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

urned to the representatives of non-Orthodox churches.” Wardin argued that German Baptist missionaries did not try to evangelise the Russian Orthodox population ‘until after the Stundist movement had started... If anything, Ukrainian Stundists will reach out to Baptists rather than Baptists reaching 152 out to them.’” The shift from Orthodox-Stundism to Baptist-Stundism started when “° Rozhdestvenskii, Yuzhno-Russkii Stundism, p 57. Also Doronitsin, Materiali Dlia Istorii, p 48. °° Doronitsin quotes a complaint of Ratushnii that was sent to the police, after he and three other members of their group were beaten by some extremist Orthodox peasants. In the complaint, Ratushnii stated that they were persecuted for reading and studying the Bible, implying that his group were still members of the Orthodox Church, who had no intention to leave the mother- church. (Materiali Dlia Istorii, pp 67-68). > Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv [Russian State Historical Archive], f.796, op. 149, d.448, 1.9; F.821, op. 5, d.991, 1.2-20b. (Quoted after Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation, p 192). See also a police report from Odessa Region, as quoted by Doronitsin, which says that “... Stundists are not a religious sect; rather they appear to be a social group that believes that the Bible is better to be read at home, rather than in a church, where its reading is difficult for them to understand. That is why they gather in selected homes, read the Gospels, and interpret it as they can.’ (Materiali Dlia Istorii, p 64). 2 Albert W. Wardin, “How Indigenous was the Baptist Movement in the Russian Empire?” in Journal of European Baptist Studies, Vol. 9, lssue 2 (January 2009), pp 34-35. 26 Efim Tsymbal persuaded Abraham Unger, a Mennonite Brethren preacher, to carry out water baptism for him and several other converted peasants in 1869.°° Tsymbal in turn baptised lvan Ryaboshapka, who became one of the most prominent preachers of the new movement. In 1871 Ryaboshapka baptised Ratushnii and forty-eight people from his group.’ The name of Johann Wieler should be mentioned at this point.°° After 1869 he had developed close relationships with Ratushnii and other Stundists, counselling ‘them to withdraw entirely from the Orthodox Church and form their own congregations.’”° This began the transformation of Stundists as a radical Orthodox wing into independent baptistic communities. On November 28, 1871 Ratushnii informed Archbishop Dmitrii about their withdrawal from the Orthodox Church.°” After that he and his followers took all the icons and crosses that they had in their homes and brought them to a local Orthodox church-building and left them there, thus marking their complete departure from the Orthodox way of life and worship. ”® Ratushnii’s group was only one among many that sprang up in the south of Ukraine at the beginning of the 1860s. Some of them were clearly linked to the German settlers