Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

they found it difficult to regain their credibility among fellow believ-. ers abroad. There is also a deeper pacifist question which remains puzzling. Why should the state authorities regard pacifism or nonresistance as a dreaded form of dissent? Repeatedly the story raises the issue of the relationship between the church and the state. What role is possible for a church under an authori- tarian regime, a Weltanschauungsstadt where ideology is unfriendly to reli- gion? What is the extent of the Christian's obligation to the state? What are the limits? What is the relationship between being faithful to the faith (in theology and practice) and seeking to survive? What is the church’s responsibility in speaking truth to power in such a context? Is it worth repeated imprisonment as experienced by Georgi Vins and his associates? What does it cost the church if it opts for a selective conscience? The Soviet evangelical experience sets one thinking about the way a church reflects its theology. Like evangelicals everywhere, they regard bib- lical authority and proclamation of a gospel of reconciliation as cardinal tenets. How does one transmit the faith in a context of societal hostility? So- viet evangelicals have devised contextually appropriate methods. They are growing numerically but some of their accommodations to the context make one wonder. How strong is their professed biblicism if the registered Baptists regularly stress Romans 18 and studiously ignore Acts 5?! That question is unfair, given our comfortable context, but is it not selective bibli- cism to insist on baptism by immersion but to reject foot washing? Is it not selective biblicism to insist on evangelism but to refuse members the right to speak in tongues? Perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of this ques- tioning is to observe how this selective biblicism was imported from evangel- ical America. Pondering the story of the Soviet evangelicals inevitably leads us to compare faith in the Soviet Union with faith, or the loss of it, in the West. What kind of persecution most effectively destroys a religious movement? Do all-out antireligious campaigns achieve their goal? Does sustained pressure weaken, or does it really strengthen the church? Or is the desire for social approval the most debilitating? In the Soviet Union it costs something 14 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II to be a Christian—that is clear to all. Perhaps Western churches might be more self-disciplined if we saw with greater clarity what Christian disciple- ship costs. In contrast to the earlier Russian Corpus Christianum, many people have come to think of the Soviet Union (or even all of Eastern Europe) as the Corpus Marxianum. By that they mean the domain of godless commu- nism where religion can no longer exist, neither by definition nor in fact. Well-informed observers, however, are wont to underline the degree to which the Soviet Union has s