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

eople’s inability to see that there must exist a Christian alternative to the current struggles of Russian and Ukrainian political elites. Unfortunately, at the present time, the way of Christ is perceived through the lens of ethnic and political identity, rather than its viable alternative. The Christian narrative has turned into a number of ethical add-ons, being overwhelmed and suppressed by another story, skilfully told through the state media as the only available option for Russian citizens. A century old manipulative slogan “to be Russian means to be Orthodox” returned onto the public stage in a different disguise — “to be Russian means to hate everyone and everything that disagrees with the State politics.”° * The problem of growing nationalistic feelings has been a plague for the whole of Russian society, affecting representatives of various faiths and Christian denominations. However, for obvious reasons | focus exclusively on members of Baptist communities. Similarly, | believe identical problems can be found among Ukrainian Christians and the wider secular society. Yet, | choose to speak about Russian society because, being Russian, | feel it is more appropriate to focus on my own country, thus avoiding unnecessary debates about societies’ degrees of guilt in escalating the conflict, and especially for propelling it into the ecclesial sphere. For reflections on the responses of Ukrainian evangelicals to the situation in Ukraine see Fyodor Raychynets and Parush R. Parushev, “Politically-apolitical Jesus: Reflections on the evangelical churches’ response to crises in Ukraine,” Christian Ethics Today, Vol 22:4 (Fall 2014, aggregated issue 95), pp 10-15. > Eg. the term “Fifth column,” historically referring to the “fifth column” of supporters in addition to ‘four columns of troops’ that helped Nationalist General Emilio Mola to defeat the Republican government in Madrid in 1936, and later, was used as a reference to the ethnic German Nazi sympathizers in the occupied territories during World War Il, or ‘the enemies of 219 Does preaching in churches make a difference? Apparently, not much: a lot of contemporary Baptist preaching can be described as a crusade against sinful living, which in Russian Baptist context means attacking certain social trends, like people’s dwindling commitment to church, seen through their irregular attendance of worship services, as well as some obvious social ills like divorces, alcoholism, smoking, and others. A lot of such preaching comes with a warning of Jesus’ imminent eschatological return and an inevitable threat of judgement and punishment for those who do not comply with the way, deemed right and, hence, propagated by the church and her leaders. To sum up, it can be said that most preaching either aims at imposing certain ethical restrictions on people’s lives or simply cannot be described as any sort of meaningful activity, being a random collection of p