Baptistic Theologies, 2009

ld War, that Poland had become a free country again. People expressed delight that the dream of freedom had come true, but at the same time there was enormous sadness because of the very large number of lives lost in the war. About 2,000 members of Polish Baptist churches had died. 1 2 Among Polish evangelicals generally, however, including Baptists, there were hopes for a new spiritual awakening in the country. The result of this was that evangelical churches, in the period after the First World War, made a significant impact on Polish society. Baptist churches were prominent among these, with their desire for mission being an inspiration and example for the other evangelical denominations. Background The greatest problem for the Second Polish Republic was integration. The whole of society - the population and the institutions of the three main regions - had to be moulded as far as possible into one nation. There were, in fact, four languages, three legal codes and eighteen registered political parties competing for power in five regions.“ Everything had to be built up again from scratch. The task was enormous. Commenting on the issue of religion and ethnicity, Jerzy Kloczowski, in ‘A History of Polish Christianity’, writes: ‘One of the most important problems of the Second Republic, from its very beginning to the very end, was its multinational character: to a great extent nationalities were identified with denominations’. 3 The correlation between the ethnic groups and the Christian confessions is striking. A census in 1931 showed the following linguistic 1 William L. Wagner, New Move Forward in Europe, Growth Patterns of German Speaking Baptists in Europe (California: William Carey Library, 1978), p. 113 2 Norman Davies, God's Play Ground, volume II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 298. 3 Jerzy Kloczowski, A History of Polish Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 269. Between the Wars: Golden Years of Polish Baptists 87 breakdown: those who spoke Polish formed 68.9 % of the total population, the Ukrainians formed 13.9 %, the Yiddish-speaking Jews 8.7%, the Belarussians 3.1 %, and the Germans 2.3%. Norman Davies notes ‘cultural sensitivities were sharpened by marked economic discrepancies’. 4 This situation required specific regulation and, as Davies notes, legislation was passed that ‘guaranteed the legal equality and protection by the State of all citizens irrespective of “origin, nationality, language, race, or religion”.’ 5 In the first years of the Republic’s existence, the whole economic system had to be re-established. The Polish Constitution of 17 th March 1921 decreed equality and religious freedom for all citizens, but the constitution fell short of the expectations of the minority faiths in the country. 6 7 8 The most important constitutional article defining the status of the Church was article 114, which concerned the legal situation of