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

other important influences, such as the life and example of the German settlers, the sporadic contributions of missionaries of various sorts, and many other things. This omission was done for only one reason — all those additional elements, though important, did not produce any significant results until the Bible and the ability to read it was given to the people. practices, including relationships with Orthodox believers. This, however, is a subject for another study. 29 CHAPTER 2. Understanding the context: theological nest of the Russian Orthodox Church Introduction The main purpose of the previous chapter was to show the important role that the practice of reading the Bible in a community of believers played at the beginning of the baptistic movement in Russia. No doubt those few pages cannot provide comprehensive coverage for such a complex subject as the origins of Russian Baptists. The definition of the historical identity of Russian Baptists is a complicated, if not an impossible, task. Historical works on the topic include a wide spectrum of various ideas and perspectives from emphasizing the crucial role of western evangelicals (either British, such as Lord Radstock, or German colonists, and missionaries from other countries that served in the South of the Russian Empire) to an equally persuasive view that this was an indigenous movement conceived and developed without any significant influences from the outside of Russian society. Consequently, after long hours of reading and comparing various books, articles and dissertations a careful reader may end up in a state of confusion, deciding that the task of writing a comprehensive history of the baptistic origin in Russia is impossible to fulfil. Such statements may prove to be right as so far no ‘scheme regarding the emergence of the Evangelical Christian and Baptist movements in Russia [that could] integrate all related issues’ was developed.’ It would not be wrong to suggest therefore, that the wide spectrum of the existing positions provide only partial insight into the historical background of the movement, since similar to the Anabaptist polygenetic origins, the roots of the contemporary Russian Baptist movement should be searched in numerous large and small movements, groups, leaders and influences.” And similar to the origins of Anabaptists, the emergence and the spread of all these “neresies,” as the Russian Orthodox Church named them, at a scale that Russian * Alexander Popov, “The Evangelical Christians-Baptists in the Soviet Union as Hermeneutical Community: Examining the Identity of the All-Union Council of the ECB (AUCECB) Through the Way the Bible Was Used in its Publications”, PhD Dissertation (University of Wales, IBTS, Prague, 2010), pp 31-32. ? For a critique of the traditional tripartite theory of the origins of Russian Baptists See A. Popov, “The Evangelical Christians-Baptists...,” pp 34-35. Cf. Zhuk, Russia’