Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ver, send letters of inquiry such as two letters to Ilia Ivanov, AUCECB president, in 1967 and in 1970, asking for a response to specific Samizdat appeals. This apparent failure of the World Council to raise its-voice on behalf The Foreign Connection 371 of suffering Christians in the Soviet Union occasioned growing disquiet among ecumenical leaders. A conference held in St. Polten (Austria) in 1974 recommended greater exchange of information and encouraged the WCC to make statements “designed to diminish the negative effects of human rights situations, especially where the local churches or the regional bodies are prevented from doing so.’’43 The Yakunin-Regelson letter was welcomed by many because it finally prompted an airing of viewpoints, Former WCC staff member Albert van den Heuvel declared that “it is im- possible to have zones of silence in the area of human rights.”4° The spiritual authority of the WCC was at stake if it did not speak openly, The publicity in the 1970s on behalf of specific Soviet dissidents had made clear that such publicity did not hurt the person involved but often served to improve his prison conditions or to prevent his arrest. During the trial of Georgi Vins, the leaders of the WCC sent a letter to the Soviet prosecutor requesting permission to send a legal observer. “We have reason to believe,” they wrote, “on the basis of information received that the charges against Mr. Vins are made primarily because of his religious convic- tions and activities.” That appeal did not help Vins directly but it did give the WCC a more forthright image and served notice on Soviet churchmen that the WCC could no longer remain silent. As Albert van den Heuvel wrote to Metropolitan Yuvenaly following the Nairobi Assembly: Our silence and our defence of the churches has not given any effective defence to the local churches in your country.... Some of us can no longer silence their questions and we cannot keep from taking the sides of those who appeal to us in the name of Christ, or even in the name of humanity... .47 Repeatedly when Western churchmen have spoken up about restriction of human rights in the Soviet Union, Russian churchmen have attacked them. Here, ie a growing number of churchmen fully agree with Hebly’s remark: We cannot blame them for their silence, but it seems to be rather unecu- menical when they blame others for speaking where they had to remain silent. The other churches should not allow themselves to be sucked into the captivity of the Russian church.48 Following this debate the WCC executive committee eventually approved a“church-centered human rights programme,” gave it a budget of $80,000 372 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II (U.S.) and a full-time staff person, and assigned it the tasks of documenta- tion on human rights, coordination o