Baptistic Theologies, 2009

d under the influence of European Protestants, particularly groups that were formed around the study of the Bible, which in the countryside were scornfully called ‘Stundists’. Among the aristocracy the most prominent of these new groups was Radstockism, so-called after an English Evangelical who visited Russia, Lord Radstock. 6 Ibid., pp. 5-6. 7 Ibid., p. 8. 8 Ibid., p. 7. 9 Cf. James Wm. McClendon Jr, Systematic Theology: Witness (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), p. 23. 10 Heier, Religious Schism in the Russian Aristocracy, p. 7. 11 Ibid., pp. 18-19. 74 Baptistic Theologies Whilst analysing Evangelical-Orthodox relationships in this period it is important to understand the reasons for the persecution of the Evangelicals. The belief that every Russian is (at least potentially) an Orthodox was one reason; thus accepting ‘different faiths’ (as other Christian confessions are called) was seen as a great crime. 12 Very close relationships between the Church and the Russian State was another reason to persecute non- n Orthodox. To a certain degree the rigidity of the Orthodox Church was imposed on it by the State in order to ‘prevent the Church from regaining its pre-Petrine [pre-Peter the Great] strength’. 14 This requires explanation. Peter the Great established the Governing Holy Synod having abolished ‘sobornost’ 15 or the autonomy of the Church. The Synod was under the Tsar’s authority and had greater power than the Patriarch or the Church Council. The State therefore, was supporting and protecting the Church. The Church in turn was supporting the State by teaching patriotism. Priests even had to inform the police about any political disloyalty of believers, even if this became known through the confessional. Patriarchs swore an oath of loyalty to the Emperor as ‘the head and supreme judge of the Governing Synod’. 16 Pondering over the ‘desolate’ situation in the Orthodox Church at the end of the nineteenth century, A. Neidgart, administrator of the Moscow Synod Office in this period, pointed to the root of the problems. He wrote: ‘The Tsar is not a pastor of the Church. Yet, Peter the Great, seeking to destroy the opposition of some Bishops, along with their opposition, destroyed the Russian Orthodox Church itself, having deprived it of canonical leadership, its legal Saint Bishop and having abolished “sobornost”.’ At the same time he argued that state government harmed the Church only because of the authority’s indifference to religion and misunderstanding of the Church’s goals, which he saw as being in fact inseparable from Russia’s goals. 18 Unlike the intelligentsia whose dream was to bring about the transformation of society through the enlightenment of the masses, Russian aristocracy had different visions. They were divided between ‘those desiring a 12 For more on the problem of proselytism in Russia see John Witte Jr. and Michael Bordeaux (eds.), Proselytism and Orthodoxy