Baptistic Theologies, 2009

was relieved, became free and got to know God. This testimony of the first convert is typical of Pietist revival, as confirmed by many sources about spiritual life in the German villages in Russia. 5 First, a person is overcome by a deep sense of sinfulness and then a phase of highly emotional inner struggle follows. Finally, an inexpressible feeling of joy serves as an authentication of full forgiveness and personal salvation. The experience of personal salvation was totally new, not only for peasants in the South Russian backwoods but also for the Russian Orthodox Church on the whole. New horizons of spiritual life had been opened; this explained the attribute spiritual. Personal salvation was a very strong argument in a deeply religious country. Independently from the village of Osnova, and at almost the same time, revival broke out in several other villages hundreds of kilometres away and even in the city of Odessa. In South Russia, all those converted had been in close contact with German colonists so they were given the name Stundists - a translation from German. The second attribute of the term revival - evangelical - comes from the Russian evangelie meaning gospel. The simultaneous emergence of similar groups in different parts of the country had a cause - the start of the publication of the Russian New Testament with the imprimatur of the Holy Synod in 1862 after a long interval of almost forty years. The new faith had been directly derived from the divine source that could now be accessed by everyone who was able to read. Now, as Johann Wieler, the initiator of one of the first Stundist groups in Odessa in 1859-62, and later the organiser of independent Russian Baptist structures, exclaimed: ‘... the hour had come at last for the emancipation of millions of Russians who had been enslaved in both body and spirit for centuries’. 6 From the very beginning, the sola Scriptura principle became the second main factor of the revival. 5 Examples: 'RuBland. Uber das christliche Gemeinschaftsleben um Odessa und BeBarabien' Missionsblatt der Gemeine getaufter Christen , 6 (1874), pp. 106-7; 7 (1874) pp. 126-7; P.M. Friesen, Die Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Bruderschaft in Russland (1789-1910) im Rahmen der mennonitischen Gesamtgeschichte (Halbstadt: Raduga, 1911, repr. Gottingen: Verein zur Erforschung und Pllege des Kulturerbes des russlanddeutschen Mennonitentums, 1991), p. 238; J. Pritzkau, Geschichte der Baptisten im Siid-Rufiland (Odessa, 1914, repr. Lage: Logos, 1999, new pagination), p. 17. 6 J. Wieler, Einige kurze Mitteilungen uber die Entstehung des Stundismus und Baptismus unter der russischen Bevolkerung im Siiden RuBlands (Sevastopol, 7 Nov. 1884), Univ. of Birmingham, Special Collections Department, Pashkov Papers [Hereafter Pashkov Papers], 2/25/8, p. 7; Engl, trans.: L. Klippenstein (trans. and ed.), ‘Johann Wieler (1839-1889) Among Russian Evangelicals: A New Source of Mennonites and