Baptistic Theologies, 2009

of the Russian state and society’ and its major interests were in seeking ‘the rights and the good of the people and of the individual... not in the interest of its own class but in the interest of all people’. 5 The Populist movement could serve as a good example of an attempt to transform society. The movement appeared among the intelligentsia in 1873 3 Edmund Heier, Religious Schism in the Russian Aristocracy 1860-1900. Padstockism and Pashkovism, (Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1970), pp. 2-3. 4 Intelligentsia is a term still used in reference to the middle-class of Russian society, represented by teachers, doctors, musicians, etc. 5 Heier, Religious Schism in the Russian Aristocracy, p. 4. Relationships between Evangelicals and the Orthodox Church in Russia 73 and 1874. The class of intelligentsia in Russia was ‘numerically small’ but their activities were ‘a powerful force shaking the very foundation of Russian society’. 6 Populists wanted to develop socialism in Russia by means of education among the masses. Thousands of people of different age, status and profession left their jobs and universities and went to rural parts of Russia ‘in order to serve people’. 7 This faith in people, coupled by atheism, which was very popular among the intelligentsia, and ‘the cult to sacrifice and suffer for them, to live their life, enlighten them through books and lectures, and thus elevate them to a higher cultural level’ has been called ‘a unique phenomenon not only among o emerging intelligentsia, but also among the aristocracy’. In the 1860s and 70s many aristocrats attempted to ‘repair old wrongs’ by preaching the importance of moral perfection. The notion of moral perfection and the liberation of people through education, in some ways resembles Wesleyan striving for holiness which had its roots in both the Enlightenment and Evangelicalism. 9 Heier sees the ‘primary source’ of the Russian Populist movement in Evangelical Christianity. 10 The spirit of change also came into the Orthodox Church. In the nineteenth century the Church experienced difficulties. Having received the Bible, as noted above, people started to ask different ethical, social and religious questions and needed answers. Being rigid in its following of (largely) medieval traditions, the Church rejected any possibility of reforms, leaving the spiritual needs of many people unsatisfied. Different evangelical groups were a natural consequence. Heier wrote, ‘...no matter what nature the various religious currents assume, whether it was that of Tolstoi, V. Solov’ev, Dostoevskij, or that of the Evangelical revival which advocated religious freedom with a personal relationship with a personal God, at the base of their origin was the general disillusionment of the age, and lack of faith in the direction taken by the state and the official Orthodox Church of Russia.’ 11 Some of the ‘sects’, as they were called, appeare