Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

of the genuine piety they encountered. When Andrew MacRae was president of the EBF in 1971 he visited the Soviet Union. On his return, he wrote a long, serialized article on his experience which was full of superlative praise for the AUCECB and included rather ill informed criticism of the CCECB. For him, apparently, the primary criterion for deciding whether there was religious liberty was that he was permitted to preach freely wherever he traveled and no one censored his sermons in ad- vance. He was roundly criticized, including by fellow Baptist leaders, who were embarrassed that their spokesman sounded more like a round-eyed tourist than a well-informed church leader. On a later trip in August 1977 his report was printed in the European Baptist Press Service and his super- ficial knowledge of the situation seemed to persist. He claimed that the number of prisoners might be as low as 25, which was an exaggeration. He stated that Georgi Vins was not a minister and he thought that the fact that he had been asked in an interview quite openly what he thought of the split-away group was proof that this group was not underground.® One would expect a Western Baptist leader in such a critical situation to exert a bit more effort to discover the facts or else to keep silent. Since 1975 world Baptist leaders have been taking a second look at their policies toward the Soviet Union. When they attended the congress in December 1974 and announced their intention to appeal for imprisoned Baptists in an interview with the Council for Religious Affairs, Alexei Bychkov showed approval. BWA Associate Secretary Carl Tiller was be- coming uncomfortable with their “seeming inactivity” in key world trouble 378 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II spots during the years that they were emphasizing a ministry of reconcilia- tion. How could the BWA become a reconciling force? Did the situation re- quire a member body (with veto rights) or a no member body before the BWA could intervene? What has happened has been a process whereby BWA leaders have personally expressed their concern to Soviet authorities with frankness. Not as a spokesman for the BWA but as secretary of the British Baptist Union, David Russell, for example, spelled out the concerns of his membership for the release of Georgi Vins and other prisoners. He also wrote a letter to the Soviet authorities when the new legislative revi- sions on cults was announced in 1975, listing all the clauses in the legislation that still gave him and other Western Christians cause for concern. Such well-documented letters clearly demonstrated a genuine concern. Other Baptist leaders, unable to issue formal statements through the World Alliance, privately urged fellow Baptists to address simple appeals to the So- viet ambassador and in other. ways to inform Soviet Baptists of their conc