Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

bates about effective methods of evangelism. Surprisingly, in some cases the state authorities did not take severe meas- ures to suppress Estonian ECB activities, such as the efforts to reproduce typewritten literature, to revive and organise youth work in churches and on a Union level, to organise evangelistic services with youth participation, and to provide theological training through informal study groups. Senior Presbyter Robert Vosu, with his diplomatic abilities, was able to organise semi-illegal training for presbyters, and a new hymnal was published. All these phenomena demonstrate that Estonian Baptists tried to revive some of their traditional ministries in the 1970s and 1980s, though the general membership numbers in the UECBE continued to decline. Although ECB believers restrained from public criticism of the atheistic socialist political system, their presence was a witness of a non-materialistic worldview. They represented an alternative way of life characterised by trust in God, not by human-bound atheistic optimism. This was one method of peaceful resist- ance in atheistic suppression. However, in some cases, Estonian Baptists actively supported the “underground Baptist movement’, which openly defied the restrictive religious laws. All this helped to develop and form the UECBE identity in Estonia. During the period of “Brezhnevian stagnation’, Estonian ECB churches, searching for their way in the socialist atheistic labyrinth, saw some rays of light which directed their path: renewed evan- gelism in several churches, emerging youth groups, and attempts to keep their minds and thinking free. Toivo Pilli was Course Leader in Baptist and Anabaptist Studies at the International Baptist Theological Seminary, Prague, Czech Republic (2002- 2006). He now teaches at the Estonian Baptist Seminary in Tartu, Estonia. 164 Changing Worship in a Changing Society: Baptists in Poland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Zbigniew Wierzchowski “In words we see only desire; in work, greatness. To survive the day is more difficult than to write a book.” ps society has been known throughout the ages for its thinking reformers. Poland has consistently raised up people who sought reform, desiring to change the difficult situation in which the nation found itself. Poland was generally one of the most tolerant nations in Europe. During the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the Gentry (1569-1795), the Confederation of Warsaw was established on 28 January 1573 to guarantee religious freedom. The only one of its kind at that time, this document exhibited great religious tolerance,’ creating in the sixteenth century the roots of the Polish tradition of friendship among various confessions in one country.’ This Polish act of tolerance was the collective work of the Polish state. Already in the sixteenth century, Polish Brethren were preparing the way for Baptist churches in the l