Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

gy are merce- Beginnings and Patterns 31 nary and selfish, of which the masses are well aware, whereas in the Schism the success of the leaders depends largely on the high standards of their life and character. !2 There was further the simple fact that Orthodoxy had not kept pace with population growth and movements. Where there were 31,383 churches in 1840 with 116,728 clergy, by 1890 the number of churches had increased to 40,205, but the number of clergy had dropped to 96,892. That meant that whereas there were 71 churches per 100,000 inhabitants of Orthodox faith in 1840, by 1890 there were only 56. The ratio of clergy to 100,000 parishioners had dropped more drastically from 265 in 1840 to 187. in 1890. !8 What brought new life to Russian Orthodoxy in the early nineteenth century and also triggered the birth of evangelicalism was Protestant Pietism. The post-Reformation period in Western Europe is sometimes _ described as a time of cold confessionalism. As a reaction to it, Christians in various Protestant confessions turned to devotionally and - practically oriented writers such as Jakob B6hme and later Jung Stilling. This Pietist movement preceded and partly coincided with the birth of evangelicalism in Germany and England." Pietism came to Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century and made a major impact because it was vigorously fostered by the tsar and his leading minister, Alexander Golitsyn."* Dynamic preachers from Wiirt- temberg (a Pietist centerin South Germany) came to Russia, proclaiming the reality of a personal conversion and a sense of devotional nearness to God. Russian high society flocked to hear the preachers, met in each other's salons for Bible study and prayer, some even experiencing ecstasies.}6 Pietist literature was translated into Russian and widely distributed. Increasingly it became accessible to the lower classes, for the Pietists became active proponents of literacy training, for example, through the Lancastrian school movement. Other upper-class Russian Pietists started visiting prisons and trying to reform the prisoners, sometimes also the prison system. Above all, the Pietist leaders organized the Russian Bible Society, which by 1819 had translated the New Testament into modern Russian. The Bible Society was closed by tsarist order in 1826 when Orthodox reac- tion set in, but Bible translation and distribution never ceased entirely. A translation of the entire Bible was finally completed in 1876 and circulated by the British and Foreign Bible Society even though the official translation approved by the Orthodox Church did not appear till 1882. The Bible So- 32 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II ciety was reopened in 1831 to serve the non-Russian peoples of the Russian Empire. !7 Bible colporteurs again traveled about the countryside and, as a more liberal climate returned in the 1860s, they also