Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

ists. Professor Lev Mitrokhin once admitted, “Tt is difficult for a Russian secular researcher to portray the Baptists accurately. In the past there was pressure from Communist ideologists; now we are pressed by a great anti- propaganda from Russian Orthodox ideologists.’* A recent study based on documents of the Russian Ministry of Justice shows that from 1999 to 2004, about two thousand cases were registered in which evangelical Christians (including, but not limited to, Baptists) appealed to the Ministry of Justice for protection against injustice and biases. Russian Baptists are often denied entry to prisons, hospitals, schools and other institutions on the basis of ofh- cial federal directives. In a document entitled “Classification and General Distinctiveness of Some Destructive Religious Organisations’, Baptists are referred to, among other religious groups, as “unorthodox’, a “dangerous sect’, and an “aggressive sect’.”? Even among the Federal Services of Russia 7 Andrei Kuraev, Protestantam o pravoslavii [To Protestants about Orthodoxy] (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo podvor’ia Sviato-troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1997), p. 12. 8 Personal communication of Lev Mitrokhin with Aleksandr Negrov (2 December 2003). 29 See E. Mel’nikova, “O rassmotrenii zhalob i obrashchenii grazhdan i religioznykh ob’edinenii v apparate upolnomochennogo po pravam cheloveka v rossiiskoi federatsii’, in 14] [Gosudarstvennyie Sluzhby RF] there is no clear understanding of Baptists. Several recent publications of the Department of Religious Studies of the Russian Academy of State Service [Rossiiskaia Akademiia Gosudarstvennoi Sluzhby| contain numerous attempts to explain to the regional federal authorities that Baptists are not sectarians.*° This paper deals with issues related to a specific understanding of the Baptists in Russia. A complete analysis of how and why Baptists were perceived by others as sectarians has to be related to a further topic - an analysis of the recent history of Russian Baptists, which demands further attention to the current transitions taking place in a modern Russian society. There is a need for critical reflection on how the Baptists are perceived by outsiders in Russia today. Yet, it is also important to ask questions about self-identification. For example, how do the new contexts accommodate Baptist self-understanding within the boundaries of the Orthodox Chris- tian tradition in Russia? How do these changes affect the Russian Baptist doctrines and practices? It would be stimulating for Russian Baptists to analyse to what extent the modern concepts of religion and culture, ethnicity and race, and gender relations have to be reconsidered, so that the Russian Baptists fully understand their identity in the rapidly changing context of their country and world at large. Aleksandr Negrov is Rector of St Petersburg Christian University and author of the forthcoming monograph, Biblical Inte