Church Without Walls: Post-Soviet Baptists after the Ukrainian Revolution, 2013-14, Joshua T. Searle, 2016

nd society, in light of biblical teachings concerning the responsibilities of Christians as citizens both of a particular nation state (Ukraine) and of God’s Kingdom. The maps of the sacred and profane, religious and social have been redrawn. The task of the church is to discern between good and evil, between God and gods, to illuminate the front line in the spiritual battle against the powers and principalities that manifest themselves in social structures and political institutions, and to make the Kingdom of God a visible reality in the public sphere.*© The Revolution of Dignity and its aftermath have led to the conviction that the church is called to engage with society, rather than withdraw from it. Neutrality is no longer an option. By not protecting the victims of state violence, the church is complicit in the crimes of the governing regime; by not calling evil that which is evil, the church colludes with the criminals. In common with every citizen, Baptists have a clear responsibility towards the state.*” This responsibility consists in maintaining order and staying within the law. The church and individual Christians are obedient to the authorities, on condition that these authorities carry * The scope of this lecture precludes a detailed discussion of the meaning and application of the terms, “state” and “society” and their interrelation. My point of departure for reflecting on these concepts is the Hegelian distinction between “civil society” (die Biirgerliche Gesellschaft), “the family” (die Familie) and “the state” (der Staat). In contrast to the classical tradition of political theory, represented in the writings of Aquinas, Bodin, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Kant, Hegel drew a clear distinction between the “political” and the “civil” spheres of ethical life. Civil society, for Hegel, describes a public sphere of ethical life in which “individuals seek to satisfy each others’ needs through work, production and exchange.” Hegel maintained that the role of the state was to represent universal values that transcend the irreconcilable conflicts over private interests that are an inevitable consequence of citizens’ participation in civil society. Civil society and the state are mutually dependent in so far as the competing interests within civil society require the regulation of the state. For its part, the state cannot reach its full ethical potential without the operation of a robust civil society. See G.W.F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 28; and Z. A. Pelczynski, “Political Community and Individual Freedom,” in Pelezynski (ed.), The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel’s Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 61. “© Miroslav Volf, Public Faith, A: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), xvi. 7 Lee Canipe, A Baptist Democracy: Separating God and Caesar in the Land of t