Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2017

t divine blessings in their ministry, that it might be full of grace... [signed] President of the AUCECB, Ya.I. Zhidkov, and Secretary-General, A.V. Karev. 14 The title given to Patriarch Alexius by Zhidkov and Karev is significant. They did not use the common language employed by ministers of the AUCECB, which was ‘brother in Christ’, nor did they place emphasis on hierarchy by using, for example, an allowable but more modest Orthodox appellation vladyko [sovereign]. Rather, they deliberately chose what the Orthodox themselves used as their ecclesiastical title - ‘His Holiness Alexius, the Patriarch of... ’ In this period it is possible to observe a growing affirmation by Russian Baptist leaders of the role of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and a growing warmth in the character of their mutual relationships. 15 In 1971, leaders of the AUCECB addressed the newly elected Patriarch Pimen in more democratic way, as their ‘beloved brother’, but even here one can find in abundance not so much a Protestant as Byzantine vocabulary: To Pimen, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia: ‘Dear and beloved brother in our Lord Jesus Christ and minister of His Church, .. .not wishing to be apart from the historical event in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church - the election of her Primate, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia - we express our unalloyed joy that this great decision has fallen to Your lot and congratulate You... from the bottom of our heart on the assumption of this high-holy and highly important 12 On the Orthodox custom of ‘holy kissing’ see, for instance: Archbishop Veniamin, Novaya Skrizhal’, ili Ob’yasnenie o Tserkvi i Vsekh Sluzhbakh i Utvaryakh Tserkovnykh [The New Tablet, or an Explanation of the Church, Liturgy and all Church Services and Utensils] [1908] (M.: Izd-vo Pravoslavnogo Bratstva Sv. Filareta, 1999), p. 120. 13 In 1964, J. Pollock cited the words of an Orthodox Archbishop that the times of persecution of Russian Baptists by the Orthodox Church had changed into their ‘kiss of peace’. See J. Pollock, The Faith of the Russian Evangelicals (N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964), p. 99. 14 BV, no. 4 (1958), p. 5. 15 See also the warmth of the article in memory of Patriarch Alexius published in BV, no. 5 (1970), pp. 58- 60. Prokhorov, Eastern Christian Self-Identification 21 ministry. We are praying to our One Lord and Saviour that He will give You heavenly wisdom and the fullness of physical and spiritual strength for leading the great Russian Orthodox Church... Love in Christ... from the Presidium of the AUCECB.’ 16 The Communists would not have forced Russian Baptists to pour so much ‘holy oil’ (since it was possible just to say some formal polite words), if many of them had not felt in the depths of their heart a kinship with the Orthodox Church. Talking with older ministers of the Russian Baptist brotherhood and turning the pages of Christian periodica