Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

ocess for the Baptist Church to gain legal recognition and receive full rights as a denomination. One reason for the delay was the accusation that Baptists would not serve in the army or take oaths. Baptist leaders sent several letters to state ministries explaining that this was not true, listing many Baptist men who fought in World War II. Both the Communist government and Catholic society were unwilling to recognise Baptists as equal in rights and free to practice what they believed. Roman Catholicism dominated almost the entire denominational struc- ture of the nation. Some nationwide newspapers recognised the problems that came out of stereotypical thinking such as “to be a Pole is to be Cath- olic’. Such a slogan was described in a 1966 newspaper as “deeply hurting other Christians and non-Christians and placing other legally recognised denominations ... outside Polish descent”. Seeking New Methods of Worship Work in the Baptist churches after the war began with the preparation of lay people who had completed only a few months of Bible courses. The next step was to fill the need for new leaders in many churches. A few people directed everything. One of those was Aleksander Kircun, who led vol. 31, no. 1 (1987), pp. 105-106. ‘6 An example is a letter written by a priest and chaplain from the Olsztyn area, in which he wrote, “I ask that a church building in Szczytno, which we already possess, be allocated to the Catholic Church...”. Cited in H. Ryszard Tomaszewski, “Polski Kosciét Ewangelicznych Chrzescijan Baptysté6w w Latach 1945-1947", Stowo Prawdy, no 4 (April 1991), pp. 15-16. ‘” Olszewski, Dziesieé Wydarzen, p. 98. 8 Andrzej Tokarczyk, “Rzeczywisty probierz polskosci’, Sztandar Ludu, no. 304 (1966), p. 3. 176 the entire Baptist church in Poland for a few years as one body. All deci- sions were made in the capital, Warsaw. Local churches were too small and weak to exist by themselves, about which the government was happy. There were probably no more than one thousand Baptists in Poland after World War II, the result of deaths, border changes and “ethnic cleansing’. Many churches simply disappeared. In western and northern Poland, only a few churches existed, founded by repatriates from the east. After World War II, the Baptist Church in Poland, as well as elsewhere in Europe, focused on the construction of church buildings in order to attract new church members and provide places for worship. This approach to missions had advantages and disadvantages. Surely it was a time of crystal- lisation of the church and its worship patterns, but it weakened the spirit of the movement, as it had been revealed before World War II. The Baptist Church was no longer a fervent Christian movement. But still, for Baptists in Poland, the post-war years were a time of new possibilities and new methods, which can be divided into four periods. The first period (1944-1949) can be called the enthusiastic