and daughter, Elina, came to the United States, where he earned an MDiv degree from Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist Seminary in Michigan, in 2001. Two years later, he graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a master's degree in social and Christian ethics. The family made its trek to Central Texas in summer 2003, and Zaonegin began his studies last fall as one of 28 students enrolled in the Institute's two doctoral tracks -- one in church-state studies and a new one, begun last year, in religion, politics and society. His colleagues are international (students from China and Nigeria, for instance) and religiously diverse (Protestant, Jewish, Catholic and Orthodox).
"The relationship between religion and state is important, not only in the United States but in every country in the world," Davis says. "So it's important that, as the only university in the world that offers this degree, we make serious attempts to train people from other cultures."
Students in both doctoral tracks can take classes in the Dawson Institute and in Baylor's Center for American and Jewish Studies, established in 1999 for the purpose of expanding and contributing to the dialogue on issues important to Jews and Christians worldwide. Course subjects include religion, political science, philosophy, history and sociology/anthropology. Research topics include discussion among Christians, Jews and Muslims, social justice and human rights movements worldwide and the interaction of law and morality. 
When he completes his doctorate, Zaonegin hopes to serve in the International Religious Liberty Association of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and he would like to teach ethics and religious freedom. 
After 10 years away from family in Latvia, he is looking forward to a trip home but admits he and his family may not settle there. "It's a very multinational church, so it's hard to say where I'm going to be," he says. "I think where the church needs me, I am going to be there."