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

t of communist rule, nonetheless, leading them into the Promised land of God’s eternal Kingdom.** The story of Exodus was a story of people who despite all hardships of the desert followed God, a story that helped Christians in Dobrovolets commune to survive by emphasizing the importance of faithfulness and following in the life of a Christian. What enabled such reading? The understanding of the Bible as their book, the book of the church; those people were reading biblical stories as their story, they saw biblical characters not only as real people who lived in the past, but they saw themselves being described by the biblical authors. McClendon called this ‘the plain sense’ of Scripture that allowed the church to continue to read the Text, understand it and apply it to their lives. For the disciples of Jesus the ‘Bible was not a code or cipher to be cracked; it was not a book of secrets; it was realistic; it spoke plain.’“* Of course there were abuses and misinterpretations, of course there were occasional extremes, yet this allowed the church to survive, and to continue witnessing to people despite the hardships they had faced. “3 This account is based on personal interviews of the researcher with A. Cheprasova (Voronezh, 01.10.2007), M. Lesheva (Voronezh, 02.10.2007) and L. Onischenko (Voronezh 15.08.2007). “* Hans W. Frei, “The ‘Literal Reading’ of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does it Stretch or Will it Break?” in F. McConnell, ed., The Bible and the Narrative Tradition (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986), pp 36-77, quoted after McClendon, Doctrine, p 36. 148 A peculiar way to read the Scripture The example from the history of Voronezh Baptists brings out a key issue for understanding the baptistic vision: the role of the Bible is obviously difficult to overestimate. The importance of the Bible, its literal reading and application to the life of the members of the community is emphasized in almost every attempt to identify the baptistic way or the baptistic vision. From the first communities of Stundists in the south of the Russian Empire, to the first Baptist church in Tiflis, and gatherings in aristocratic palaces in St. Petersburg — the uniting feature of all these diverse groups is the position and the role of the Bible for their life and worship. The reading of the Book was the discovery of the story of these people, their lost story. An attempt to recover that narrative and apply it to their lives resulted in the formation of Baptist churches in Russia. Of course, this feature is not uniquely Baptist. Sometimes, extreme biblical literalism leads churches into troubles. Situations when the Bible is raised to the position of self-sufficient god appear for one reason, when the Scripture is perceived as a Book that tells us how ‘we can be made right with God. Personal salvation and justification by grace through faith are the essence of it all and anything else is a