Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

ists was not a priority for the Alliance.” From the mid-1870s it was the Baptists, usually seen in British reports as part of the Stundist movement, who received most support from the Evangelical Alliance in Britain. Support was, however, given by the Evangelical Alliance to other groups across Eastern Europe, and some of these connections would prove valu- able to Baptists. In Estonia the Moravian community received assistance, the contact in Britain being Bishop Alexander Hassé of the Moravian Church, who was a supporter of the Alliance.** There was interest in the early 1870s in evangelical activity in Hungary, Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria. A report on a group called the Nazarenes, mainly Hungarian and Serbian speakers, noted that members of this rapidly growing group based their beliefs on the Bible and were being persecuted. They practised the baptism of believers. In some areas they had a meeting in almost every village.” Heinrich Meyer, the Baptist leader in Hungary, met Bible colporteur Adolf Hempt, a member of the Nazarenes, and in 1875 Hempt invited Meyer to visit a small group of Nazarenes in Novi Sad. A number of these Naza- renes, including Hempt, were baptised in November 1875 and were drawn into Baptist life. In 1873 Evangelical Christendom also reported on church planting in Bulgaria. There was a plea for an evangelical training institu- tion operating in the Bulgarian language. There was one college, Robert College, in Constantinople, but it was using English.*' In 1869, after a visit by Oncken, a Baptist church had been formed in Katalui (Cataloi), a German colony in Bulgaria. The Baptist work in the early 1870s had strong connec- tions with British and Foreign Bible Society colporteurs in Bulgaria.” In ** P.D. Jordan, The Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, 1847-1900: Ecume- nism, Identity and the Religion of the Republic (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982), pp. 115-116. *” EC, vol. 26 (June 1872), pp. 190-191. 38 EC, vol. 23 (March 1869), p. 104. . * EC, vol. 21 (February 1867), p. 91; EC, vol. 27 (March 1873), pp. 95-96. 40 J.D. Hopper, “A History of Baptists in Yugoslavia, 1862-1962” (PhD dissertation, South- western Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, 1977), p. 18. 4! EC, vol. 27 (July 1873), pp. 196-199. * A.W. Wardin, “The Baptists in Bulgaria’, BQ, vol. 34, no. 4 (1991), pp. 148-149; T. Oprenov, “A Critical Account of Baptist Origins and Early Development in Bulgaria” (unpublished MTh essay, International Baptist Theological Seminary, Prague, 2002), p. 5. 23 many cases Baptists emerged from existing evangelical communities with which the Evangelical Alliance had contact. Progress and Pressure During the period from the early 1870s to the early 1880s, Baptists in Eastern Europe experienced significant progress, but were also subject to considerable persecution. The frequent visits to Eastern Europe of Lord Radstock and also of Frie