Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

on, was Russia. Evangelical Christendom had no correspondent in Russia until the 1860s, but it did receive some reports. For example, a missionary with the Basle Mission, Mr Roth, met a member of the Russian Molokan community in 1848, and they discussed the second advent '3 EC, vol. 9 (1855), pp. 83-86. 14 EC, vol. 16 (September 1862), pp. 447-448. '5 E, Steane (ed), The Religious Condition of Christendom, Third Part: Exhibited in a Series of Papers Prepared at the Instance of the German Branch of the Evangelical Alliance and Read at the Conference Held in Berlin, 1857 (London: Office of the Evangelical Alliance, 1859). 16 'T. Nestorova, American Missionaries Among the Bulgarians, 1858-1912 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1987), p. 8; EC, vol. 11 (February 1857), pp. 63-65 for appeal by Blackwood. 18 of Christ, including the ideas of the Lutheran scholar Johann Albrecht Bengel, which were evidently known by Molokans.” Interest in Russian spiritual movements such as the Molokans continued. German links also provided a window on Russia. From 1861 a group of evangelicals, mainly Germans, who were interested in mission, began to meet in St Petersburg every Monday evening for prayer, reading devotional books and hearing missionary reports. Collections were taken for the Basle Mission and other German missions, including the Moravians. Although the group members were mainly Germans, there were also some Russians. One member attended an Evangelical Alliance conference in Geneva in 1861 and this stimulated the group to join in the annual international concert of prayer organised by Evangelical Alliances during the first week in January each year.'® St Petersburg became a place of interest for the British Evangelical Alliance, and this link would be significant as the Baptist movement devel- oped in Russia. Building Baptist Networks From 1863 there was much more awareness within Evangelical Alliance circles of the situation of Baptists in Eastern Europe. James Henry Millard, who was now joint Secretary with Hinton of the Baptist Union, placed information before the Council of the Evangelical Alliance in November 1863 about severe persecution of Baptists in the Baltic countries and in Poland. Baptists were seeking support from fellow evangelicals. The Foreign Secretary of the Alliance protested to the Russian ambassador in London and asked for the protest to be passed to the Tsar, Alexander II, who was widely known as a reforming leader. By January 1864 Evangelical Chris- tendom could report that one Baptist, Brother Gaertner, who had been imprisoned, had been freed. A letter from Pastor Ferdinand Niemetz from Memel, which was by far the largest Baptist church in the Baltic region, said that the local governor had given orders that Gaertner should be released. The governor pronounced: “You can go to your house and pray there... It would be a disgrace to the Czar that pious people should have to go