Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

Assessment of East European Mission Societies 407 6. Scandal, Without question, what has brought East European missions into disrepute generally has been their scandalous behavior to each other.. Not all the missions charge their competitors with personal ag- grandizement, with being duped by the communists, or simply engaging in personal slander. But the conflicts between Underground Evangelism and a number of workers who left that mission to found competing agencies, especially Richard Wurmbrand and Haralan Popov, have circulated widely enough to damage the reputation of other missions.®? This is most un- fortunate. In March 1977 Underground Evangelism and Jesus to the Com- munist World (Wurmbrand) became involved in a bitter, multi-million- dollar defamation suit.58 In September 1976 Richard Wurmbrand’s son Michael (age 40), who became general director of the mission, traveled to Switzerland in order to speak to Underground Evangelism Board chairman Hans-Jurg Sttickel- berger in order to warn him of serious developments within the Under- ground Evangelism (UE) organization that Wurmbrand felt threatened the work of all missions in Eastern Europe.. Michael Wurmbrand informed Stiickelberger about information that he had received that UE president L. Joe Bass and his associate Stefan Bankov had taken part in sex orgies; that Bass had raped Bankov’s teenage daughter, Filka, and had threatened to import a sharpshooter from Europe to kill her if she did not remain quiet; that Bankov’s claims that pastoral work in Bulgaria were falsified; and that Bankov had referred to Joe Bass as.a gangster and mafioso. As a result, Bass and Bankov filed defamation suits, seeking undetermined compensatory damages, plus $1.5 million in punitive damages. Richard Wurmbrand, who had retired as general director earlier (but he still dominates the content of the journal), also resigned from the board of his mission, arguing that Chris- tians should not go to court with each other. Michael Wurmbrand and the mission board, however, decided to file a counter-suit in November 1977, also alleging defamation and asking for $4 million in damages. Actually, responding to criticism by threatening court action had. al- ready become established procedure but this time the stakes were higher. In September 1978 Bass published a very striking 14-page booklet entitled “Conspiracy” which reported a “Plan to Destroy Underground Evangelism _.. Involving an Agency of Communist Bulgaria, Its Moscow-Trained Of- ficials and Others.” On the basis of a scrap of paper containing some scrawl- ings by Michael Wurmbrand, Bass developed a conspiracy theory involving a variety of Bulgarian Orthodox officials, some of whom had been trained in Moscow. These, he said, were cooperating with several Bulgarian evangel- 408 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il icals living in California, including Michael Wurmbrand as chief tool of the c