Baptistic Theologies, 2009

Evangelicalism in Imperial Russia’, Journal of Mennonite Studies, 5 (1987), pp. 44- 60, 48. 16 Baptistic Theologies The active dissemination of the scriptures substantially increased the potential of the revival. However, the distribution of Scripture did not automatically mean an increase in Stundism. Under Russian conditions, the Bible was not self-explanatory as the case of Molokans shows. This group had been regarded as a rationalistic sect, separated from the Orthodox Church in the 1770s, and also following the sola Scriptura principle. Over three generations, before the Pietist revival, they organised their community life in accordance with the scriptures and faithfully studied them, but the results of their studies cardinally differed from the Pietist one. An inevitable conclusion comes to mind that the Pietists shared not only their previously unknown experience of new life but also a new hermeneutic that placed this same new life as a reference axis of biblical interpretation. In general, in the 1860s and 1870s, the Molokans were a hard soil for the Pietist seed. Only a generation later did they open their minds to the central idea of the revival - the experience of personal salvation. This can be explained by the readiness of a new Molokan generation to follow a different hermeneutical approach. Soon a third argument was added to the two main ones referred to. The life of the converted substantially changed revealing a power to overcome vices and evil. New rules of a new life, like full abstinence, were established. A new ethic was derived from the changing power of the Gospel, and it became the most important confirmation of the reality of a conversion because it was the most visible one. In best Pietist tradition, the promoters of the revival were not only trained theologians but every able person. This greatly expanded the potential of the revival. In fact, the extension of German Pietism to the Russian population was done at a time when there were no prominent German Pietist pastors working in Russia. After the death of Pastor Wiist in 1858, the main Pietist impulses came from so-called lay people, and twenty n years later, in the German settlements, hundreds of Pietist groups existed. At this time, the Pietist revival was the work of enthusiasts, not theologians. The Russian revival occurred in the same manner. Here is a typical example. In 1875, in the settlement of Malovodyanaya in the Aleksandriya district, lived just one Stundist family. Nine years later, there were 118 people from twenty-two Stundist families, accounting for almost half of the 7 'RuBland. Uber das christliche Gemeinschaftsleben’, p. 106. Revival and Baptist Beginnings in Russia 17 village. All of this was the work of one person, the peasant Vasili Levchenko, a person not mentioned anywhere else in Baptist history. The potential of the Russian revival was tremendous. Twenty-five years after