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

ing the same problems of social inequality, of order and disorder, of modernization and Westernization, and of national and social identity in this rapidly changing society. | examine how these new religious identities emerged from individuals’ personal experiences and were then articulated by the ritual re- telling of conversion stories and by forming organizations that reflected and promoted their members’ new sense of self.’ (Coleman, Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, p 4). > Kushnev, Nemetskiie Very, p 3. 3 Savinskii, Istoriia Evangelskikh Khristian — Baptistov, Vol. 1, p 262; Sawatsky, Soviet Evangelicals, p 23; M. Elliott and A. Deyneka, “Protestant Missionaries in the Former Soviet Union,” in J. Witte & M. Bourdeaux, eds., Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls (Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books, 1999), p 197. 66 law from April 17", 1905, “On the Strengthening of Religious Toleration.” This law legalised the existence of Evangelical and Baptist churches. They received the right to be officially registered and carry out their religious practices without fear of persecution, even though the Orthodox Church remained an established church and preserved its exclusive right to proselytise.-’ The implications of this law for Baptists, and all other non-Orthodox believers, were so great that some considered this law of equal importance to the revolutionary liberation of the serfs by Alexander Il.°> Rejoicing about their new status, baptistic churches could not predict how long such freedom would last, thus they channelled all their energy into the outreach — sending missionaries, planting new churches and Bible-reading groups. Some of them, like Kargel and Prokhanov, Pavlov or Wilhelm Fetler, became important leaders of the baptistic movement, whose heritage is difficult to overestimate. At the same time, there were countless others, who went to the distant corners of the Empire driven by their enthusiasm and passion for God’s Kingdom. They were not taught or sent by any specific congregation. Their only tools were the Bible and preaching. There are even accounts of people turned into preachers after visiting one evangelistic meeting, undergoing conversion and deciding to commit their life to Christ. Such people did not even have Bibles, and their Christian experience was limited to one or two sermons that had brought them to conversion. V. Ivanov, a pastor from Baku, wrote about this period, ‘Armed with the truth of God, [the Baptists] boldly enter into an unequal battle with errors of all sorts and expand their spiritual territory with great success... Since 1905 an era has begun in the history of the Baptists that can be called the era of open storm.’°° ‘The errors of all sorts’ were to be expected with Baptists’ diverse cultural, theological and doctrinal backgrounds. Prior to ** Lieven, Dukhovnoie Probuzdeniie v Rossii, p 105; G. Ellis and L. Jones, The Other Re