Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2017

urch, and was keeping the true faith, not only for herself but also for other countries and nations, including the Western world, where, from the point of view of Karev, authentic Christianity had been lost. He wrote: We are the successors of those who were burnt to death in Nero’s gardens and torn to pieces by lions in circus arenas!.. [That is] the ‘messianism of Russia’! The Christian West is Christianity without Christ ([quoting] F.M. Marts inkovsky). The sacred mission of the Russian evangelical movement is to uphold Apostolic Christianity! 40 Baptists, Orthodox, and confrontation with the West Taking into account the root causes of the existence of such views in the Russian Baptist brotherhood, it is not surprising that there were numerous publications in Bratsky Vestnik, which were directed primarily against the wrong course of the leading Western countries and, at the same time, in 39 A. Karev, ‘Russkoe Evangel’sko-Baptistskoe Dvizhenie’ [The Russian Evangelical-Baptist Movement], BV, no. 4 (1957), pp. 37-8. Such ideas were found much earlier, in I.S. Prokanov’s time. See, for instance, Utrennyaya Zvezda [The Morning Star], nos. 6-8 (1922), pp. 6-14. 40 For these and other similar thoughts see ‘Dnevnik A.V. Kareva’ [A.V. Karev’s Diary], BV, no. 1 (1999), pp. 44-51; nos. 2-3 (1999), pp. 53-7. Prokhorov, Eastern Christian Self-Identification 33 support of the ‘most fair’ Soviet (Russian) foreign policy. And these kinds of materials had a sublimely religious fervour; it would be more precise to refer not so much to the Communist propaganda (elements of which, of course, took place), but to the centuries-old Orthodox way of thinking, whereby the mythologised world evil is concentrated in the West, and the truth of God is in the East. For comparison, here are some typical quotations from Zhurnal Moskovskoy Patriarkhii [Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate] and Bratsky Vestnik : The household of the Church, as well as our entire nation, cordially approve the consistent, truly peace-loving policy of the Soviet Union. The situation in Europe... has become quieter mainly simply through the efforts of our country. 41 We are grateful to God that, in spite of the escalation of the international situation by the aggressive forces of the West, the government of our country takes a line over peace... Many international conferences... are grateful to our country for the way of peace. 42 The polemic here against the ‘aggressive’ course of the countries of the West, and at the same time the support of the ‘way of peace’ that was being set out and implemented in Russian foreign policy, certainly owed something to Communist propaganda and to the need for Baptists to be seen to be loyal to the state; but there is also an indebtedness in such statements to the traditional Russian Orthodox world-view, in which wrong thinking is found in the West, whilst God’s truth is known in the East. The leaders of