Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

ng the earlier waves of emigration were elected council members of the Association of American Latvian Baptists established in 1950.?! 8 The author of one article speaks of the “ideological degeneration” of Latvian workers and complains that they “have fellowship with purely reactionary middle-class elements”. J. Pallo, “Amerikas latvieSu stradnieku idejiska degeneracija’, Amerikas Cina, no. 8 (1930), pp. 2-3. ®° Roberts Lidums, Latviesu brivibas meklétaji ({Canada]: Greenwood Printers, 1973), pp. 75-77. *” Akmentins, Amerikas latviesi, 1888-1948, p. 132. *! Cakars (ed), Teici to Kungu, p. 11; American Latvian Baptists for quite a long time debated the need to establish an association, but it was founded only after the Second World War. 117 Conclusion The issues discussed in this paper reveal a rich variety of perspectives held by Latvian Baptists in response to socio-political realities of the time. The claim by Voldemars Freimanis that “Latvian Baptists, the majority being people of low income, in rural and urban life never have been become entangled in the nets of leftist streams’,”” remains wishful thinking. Socialist ideas indeed had some influence on Baptists. Modernity challenges reli- gious tradition with innovation and restructuring. Nowadays in post-socialist countries socialism is still classified by many Christians as an enemy of Christianity,” failing to distinguish between totalitarian currents like Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism, which can be equated with Nazism because of their crimes against humanity, and other types of the political Left. This attitude uncritically places Christianity on the side of post-industrial consumer society and such political ideolo- gies as U.S. president George W. Bush's politics of aggressive American messianism. But one does not need to be socialist to be a true witness to God's transforming work in the world. Likewise, rigid anti-Communism is not a Christian value per se. As stated by Karl Barth, “Anti means against. God is not against, but for men. The communists are men too. [...] To be for the communists does not mean to be for communism. I am not for communism. But one can only say what has to be said against communism if one is for the communists” (emphasis in the original).** The Church can and must be political without being politicised. Valdis Téraudkalns is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Rezekne Higher Education Institution, Rezekne, Latvia, and author of academic arti- cles in English and Latvian, as well as a monograph on the history of the Pentecostal movement in Latvia (published in Latvian in 2003). 2 Voldemars Freimanis, “Baptisti tautas un valsts dzivé in Fridrichs Cukurs, Radolfs EkSteins and Augusts Méters (eds), Dzivibas ce]s: Veltijums latviesu baptistu 100 gadu jubi- lejai ([Toronto]: ALBA, 1960), p. 209. *3 See, for example, claims made by leadership of the independent Charismatic church New Generation [Novoe