Towards Understanding of the Practice of Proclamation: The Core Element of Russian Baptist Worship, Timofey Cheprasov, 2015

reys, The Way We Were, p 48. ? Ibid. *4 See Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith. 25 Chad Brand, David E. Hankins, Southern Baptist leaders in One Sacred Effort: The Cooperative program of Southern Baptists (Nashville, Tennessee, Broadman and Holman 141 every baptistic characteristic has also characterised other groups of non-baptistic Christians. Moreover, there are very few (if any) features, which could be identified exclusively with baptistic culture.7° In addition, none of the above mentioned ways of approaching the subject of baptistic identity can answer the question, What is it, that forms, unites and organises these beliefs into a coherent structure? What brings baptists into existence? Thus, the previously mentioned ways of dealing with baptistic identity are helpful for understanding baptistic beliefs, which might be necessary in ecumenical dialogue or a mission field, or even for prompting churches to revise their practices.*” However, any attempt to define the borders of baptistic culture by providing a set of beliefs, neither answers how these beliefs, these markers of baptistic identity, came into being, nor explains why different Baptist churches have slightly different sets of core convictions (different confessions of faith), nor allows one to understand why these communities emphasize different beliefs at various stages of their development. Hence, the approach to understanding baptistic identity through the lens of their major beliefs in spite of all its usefulness and clarity, is of little help in explaining what makes these heirs of the Radical Reformation who they are, what is the ‘guiding Publishers, 2006) may serve as a good example of such controversy. In their book, Hankins and Brand try to explain what it means to be a Baptist. Among several features they speak about freedom of consciousness or soul competence. However, because the Southern Baptist understanding of this subject defers from the perspective of some other groups of Baptists, they argue that their view is the correct one (p 17). 6 Sharp, “Kto Takiie Baptisty Segodnia?”, p 108. 27 e.g N. G. Wright’s book Free Church, Free State. There the author reviews several ‘Baptist marks’ such as community of believers, baptism, communion, and compares them with similar practices of the Catholic Church. Yet, his analysis does not sound like another attempt to justify baptistic ways and to label Catholics as those who got it all wrong. Rather, it is a way of beginning a dialogue between these two traditions, highlighting the positive things in their perspectives and trying to find the way to understanding. See also R. Stanton Norman, who presents four theological components, which are present, as he argues, in ‘all writings on Baptist distinctives and are definitive for this genre.’ These traits are epistemological, polemical, ecclesiological and the volitional. (Wore Than Just a Name: Preserving Our Ba