Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ly voted for membership, at least post facto. The role of the AUCECB within the World Council of Churches has not been significant. It regularly served as junior partner to the Russian Or- thodox Church, voting as a bloc on all decisions. It therefore shared responsibility with the Orthodox in blocking numerous resolutions’ that might have been critical of the Soviet Union. A significant shift occurred at the World Council Assembly in Nairobi in 1975. A Russian Orthodox layman, Lev Regelson, and Father Gleb Yakunin (banned from exercising his office since 1965) addressed a letter to Philip Potter, WCC general secretary. The letter was printed in Target, a daily newspaper for the Assembly. The authors of the letter noted the selective indignation which The Foreign Connection 369 had characterized WCC pronouncements in recent years, listed various facts of religious persecution in the USSR, and offered a number of sugges- tions whereby WCC member churches could help. Concern for religious persecution, Yakunin and Regelson argued, “ought to become the central theme of Christian ecumenism!” Both the Russian Orthodox and the Baptist representatives published official replies which were defensive but also included candid acknowledgment of problems. Swiss missiologist Jacques Rossel proposed an amendment to a report on the Helsinki Decla- ration which specifically requested the USSR to implement the religious liberty clause of the Helsinki Declaration. English Baptist Ernest Payne suc- ceeded in transferring the issue to a committee but the Nairobi Assembly marks a certain turning point after which the World Council has become less accommodating to the fears or even threats of withdrawal of Soviet churchmen.*8 AUCKECB representation at the World Council was never of the same caliber as the representation at the BWA. Whereas the AUCECB president or general secretary traveled to BWA meetings, it was international depart- ment spokesmen who were the most regular representatives at WCC com- mission meetings. In addition to Stoian, Belorussian Senior Presbyter K. S. Veliseichik was a longtime member on the central committee.®° In recent years, however, General Secretary Alexei Bychkov, a member of the central committee since 1975, has begun to play a more active role in the dis: cussions, prompting some to hope for more serious dialogue between East and West. For the AUCECB its membership in the WCC has meant growing problems within the union. The more conservative Ukraine and Central Asia have a deep fear of the ecumenical movement as such, a fear that has been fed by Western Fundamentalist radio preachers who regularly identify the World Council with the Babylonian whore which is to lead the church astray in the end times. The pronouncements (printed in Bratskii Vestnik) of the WCC on many topics, especially the criticism of American policy in Vietnam and of South African racism, and the affirmation of