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

efore | refer to these ecclesial groups as ‘baptists’ or ‘baptistic’ (using small ‘b’). ? It is possible to study the texts of sermons of some prominent baptist leaders, which were recorded and some of them published on the pages of the Khristianin, Baptist, Bratskii Vestnik, and other journals. This, however, does not solve a problem of lack of textual examples of sermons of the vast majority of regular preachers, since the majority of churches did not keep any records of what was being said or preached from their pulpits. At the same time, even such a project might not be an impossible one. Due to almost total absence of written or published materials (during Soviet persecutions), it became customary for many people to take (unofficial) notes during the sermons. Some of them still keep (or have inherited from their grandparents) archives of note-pads full of sermon summaries and even full-texts of the messages they’ve heard. This, however, is not the prime focus of this study, therefore will be left as an opportunity for further research. 47 Christians (first of all Baptist and Khristianin) and newspapers from the beginning of the 20" century, a number of books written in the second half of the 20" century and some articles in the BV, as well as books, articles and dissertations that appeared in recent years, covering various areas of Russian Baptist worship, hermeneutics, ecclesiology, and finally a number of surveys gathered in several Baptist churches in Voronezh, Russia. Apart from the sources coming from the baptistic circles, there are publications from their “opponents” — critical, sometimes even hostile books and articles produced by the Orthodox authors, particularly at the end of the 19" and the beginning of the 20" centuries. Several books appeared during the communistic period, written as a part of state battle with religious faith. Some of them lack any academic value, being examples of overt atheistic propaganda. Yet a number of these publications contain serious and fairly objective observations and reflections on baptistic life and worship. | will refer to these sources later in this Chapter. For the purposes of current research, it is helpful to divide the history of the baptistic movement in Russia into four periods. The first is the formative years (approximately from 1862 to 1905) from the appearance of the first known baptistic groups until the Revolution of 1905 and the Edict of Religious Toleration (April, 1905) that allowed Russian citizens to leave the Orthodox Church.’ | will show the significance of that period, as even today the churches follow a number of patterns in worship and preaching, which were inherited from a format of a Stundist Bible- study. The second period begins with a liberating law of 1905. The relative freedom that non-Orthodox Christians received at this stage, coupled with changes in the political sphere, and aspirations for more democratic re-sh