Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

general secretary Aleksei Bychkov's reports to the congresses in the 1980s more extensively, including pushing for greater legal- ity in society as guarantee of individual freedoms. > '6 Miroslav Volf, “When the Unclean Spirit Leaves: The Tasks of Eastern European Churches After the 1989 Revolution’, Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe, vol. 11, no. 1 194 certainly with thankfulness, that the evil spirit of state atheism in its Marxist version had been cast out. But woe to us if the vacated space be taken by seven other evil spirits. (See Luke 11:24-26) The most obvious ones to appear were nationalism and religious xenophobia, especially so in the former Yugoslavia, but also to a considerable degree in most regions of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. One way to utilise the Soviet legacy is to compare the series of changes to the constitution of the AUCECB, which by 1979 was still much too focused on restraints, but nevertheless, was again pointing to ministry tasks such as youth work, womens ministry and theological education, and then to ask in what way the national unions after 1990 entailed a more visionary programme of ministry.'? One element of the legacy has been a reluctance to wrestle with the social and political dimensions of the Gospel for fear of evoking oppo- sition from the new rulers after 1990. Soon after the split of the Reform Baptists around 1962, they organised an alternative union, the Council of Churches of ECB (1965). In spite of interference with their work by the authorities, who arrested key leaders, an extensive list of ministries developed, each of which was placed under the responsibility of one person reporting to the CCECB. There were divi- sions for youth work, evangelism, relief to prisoners’ families and children’s work. A separate division, which established the printing press Khristianin, became widely known - yet seldom discovered - for its production of a Bulletin of information, a journal of devotional materials, and even Bibles and songbooks. But the union became weakened in the mid-seventies as key leaders broke ranks, mostly in opposition to the leadership style, control and growing suspicion of his colleagues by president Gennadii Kriuchkoy, » who remained underground. Most of those who broke off led their congre- gations into a rather loose association of like-minded churches. They kept clear of both unions, but managed sufficiently frequent personal meetings with other leaders in order to be the best suited for the early cooperative evangelism, mission and relief projects that began at the end of perestroika. | The CCECB, in contrast, turned out to be the least open to cooperative | evangelism in 1988-90, and in effect surrendered the moral leadership (February 1991), pp. 11-24. '” This is more readily done using the English translations of the 1960 ACUECB Polozhenie in Michael Bourdeaux, Religious Ferment in Russia: Protestant Op