Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

the pleni i claimed to be receivin i aaa! g complaints that the noisy singi i rea irae eatet faints y singing at the services was ghbors. Their active youth group was also presenti - grams in neighboring congregations a: i ole nd even in private homes in oth villages without his knowledge. So far he had been fined three times this 326 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II year but the plenipotentiary was threatening other measures. How he: wished he could take a break from his duties, get a good rest, and reassess _, all those little decisions he had been forced to make, small compromises he had agreed to, to give the church more breathing room in other areas. He had not consciously compromised nor cooperated with the state but some of his actions troubled his conscience. Recently he had started a new activity that was a mixture of blessing and worry. He had told the congregation that on one day of the week he would be available at the church for counseling, This did not work too well until the other ministers who had joined him for the counseling session received the message that the people wanted to see the presbyter alone. Once he was alone with them, they had started unburdening their hearts and often he had been able to help them or at least to pray together with them. But this, too, weighed on him because if the member s secret became known to the authorities, then clearly he alone could have told them. He knew he “was suffering from emotional fatigue but didn't know where to turn. The role of a presbyter in a Reform Baptist church is probably more difficult. Presbyter Ivan Froese of Dzhezkazgan was regularly ordered to appear for questioning at the offices of the city executive committee.*4 The interview was usually conducted by a KGB official. Since 1969 this man had been urging them to register their church but Froese refused because of the conditions involved. The authorities demanded to know everything that was happening at their church but his church brotherhood had determined that the authorities had no right to know about inner-church affairs. Therefore he refused to talk, refused even to say who was the leader of the congregation. The interrogations continued, usually they lasted from five to eight hours, even if he spent the whole time saying nothing. The authorities began offering incentives, suggesting that if he would cooperate they would allow him as a Soviet German to emigrate to West Germany. Froese refused, and one day, after a series of coincidences in which members of his family had been photographed, they were shown a one-hour television program which presented Froese and his family as backward and dull, a family receiving the advantages and privileges of the Soviet state but pay- ing them back with hatred and agitation against the socialist order. Froese was only twenty-seven when he became p