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

for baptistic theology. Therefore, he offers another approach. He accepts biblicism as the key starting point in defining the vision. However, this biblicism is different than simply a literal understanding of the Scripture, since the authority of the Bible, and its normative nature is a mark of all Christian traditions, and not something uniquely baptistic.”* The difference then is in the 3 Curtis W. Freeman, “The ‘Coming of Age’ of Baptist Theology in Generation Twenty-Something,” Perspectives in Religious Studies Vol. 27, No 1 (2000), p 22. ” In his reflection on ‘baptistic biblicism,’ McClendon indicates that ‘biblicist literalism’ is ‘more of a characteristic of the Reformed movement.’ Also he is referring to the problems of the Reformed 158 way the Bible is read and applied. McClendon claims that the Bible can be a starting point only when it works as a ‘link between the church of the apostles and our own.’”” At this point, it is necessary to remember that by looking for a vision, or a ‘baptistic idea,” McClendon does not simply look for a practice or a belief that is inseparable from a particular denomination, but for a certain conviction (or a practice) that would serve as a source of all the others convictions and practices. As noted by Freeman in the introduction to the first volume of McClendon’s Systematic Theology, his baptist vision ‘is not so much a denominational, historical, or sociological account ’7® Thus, the key to understanding baptistic as much as it is a theological standpoint. convictions is neither a practice of ‘baptism,’ nor is it a ‘community’ (although ‘community’ is extremely important, since communal reading and communal interpretation of the Bible is at the heart of the vision), nor ‘mission’ or ‘discipleship.’ They all are ‘living instance[s] of this vision at work.’ ’” According to McClendon, the vision that serves as the key to understanding baptistic theology and is the centre of the baptistic way of life, can be expressed in a form of a hermeneutical principle. It is shared awareness of the present Christian community as the primitive community and the eschatological community. In a motto, the church now is the primitive church and the church on the judgment day; the obedience and liberty of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth is our liberty, our obedience, till time’s end.” Puritans caused by their desire to ‘apply Old Testament law to England and America.’ (James Wm. McClendon, Jr., “The baptist Vision,” in Baptistic Theologies, Vol. 6, No 1 (Spring, 2014), pp 23-35) The attempts to use biblical texts literally created troubles in Russian Baptist churches as well. Even today, there are people who preach about the importance of ‘head-coverings’ for women, the impossibility of women being involved in ministry, insisting that this is the message of the Bible. At the same time, the Bible speaks about many things, which they either cannot find expl