Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

ottfried W. Lehmann from Berlin, Julius Ké6bner and C. Schauffler. The King assured them that he opposed all religious discrimination. He then enquired how many Baptist chapels there were in Prussia. “Three or four, your Majesty”, was the reply. “No more?’, the king asked. Then came a typically optimistic Baptist reply: “The erection of several others is contemplated”. The King also asked why Baptists did not join with the Mennonites. Lehmann said that they had made overtures, but the Mennonites were wary. Since Mennon- ites were losing members to the Baptists, this was not surprising. Oncken added that Mennonites baptised their children indiscriminately at the age of fourteen to sixteen, whereas Baptists required evidence of faith in Christ. Also Baptists baptised by immersion, not pouring. Finally, Oncken emphasised, Baptists, unlike Mennonites, did not refuse to take oaths or '' Executive Council Minutes, 11 May 1853. '2 EC, vol. 9 (1855), pp. 49-52. 17 perform military service. The king (who may not have been interested in finer points about baptism) was happy to hear this last point. He seems to have had sympathy for Baptists, having taken advice from Christian Karl Josias Bunsen, his ambassador in London, and had representations from Daniel Barnard, the American envoy. The king promised to take action about persecution - something “so foreign to my conviction’. But Oncken, writing to Edward Steane, had no faith that the king’s wishes would prevail, as leading Lutherans wanted to impede Baptist progress.'* Oncken felt the need for continued wider evangelical support. Throughout the 1850s and the early 1860s the issue of liberty for Baptists and other groups in Prussia and across Eastern Europe remained an important one for the British Evangelical Alliance. Meanwhile the German Evangelical Alliance continued to experience severe tensions. It was alleged from the Lutheran side that Baptists accused evangelicals in the Lutheran Church of “infidelity”. Baptists, for their part, said that false accusations were being made about them. All of this weakened the German Alliance and made it difficult for other Alliances to know whom to support."* At the same time there was increasing interest in European evangelical progress further east. At an international Alliance conference held in 1857 in Germany there were reports from Protestants in Hungary, Bohemia and Russia.’° James Blackwood, a well-known Anglican clergyman, writing in Evangelical Christendom in 1857, called for new evangelical enterprise in Bulgaria. The New Testament had been translated into Bulgarian and sales were extensive. American missionaries were becoming involved, and Blackwood suggested that money raised in Britain to support work in Bulgaria should go to the Baptist minister Edward Steane."® Baptists were active pan-evangelically across Europe. The area that was attracting growing Evangelical Alliance interest, indeed fascinati