Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

elical Christians retained the name ECB. '° On the initial stages of separation from CCECB, conversations with AUCECB leaders, and issuing of a statement of intent to cooperate as autonomous churches, recognising both unions, see Walter Sawatsky, “Protestantism in the USSR’, in Sabrina Petra Ramet (ed), Protestantism and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia: the Communist and Postcommunist Eras (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 270-271. 192 to share the tasks of charitable work, to prepare books and teaching mate- rials and to found schools. Then they saw opportunities - both to receive aid and to expand their ministry - by joining the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), the Union of Evangelical Christians, and later, after World War II, the World Council of Churches (WCC), European Baptist Federation (EBF), Pentecostal World Conference, Mennonite World Conference and Conference of European Churches (CEC). These associations were negoti- ated more from a pragmatic stance than a deliberate theological commit- | ment to unity. Nevertheless, the concern for Christian unity grew. What had emerged in Soviet culture was the popular question: “Veruiushchii ili neveruiush- chii?” [Believer or unbeliever?], a recognition that a common Christian faith was more important than denominational tradition. Yet given the pervasive nature of Orthodoxy, a free church could only be taken seri- ously if this alternative to Orthodoxy was truly united. A striking feature in the documents of the AUCECB and also of the CCECB is the persistent concern for unity and the deep pain when unity broke down. The capacity of the leaders for negotiating separate church structures was limited by the presupposition that evangelical unity should be obvious to all. Church Life and Limits during “Normalised Socialism” — Passé Today? For the outside observer, it was striking how quickly the memory of Soviet evangelical church life became stereotyped negatively after 1990. Suddenly both intellectuals and church people were describing the past as totali- tarian. The word “totalitarian” as it emerged in America in the late 1950s was highly charged ideologically, and served to describe Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (and often its satellite states). This reduced life in those regions to caricature, so that many observers failed to notice how the total power of the rulers was being undercut and disobeyed. By adopting totali- tarian labels for thinking about the Soviet past, the new evangelical leaders blinded themselves to the alternative and sophisticated ways in which the churches had adapted to the context without total submission. '! The classic book by Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd edn (New York: Meridian Books, 1958) retains its value because of its broad philosophical substance. For good analysis of the initial application of “totalitarian” by dissidents to their own East Euro- pean cultures, see Jef