Russian Self-Proclaimed Jesus Incarnate Cult Leader Arrested

Torop will be tried in Novosibirsk following his arrest. (Wikimedia Commons)

Russian officials arrested Sergei Torop, a man claiming to be the incarnation of Jesus and the leader of the Vissarionite cult, on September 22.

Known to his followers as Vissarion, Torop proclaimed himself to be “the living word of God the father” after losing his job as a traffic officer in 1989. Less than two years after his supposed rebirth, he founded what is referred to today as the “Church of the Last Testament.” The Russian government arrested Torop along with two of his aides, charging him with “organizing an illegal religious organization” and alleging that the cult extorted money from followers and subjected them to “psychological violence.”

Members of the FSB, or the Russian Federal Security Service, and other unnamed agencies coordinated the September 22 arrest. Torop will face trial at the Novosibirsk central district court. If convicted, he and his aides would face 12 years in prison.

Based in the self-established “City of the Sun” in the Siberian taiga, the sect extends across the globe—in 2000, there was an estimated world membership of 10,000 followers. Members choose to abstain from smoking and drinking while refraining from using money or living opulently. Known as Vissarionites, they also reject the consumption of “meat, coffee, tea, sugar, and other products.” Years of age are counted from the birth of Vissarion in 1961, while his January 14 birthday could be considered the sect’s equivalent of Christmas.

Because the new religion and its Siberian community’s establishment coincided roughly with the fall of the Soviet Union, under which religion was periodically suppressed, many Vissarionites did not have complete pictures of traditional Russian Orthodoxy before joining the sect. While based on Russian Orthodox beliefs, Torop’s religion “mixes in elements of Buddhism, collectivism, and environmental values.” 

While the cult presents itself as idyllic and idealistic in many ways—with as many as 20 small communities grouped together in the Siberian countryside—it also maintains a dark undercurrent of misogyny. Vissarion spoke in 2017 about the group’s views on the role of women in the community, declaring, “We have a school of noble maidens here. We’re preparing girls to become future wives, future brides for worthy men [and]... to understand not to rise above the man, not to be proud of her independence but to be shy, inconspicuous, and weak.”

It is unclear whether the mistreatment of women is included in what Russian authorities claim to be “psychological violence” perpetrated by Vissarion. Moscow failed to explain the timing of the arrest, and it is still unknown what will happen to the larger Vissarionite community with its leader detained.