Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

bt they sometimes did), but that under certain circumstances they took up in turn, in their own ways, a particular understanding of the gospel and of the Christian life”' In the development of the evangelical movement in the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, we find a variety of Christian groups of the same reoccurring type, rooted in different geographic areas and founded at different times and under different circumstances. Late nineteenth-century Russia saw the coexistence of communities of German Pietists, Anabaptists, German Baptists, British Pietists, Russian Baptists, Russian Stundists, and later, representatives of the Holiness move- ment. These communities shared certain reoccurring defining themes, including commitment to the Bible as the source of truth, commitment to a visible Christian lifestyle, and a desire for evangelism. Although each held these three points to be crucial to its existence, they differed in how to apply ' James William McClendon, Jr., “The Baptist and Mennonite vision’, in Paul Toews (ed), Mennonites and Baptists: a Continuing Conversation (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1993), p. 214. 71 them to the work of God's kingdom. The communities found themselves together in the Russian Empire for different reasons, yet shared a commit- ment to the supremacy of the Bible, the understanding that belonging to Christ's body was more than membership in a parish, and a desire to spread the Gospel. As they came into contact with each other, they found that they were kindred spirits on many points. However, due to cultural differences, independently developed traditions, and their unique positions in the empire, while their histories overlapped, they functioned separately. By the mid-Soviet period, the sole representatives of this “reoccurring commu- nity” in Communist Russia were the Evangelical Christians-Baptists. The so-called “Baptists” in the Soviet era were a blend of several historical communities, each with a rich and unique history, but sharing the same emphasis on the Bible, a Christian lifestyle and evangelism. The crucible of the Soviet Union in which Russian Evangelical Christians-Baptists were formed contained separate religious communities forced into one organi- sation under intense pressure. Ivan Veniaminovich [Johann G.] Kargel is a prime representative of this “reoccurring type’. His statement of faith, written in 1913, united Soviet Protestants under the umbrella of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptist in 1944. His pastoral teaching in various Bible schools transmitted a belief in the centrality of the Bible to future leaders in the Russian evangelical world. His writings, with their concentration on holi- ness, provided believers in the nineteenth, twentieth and even twenty-first centuries with the spiritual vision to remain a vibrant Christian commu- nity despite an oppressive spiritual climate. Kargel’s theology developed throughout