Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, 2007

olitical and religious opposition, soon spread to other parts of Germany as well as neighbouring Denmark (1839), The Netherlands (1845), Austria (1846), Switzerland (1847), and Sweden (1848). The movement was dynamic, believing it moved with an apostolic mandate to preach Christ crucified to everyone, insisting on a personal religious experience, followed by believer’s baptism by a missionary, and this became a watchword for the movement. On his first visit to Russia in 1864 to St. Petersburg, Oncken gained an audience with the head of the Ministry of the Interior, Count Sievers. When Sievers charged Baptists for proselytising, thus prohibiting their recognition, Oncken retorted: ‘...if the charge brought against us means that our primary object is to put people under water, we repudiate the charge’. He explained that Baptists do not teach that baptism is necessary for salvation but ‘...hold that simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work saves the soul; and we believe that God has called us to preach this great truth among the millions throughout Europe.. .Z 1 It did not take long before Baptists were lapping at Russia’s border. Swedish Baptists were just across the Baltic Sea. East Prussia was a German province that bordered the Kingdom of Poland and Baltic territory, both of which were under Russian sovereignty. In 1850 two prominent German Baptist leaders, Gottfried W. Lehmann and Julius Kobner, approached the Russian border but, without visas, were stopped. Nevertheless, on Russian territory with other believers 1 Quarterly Reporter , January 1865, p. 76. Penetration of the Baptists into the Russian Empire of the Nineteenth Century 35 they sang a missionary hymn and fervently prayed ‘that day might at length spring up in these dark regions’. 2 An evangelistic mission effort in the Russian Empire would be formidable. The Empire possessed not only vast territory, diverse populations, limited communication and transportation, and an Eastern culture, but was also an autocracy with xenophobia towards the West and with a state church, the Russian Orthodox Church, jealous of its privileges. Although the state granted religious freedom to traditional populations and to immigrants, such as Germans, it strictly forbade proselytism of the Orthodox population and barred western missionaries. In the Empire Protestantism was the predominant faith among Finns, Estonians, and Latvians on the Baltic and among the majority of the German population, but, by and large, the Protestant churches—Lutheran, Reformed, and Mennonite—were non-missionary and sought to protect their own special interests. They lived primarily in their own communities with adherents coming generally from their own children. Even the Mennonites who, in theory, practiced believer’s baptism had, generally, lost their Anabaptist zeal; for most of them baptism was performed almost proforma as a community rite. The Baptist