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

es both the state and civil society.°' A free church should be part of a free civil society, rather than an appendage or servant of the state.” In reality, however, the post-Soviet church became, in effect, co—ruler with the state. The place of the church is in society, but although the church is accountable to society, it is not the possession of society (and it is certainly not the possession of the state). The church is directly subordinate only to God. In terms of the responsibility of the church to the state and society, a natural asymmetry can be postulated: responsibility towards society (i.e. towards one’s “neighbour” in the broadest sense of Luke 10:25-37) precedes the church’s loyalty to the state. Furthermore, the church has a duty of obedience to the state only insofar as the state protects the welfare of one’s neighbours and the general well—being of the people. If we maintain that the responsibility of the Church is primarily to God, then the order of responsibility is as follows: firstly, to God, then to society (the people), and, lastly, to the state. The church’s responsibility to society can be expressed positively in solidarity and negatively in constructive disagreement with social trends that do not correspond to the gospel values of truth, freedom, respect, dignity and compassion. Thus, in relation to society, it seems that the church is enamoured of disagreement and forgetful about solidarity. The church’s responsibility to the state therefore takes two forms: one positive (obedience), and the other negative (resistance). We need to restore the natural order of responsibility: first, to God; secondly, to society; and after these comes the state; and we also need to remember the forgotten forms of responsibility — the possibility and even the necessity of resistance to the state that often results from solidarity with society. The Revolution of Dignity has forced post-Soviet evangelicals to address a question they long avoided: in what way is the gospel not only the source of personal salvation, but also the source of social transformation? Post-Soviet evangelical churches are known for two features: their focus on the personal relationship with God and on evangelistic activity. However, it is now apparent that the times call for a radical overhaul of the individualist >! Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 88; Khilnani, “The Development of Civil Society’, in Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds.), Civil Society: History and Possibilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 23. * A useful contrast could be made with Bernard Green’s book, Baptists and the Third Reich (Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 2008). modes of evangelisation that were exported to Ukraine by Western missionaries in the years following the implosion of the Soviet Union, but which were so unsuited to the communitarian context of post-Sovi