Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

aws protected our work in a manner which calls for the heartiest thanks, now and for ever, of the Baptists of Russia. I may say truly that at the Memorial Service there was not a dry eye amongst us.’°° Some Baptists were inclined to blame local officials and the Orthodox Church, rather than the Tsar, for the pressures they faced. Under the new Tsar, Alexander III, the situation for Baptists would become considerably worse. Arms Stretched Out The intensified persecution of Russian Baptists that took place from the early 1880s was led by the chair of the Orthodox Church Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev. Evangelicals from St Petersburg, the Caucasus and South Russia came together for a conference in 1884 but it was almost immediately suppressed.*” The British Evangelical Alliance became even 4 EC, vol. 29 (October 1875), pp. 313-315. °° EC, vol. 36 (November 1882), pp. 332-333. © Latimer, Under Three Tsars, pp. 121-124. *’ 1S. Prokhanoff, In the Cauldron of Russia, 1869-1933 (New York: All-Russian Evangelical Christian Union, 1933), pp. 55-56. 27 more deeply involved, as Robert Sloan Latimer put it: “It was the arm of the Alliance that was stretched out to keep above water the heads of the Stundists, when for years they were reduced to destitution by the floods of persecution, into which they were driven by Pobedonostsev and his agents. Baedeker was central in this ministry, bringing money, sharing news and speaking to the authorities. Through Baedeker and others, the British Alliance was seen as “a friend in need”.** Although by this time there was a tradition of British Alliance leaders making their views known to authorities, in the 1880s many Russian believers felt that public representa- tions from outside to the Russian government made matters worse. A.J. Arnold, Secretary of the British Alliance from 1879, had to consider the best plan to adopt. Part of the strategy was to support evangelical work where there was freedom for that, rather than to focus on restrictions on such work. The remarkable evangelical movement under Rabbi Joseph Rabinovich in Kishenev (Moldova) was enthusiastically reported in Evan- gelical Christendom in the 1880s. In his synagogue, worship was offered in the name of Jesus. Rabinovich came to England in 1887 and in 1890 to speak to the Mildmay Conference in London, held in association with the Mildmay Mission to the Jews. The Orthodox Holy Synod had not hindered Rabinovich and the Russian Minister of the Interior officially licensed the worship of his congregation as “Israelites of the New Testament’. The more typical picture across Eastern Europe in the 1880s was of considerable difficulty for evangelicals. Incidents were reported in detail to the Evangelical Alliance. In Hungary, for example, Baptists in Promontor, a German village near present day Budapest, were beaten and the furniture in their prayer house was destroyed in 1882. Heinrich Meyer, encourag