Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

form a prophetic role? Reform Baptists clearly see themselves in a prophetic role, yet their voice appears to be diminishing. Alexei Bychkov's surprisingly bold challenge to the official dogma that religion belongs to the past hints at a prophetic role for the AUCECB that may need to be taken seriously. The challenge is to steer a course that avoids a state-church mentality committed to fostering the national culture and to maintaining political stability, but that also. avoids the isolationism of narrow sectar- ianism. 448 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il By limiting this book to the Soviet evangelical movement since World War II, the movement's Soviet character seems more pronounced. Official religious life had virtually ceased during the Stalinist purges of the thirties, After the war there was a new administrative structure for what became very much a new movement after the outbreak of revivals, Most delegates attending the recent All-Union Congress traced their spiritual beginnings to the postwar period, 60 percent of them having been baptized during the re- vival years. They have had a new history in a Soviet context of rebuilding society. For the evangelicals this brought new working conditions, new prob- lems, but also new zeal. The most significant fact about their new existence was that the evan- gelical movement had survived, In their tradition, they had neither hierarchy nor a strong sense of apostolic succession. That had meant that even though their leaders were arrested and many had perished in the camps, there were always others to step into their places. These dared to preach without getting a theological degree first, because educational re- quirements had never been a prerequisite for preaching. There had been objections to women serving as preachers, but in a time of need it was the women who often maintained a functioning church life. Since communion and even baptism have no sacramental significance for evangelicals, the practice of these ordinances could wait until an ordained minister managed to visit. Much more, they were driven by a sense of the priesthood of all believers. Mother and father were responsible first of all for the most basic cell group of the church—their own family. Even if regular services were impossible, the children were sure to get religious instruction at home. All they needed for that was a Bible, but many had to manage without for a long time. Its absence remained their major problem. The new conditions had transformed them. Their members had never been wealthy, but their early leaders were either well educated like Prok- hanov and Kargel, or were wealthy farmers like Mazaev. The sober lifestyle expected of an evangelical resulted in a work ethic that brought them into the upper-or middle-class peasant bracket. Those classes were forcibly eliminated in the thirties, and when new elites developed in recent decades, religious discri