Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

nd Macmil- lan, 1988), p. 20. 45 gian not completely competent in the Russian language’.** Aleksii mistak- enly ascribed authorship of the rules to Karl Bonekemper.” The truth can be found in a thirty-four-page document written by Johann Wieler, now in the archive of St Petersburg evangelical leader Vasilii Pashkov at the University of Birmingham, England: In Odessa, Wieler picked up the threads of his earlier activity and was soon able to establish a small congregation of Russian and German believers in the city... For a long time already, the Russian brethren have accepted the teaching of Wieler on the questions of baptism and establishing congre- gations... Finally, the brethren decided to make a complete break with the Orthodox Church and form a fellowship of their own according to God’s Word. A number of brethren met in Wieler’s home... From this resulted the drawing up of a confession of faith including ten articles, which set out the principal points of the Christian faith. It agreed essen- tially with the statement used by Baptists in Germany. The brethren then submitted copies of the statement to all their groups for discussion and approval. With few exceptions, all the members agreed to form a Baptist fellowship based on this declaration.”° According to this document, the “Rules” were accepted in January of 1870. Wieler’s role as architect of the Baptist church structure in South Russia is clearly identifiable.*’ Fluent in Russian und Ukrainian, he joined the Mennonite Brethren in his early twenties during the first years of their existence, and worked until 1865 in a government office in Odessa, and then as a teacher in Berdiansk. After spending 1868-69 in Switzerland and * “Iz pisma Arkhiepiskopa Odesskago Leontiia k Ober-Prokuroru Sinoda grafu D.A. Tol- stomu 30 aprelia 1875 g’, in Aleksii, Materialy dlia istorii, p. 240. * “Pravila veroispovedaniia novoobrashchennogo Russkogo Bratstva’, in Aleksii, Materialy dlia istorii, p. 477, note 1. * Cited in Lawrence Klippenstein (transl and ed), “Johann Wieler (1839-1889) among Rus- sian Evangelicals: A New Source of Mennonites and Evangelicalism in Imperial Russia’, Journal of Mennonite Studies, vol. 5 (1987), pp. 49-50. ‘! See Hans Kasdorf, “Die Mission der Mennoniten in Russland”, in Gerhard and Julia Hilde- brandt (eds), 200 Jahre Mennoniten in Russland: Aufsdtze zu ihrer Geschichte und Kultur (Bolanden-Weierhof: Verlag des Mennonitischen Geschichtsvereins, 2000), pp. 123-151, 135. 46 Germany with Oncken, he was ordained in 1872 by Unger. Beginning in July 1883, he worked fulltime for the Russian brotherhood, with full finan- cial support from Pashkov.* The next year, 1884, Wieler became the first president of the Russian Baptist Union.” After 1885, he worked in hiding from the Russian police. In 1887, he left Russia to become pastor of the Baptist congregation in Tulcea (Romania) and died there in 1889. The “Rules” emp