Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

ught before the local magistrate by the Orthodox priest, but the magistrate dismissed the case. General Eduard Totleben, a Protestant, was sent by the Tsar to South Russia to assess the overall religious situation. The movements in St Peters- burg and in South Russia were both widely seen as exhibiting a desire for “ecclesiastical reform” in Russia.” Progress seemed to have been made when a Russian Imperial decree was issued in 1879 allowing some liberty of worship for Baptists, Moravians and Mennonites. Ivan (Johann) Kargel, who had been serving as a Baptist minister in Poland, became minister of the German-speaking Baptist church in St Petersburg. Baptists developed four language-specific churches in St Petersburg - German, Estonian, Lettish and Swedish.* In becoming pastor, Kargel was required at a public ceremony to take an oath of fidelity to the emperor. Within Orthodox Church circles such an oath involved kissing the holy cross and the holy gospel. The procedure for Baptists was not clear to the officials present. In response to their instructions to kiss the cross, Kargel replied that he had no cross. Then, the officials sighed, kiss the gospel. Kargel explained that this, too, was not done by Baptists. The officials clearly gave up at that point and simply insisted that he sign a document and pledge to report any heresies that appeared among the Baptist communities.” Since the whole Baptist movement was a heresy in the eyes of some Orthodox Church leaders, it is not quite clear what was © Letters of Prince Dondonkov-Korsakov to Baron de Rosen, 9 April 1874; Baron Andrew Rosen to Edward Young, Washington, 15 April 1874; printed in EC, vol. 28 (August 1874), pp. 234-237. ‘7 EC, vol. 28 (July 1874), pp. 201-203. 8 R.S. Latimer, With Christ in Russia (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 40. * Latimer, Under Three Tsars, pp. 99-100. 25 expected of Kargel, but at this stage he signed. Although there was much commonality between the evangelical thinking brought from England by Radstock and Baedeker and the emerging Russian Baptist movement, the thinking was not identical. The Brethren move- ment, with which Radstock was associated, advocated a form of church life in which there was no ordained leadership. The Pashkovite meetings (as they were called) to some extent mirrored this view. Those Russians affected by Radstock and other evangelicals in this period did not leave the Orthodox Church. The visiting evangelicals had little interest in existing ecclesiastical structures: Writer Feodor Dostoevsky, who attended one of Radstock’s meetings, found Radstock ignorant of Orthodoxy.” Baedeker took a similar theological line to Radstock. This largely non-denomina- tional outlook was later to produce the Evangelical Christians in Russia. After Baedeker’s conversion in 1866, when in his forties, he was introduced by Radstock to the latter’s contacts on the continent. From 1877 to 1880 Baedeker an