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

ory Nichols, ‘His writings and teaching... helped to shape the Russian evangelical movement and Russian Baptist expressions of evangelical spirituality.’ (The Development of Russian Evangelical Spirituality: A Study of Ivan V Kargel (1849-1937) (Oregon, Pickwick, 2011), pp 1). 50 However, such an attempt is worth making. Baptists themselves produced little written material on their theology and almost nothing on their practices, and particularly, practices of worship, being preoccupied with positioning themselves on a religious map of the Empire, then with survival, at the same time trying to bring some structure to their communal life and faith, as well as fuelling their missionary efforts. Nonetheless, there are various other historical material regarding the first baptistic groups in Russia that allow gathering enough data to form a grounded understanding of their preaching. Books, articles and reports written by Orthodox scholars, reporters and even police officers create a significant pool of information about baptistic worship practices at the end of the 19" century. Whilst a lot of them have little historical value, apart from being another indicator of hostility that the state- supported Church had towards any non-conformity, some offer a genuine attempt to study a new, and at times, controversial phenomenon on the Russian religious scene; these sources will be referred to in the following pages. Yuzhno-Russkii Stundism [Southern Russian Stundism], a work of priest Arsenii Rozhdestvenskii provides a number of descriptions of Stundist worship practices. The lack of data regarding the historical development of Stundist worship makes him concentrate on their contemporary worship (the book was published in 1889, less than 30 years after the appearance of the first known Ukrainian Stundist group), focusing at several major areas, such as religious songs, preaching and prayer.’ He describes it as follows: Having gathered at someone’s home, Stundists sit at the benches, and one of them is ‘chairing the gathering.’® This person sits at a table facing the rest of the congregation. He opens the New Testament or the Bible and interprets every verse. After the reading of the New Testament or the Bible there are various contemplations, often polemical in nature. Then they open another book... One person reads the first verse of some spiritual song, if the meaning of anything is unclear, it is explained first, than the ” Rozhdestvenskii, Yuzhno-Russkii Stundism, p 243. 8 It might be interesting to note that this word “gathering,” that was used by Rozhdestvenskii in relation to the “worship,” is the same word that has been used by Baptists in Russia both in reference to the worship service and to the church. For example, when saying ‘let’s go to church,’ people normally say, ‘let’s go to the gathering’ [‘poidem v sobraniie’]. 51 rest of the congregation sing the verse altogether. Then they si