Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

e the freedom for their preachers to visit neighboring con- gregations, especially during holidays. Egle even took the liberty to express a personal assessment of Karev’s leadership. Karev, he felt, was a good ora- tor and well suited to be presbyter of a large congregation, but not to be general secretary of the union. He continued the rather sharp needling by adding that the Latvians were a thrifty people, and they felt that the leaders’ salaries were rather high. In fact, the Latvians sometimes thought that the union leadership was afraid of suffering and confrontation, and it also seemed to them that the leaders were hanging onto their positions a long time. Egle was the highly respected historian for the Latvians and would soon be appointed senior presbyter. His sharp remarks, expressed in a soft- spoken manner through a translator, had to be taken seriously, He con- cluded his speech by asserting that the Latvians had no clear opinion about the Orgkomitet because the information was contradictory, but they did know that these men were people of honor. Would it not be necessary, he asked, to elect some of the Orgkomitet spokesmen:into the new AUCECB presidium? Karev replied briefly by affirming that they were ready to es- tablish contacts with the Orgkomitet but not at this conference. A Revised Statute It may have sounded as if the Orgkomitet was insignificant and that there had been no need to establish contact with the reformers till now, but when N. A. Levindanto presented the revised statutes, it was evident that the AUCECB had taken a very major step forward in meeting the reformers’ demands, Levindanto acknowledged that they had received very thorough and excellent suggestions for revising the statutes. He then declared that, “considering all this and the possibilities that are now avail- able,” the AUCECB wished to present a new revision for approval.25 In contrast to the next congress, the atmosphere was still so restrained and the time so limited that Levindanto simply read the statute paragraph by para- graph, and it was accepted without any significant changes. ~ Perhaps church conventions seem dull to the average person, and often the dullest moments involve the haggling between parliamentarians when a new constitution is to be accepted. But at the AUCECB congress in 1963, this was the electric moment. Even if no discussion was permitted, The Union Defended, 1963-1969 209 members had submitted proposed changes in written form, and it soon be- came apparent that the new constitution contained major concessions. Michael Bourdeaux, in a thorough study of this subject, demonstrated the 1963 © any The most important change was a shift from a presbyterial or even episcopal form of church polity to a congregational polity. This was achieved simply by replacing the All-Union Council with the All-Union Congress as the supreme organ for ECB churches. From now on, the statute gran