Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

with the emancipation of peasants from serfdom in 1861.” The emancipation prepared the social environment for spiritual revival and provided a new self-understanding for the large group of peasants in the Russian Empire. At the same time, Russian society was not prepared to accept the consequences of emancipation in the form of religious dissent. The first Russian Stundists were therefore necessarily pushed to the periphery of society, which was not uncommon for Pietism in general. No depiction of the Baptist beginnings in South Russia misses the starting point of revival, making the Stundism the first phase in Baptist history. The requirement of a similar experience of faith, i.e., conversion, in the later Baptist movement promoted homogeneity and similarity, evidence of the continuance of the early structure. Fellowship: the Driving Force of Pietism One more structural element should be considered: Pietism usually repro- duced personal faith in an environment of fellowship. Collegia pietatis became from the very beginning the modus vivendi of Pietism. In South Russia, the new faith among the Russian and Ukrainian populations began to gain firm footholds with the formation of groups of believers. Often the traditional strong closeness of a rural community was transferred onto the new community of faith. One example is a group of twenty-seven men and twenty-one women (half of the village!) who joined the new faith in Osnova near Odessa.” From the very beginning, the meetings of the new faith communities emphasised fellowship. A local official who attended Stundist meetings in > Istoriia evangel’skikh khristian-baptistov v SSSR, pp. 43-44. 26 “Svedeniia 0 sostoianii raskolov v Khersonskoi gubernii, trebuemykh tsirkuliarom ot 3 oktiabria 1868 goda No. 584’, in Golovashchenko and Reshetnikov, Istoriia evangel’sko-bap- tistskogo dvizheniia v Ukraine, p. 15; “Obshchestvo shundovykh na iuge Rossii (Zapiska g. Znachko-Iavorskago, predstavlennaia general-gubernatoru, P.E. Katsebu, 1867 g.)”, in Ale- ksii, Materialy dlia istorii, p. 61. 39 Ignatevka and Osnova in 1869 reported that the believers primarily sang and prayed.”” While the songs did not draw the attention of the visitor, the manner of prayer, as well as the way the meeting was conducted, was highly unfamiliar to him. The people sat on benches “like in the Roman and Lutheran Churches”. Group prayer was led by one person, and the atmos- phere was very emotional. By building emotional ties, the community was united and prepared for a totally different way of life. Fellowship was one of the main sources of power in this new movement. Pietism promoted egalitarian structures of fellowship, rather than hier- archy. German colonists in Rohrbach [Rorbakh], when meeting their pastor Johann Bonekemper at Pietist meetings, came to know him as a brother in Christ. In the same manner, for the Stundists in Osnova, their leader was one of them. The equal