Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

cil had been changed without calling a conference of presbyters. Some senior presbyters had ordained presbyters in homes without the church present, and in another case a senior presbyter had or- dained a presbyter without his wife present and did not even inform her af- terward.*4 -_* New Frontiers After 1974 429 A change in the wording order for baptism and church membership occasioned many questions for clarification. Baptism and church membership are no longer synonymous. Ukrainian leader Jacob Dukhon- chenko, who led the discussion, pointed out in response to a question, that the law does not prohibit children from attending church; even Vladimir Kuroedov, Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs, had said so in print in 1978. Maybe, Dukhonchenko went on, local workers needed to grasp more clearly the distinction between attending church and the state prohibition against children being members. After all, the Orthodox Church practices child baptism and that is not against the law. The point was clear; it would now be possible to baptize young people under 18 without breaking the law. Another practical advantage was that this would allow persons to be baptized who are not prepared for job discrimination because their names are on a church membership roll. There was also an additional clause regulating membership transfer (reflecting the new mo- bility), which no doubt was intended to prevent the embarrassment of an excommunicated member joining another church in another town and even becoming presbyter, as one man reported! Another sign of progress and promise was buried in an interpretive commentary to paragraph 27. This stated that the presbyter should devote “special attention to the education of young people.” When the discussior: period started, the first speaker was a young woman from Moscow who read a prepared statement on behalf of 600 young people in the central church and on behalf of those in Kiev. She welcomed the creation of four depart- ments, but appealed for the creation of a youth department for the union. Whether or not this was a signal to other speakers, numerous spokesmen repeated this call for a youth department which could help with the prob- lems unique to young people. Jacob Dukhonchenko responded to these many requests by reminding the delegates of state legislation, advising them to read carefully a recent article in Nauka i Religiia (Science and Reli- gion) which summarized what the law permitted. He urged the delegates to accept the open wording of the interpretive commentary and promised that the presidium would request the Council for Religious Affairs to grant per- mission for such a department. Later, when he addressed the delegates in his capacity as senior presbyter for the Ukraine, he urged each presbyter to take the concerns of his young people to heart. How that was organized was a local matter. The leaders were obviously encouraging local initiati