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

shnii’s personal witness, he decided to start his home-group after a village meeting, where ‘the peasants asked the local priest questions about religion’ but the priest was unable to answer them. Thus Ratushnii decided to invite these people into his house and to explain to them what the Bible had to say on their questions.”® Second, the movement was not an alternative to the Orthodox Church. It was an attempt to add to the Church's existing practices something that people were lacking — relevant guidance for their daily living. This point could be strengthened by considering the fact that the priest in Osnova was Greek, and could not speak Russian. Thus how could he give the needed guidance? However, acting on some strange conviction, upon his arrival in “° Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation, p 165. “© The story of Ivan G. Ryaboshapka, one of the prominent leaders at the beginning of the baptistic movement in Russia, can be a good example of how initially the Orthodox Church did not perceive Stundist preaching as spreading another denomination or a sect. Ryaboshapka was arrested in 1867 and in 1878 being accused of ‘teaching the Gospel falsely,’ but every time he was released after visiting a local priest for instruction, confession and communion. (Bishop Alexii (Doronitsin), Materiali Dlia Istorii Vozniknovenia i Rasprostroneniia Stundi Na Yuge Rossii [Materials for the History of the Appearance and Spread of the Stundist movement in the South of Russia] (Kazan Kievskaia Starina, 1884), p 11). “” Some Ukrainian authors show the connection between the conversion of Ratushnii and the peasant Fyodor Onischenko, who, presumably, was baptised by German Stundists in 1858. (Torbet, Wardin, Savinskii, A History of the Baptists, p 327.) However, in a personal conversation, Albert Wardin indicated that he was not able to find any documented proof of the existence of such a link. “8 Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation, p 166. 25 this area, he began prohibiting people from reading the Scripture in their homes, insisting on them visiting his house to receive answers to their questions.” The third characteristic feature of the movement was its gradual turn to German Mennonites and then later to Baptists. This however was largely due to the rejection of what they were doing by the Orthodox clergy.°° The breakaway from the Orthodox Church started to happen almost six years after the group began to meet for Bible study/preaching and prayer. The dissent was neither the primary goal of Ratushnii nor a sign of German (nor any other) influence. Carl Bonnekemper, a German pastor who arrived in the Ukraine to minister to German colonists, explained this to the governor of the Kherson province, The majority of Russian peasants wanted to read and understand the New Testament. They asked the Orthodox priests for instruction and help. But not receiving assistance from the Russian clergy the religious peasants t