Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

erns. The BWA relationship to. the AUCECB is a strong one and is begin- ning to have benefit for the AUCECB. Constant negotiations have brought official promise for a seminary. Klaus Meister of Switzerland was followed by Isam Ballenger and Andrew MacRae as guest. lecturers for the Moscow correspondence course. Another point of negotiation in which Baptists were also involved finally paid off when in December 1978 25,000 Bibles were imported to the Soviet Union, the BWA assuming responsibility. for the funding. ®8 , 2. Mennonites. International Mennonite relations with the Soviet Union have been much more difficult. Partly this is due-to the fact that So- viet authorities felt that Russian Mennonite links with fellow believers abroad were helping to delay the conversion of Mennonites to atheism. When official delegated trips became possible, Harold S. Bender, president of Mennonite World Conference, was immediately ready to try to resume relations with Russian Mennonites. He met the AUCECB delegation that came to London in 1955, and another that came to America in 1956, and then joined a mixed denominational delegation together with David B. Wiens for a trip to the Soviet Union in November 1956.7 Travel proved to be exceedingly complicated and all they managed to do was to meet a few Mennonite spokesmen who traveled long distances to meet them in a hotel. Even then, one of the men, Philip Cornies, was held seven hours for ques- tioning before being able to see the visitors. One pleasant aspect of the trip The Foreign Connection 379 was the first-class treatment and close Christian fellowship shown by the Russian Baptists. The Bender-Wiens trip .was followed by a series of delegations at ap- proximately two-year intervals.71 Most of these visits were officially conducted under Intourist sponsorship, whereas others were possible be- cause the Mennonites received an invitation together with a Baptist delega- tion. Four Soviet Baptists visited the United States by invitation of Men- nonite Central Committee (MCC) in May 1964, combining this with atten- dance at a major American Baptist congress. In response to another invita- tion issued jointly by MCC (Canada) and the Baptist Federation of Canada, a five-member delegation visited Canada in June 1969. The delegation in- cluded one Mennonite, Viktor Kriger. A more direct official exchange of delegates with the AUCECB began in May 1976 when five persons visited North American Mennonites. This was followed by a return visit and an in- vitation for a delegation representing the Mennonite World Conference to come visit. Usually these delegation exchanges consisted of visiting a variety of churches where delegation members preached sermons. During the day they toured the city. The 1976 delegation exchange was different in that much greater emphasis was placed on attempting dialogue between par- ticipants. Seminars with smaller groups of invited parti