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This section explores the solutions Evangelical leaders offered to promote the concept of Spiritual Revolution.

3.2.1 Evangelicalism and Ideological Changes in Revolutionary Russia

As previously noted, the evangelical movement from its very beginning was formed and developed in opposition to the official Russian Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy was not just the religion of the majority of the subjects in the empire, but the state church. Orthodoxy played an important role in the state ideology; and as the official church it played the role of the institute, educating citizens in loyalty to the empire. Therefore, distraction from Orthodoxy was a punishable offence, and sects that were suspected of it were subjected to severe prosecution. This was also true for evangelical churches that from the outset had been attracting their followers from among the former Orthodox.

As already examined by Heather Coleman, the transition from Orthodoxy to evangelical faith was a difficult decision for each individual. It was usually preceded by an active spiritual search and an awareness of all those social and economic risks, which faced representatives of unacceptable sects in the country (Moiseenko, 2013, p.35). However, people who have gone through evangelical conversion openly rejected the official orthodoxy as ‘living faith,’ and viewed it as ‘dead religion.’ The most valuable things they thought they gained, as a result of their conversion, were salvation, a simple and rational creed, and an ability to lead a respectable and sober lifestyle. These things, in their view were denied them in the Orthodox Church (Coleman, 2005, pp. 47-64).

The Bolsheviks’ harassment of the Orthodox Church was perceived by Evangelicals as a natural fall of the ‘dead’ religion, a kind of debunking of idolatry. In the early 1920s, such debunking seemed to be a good illustration of the righteousness of the evangelical doctrine. Evangelical magazines with enlightening aims reprinted stories on the elimination of Orthodox shrines as centres of superstition. For example, the magazine Slovo istiny (Word of Truth) in 1920 described an autopsy of miracle worker Macarius Zhabynskiy’s relics. The information about it was taken from the Revolyutsiya i tserkov’ (Revolution and Church)

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magazine. Here it was reported that ‘In March 1919 the Commission on behalf of representatives of the Belevsky executive committee and others was directed to the monastery,’ which was to perform a disclosure on the shrine with relics:

After much wrangling with the monks the Commission was eventually admitted to the shrine ... Before opening the shrine the Commission asked an abbot if he was sure that the ‘relics’ really existed and were located there. The abbot, Archimandrite Macarius, said that the ‘relics’ were there, and he and his brethren were really sure of that as the relics still worked wonders. Complying with the procedures in the presence of more than a hundred believers, the commission started the disclosure of the shrine. After preliminary dismantling of top decorations the cover depicting Macarius was withdrawn, the shrine box was empty, and there was nothing but spiders; when dismantling the scaffold a lot of wood lice were found (1920a).

Further, the article reported that the grave where Macarius was allegedly resting was also excavated and because there were no remains of the saint, ‘a group of believers standing there was disappointed’(1920a). The fact that it was placed in the Christian Baptist magazine, it was obvious that such cases were not considered by evangelicals in terms of freedom of religion, but as illustrations of how the Orthodox ‘were deceiving people,’ drawing away from the true faith. In this sense, the suppression of the Orthodox Church was in favour of the evangelical community. A Bolshevik government was seen as ‘an instrument of God.’

Aggressiveness and hostility of the Orthodox Church towards evangelical believers in the Russian Empire were extreme especially in times of K. Pobedonostsev, but also at other times (Savinsky, 1999). Since Orthodoxy relied on the support of the government, the only solution was the separation of church and state, which was proclaimed by the Bolsheviks23 and was very actively welcomed by representatives of the evangelical movement. This was preceded by the weakening of state structures between the two revolutions (February and October 1917), when Russian Evangelicals experienced the time of freedom and opportunity to influence the political, social, and religious life of society (Murygina, 2008, pp. 92-93). During this time, a very optimistic vision of the future of the evangelical movement emerged, particularly in terms of mission and evangelism. It was also due to the considerable interest in the evangelical doctrine of the people, as evident in the popularity of lectures of Vladimir

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Just three months after the Socialist Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik government led by Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), issued 'The Decree of Separation between the Church and the State and between the School and the Church.' According to the decree, (1) the church was separated from the government; (2) every citizen could be a part of any religious group or not to belong to any; (3) any persecution against believers was prohibited; (4) all official documents that had any reference to religious beliefs were to be banned; (5) freedom of belief was allowed as long as it did not limit the rights of citizens of the Soviet Republic; (6) nobody could use their religious beliefs to justify civil disobedience; (7) marriage and birth certificates were to be issued by the government; (8) the school was to be separated from the church. Citizens could teach religion to their children as a private matter; (9) religious organizations were banned from owning any property.

Martsinkovsky, as well as other public preachers spreading the gospel doctrine (Martzinkovski, 1929).

Because of the consistently pursued policy of discrimination in society, a suspicious and hostile attitude towards evangelical believers at the household level took hold, especially towards Baptists, who were considered to be a ‘dangerous sect’ and a ‘German faith’ (Coleman, 2005, pp. 92-109). This attitude worsened during the World War I, when suspicion of people of German nationality intensified as potential enemies of Russia. So evangelicals and Baptists formed in a rather hostile environment, which affected their attitude to the world. But revolutionary events gave them great hope for the acquisition of religious freedom, and, especially, freedom of mission.

As noted above, it was Ivan Prokhanov who was notable for the clearest vision of the mission at that time. As the leader of Evangelical Christians, he tried as hard as possible to use opportunities for evangelism and influence society at that time. He was the evangelical leader who created the Christian party and the only participant in the elections after the February democratic revolution. Despite the fact that his party was not elected to Parliament, this initiative became a prerequisite for the formation of a complex missionary vision that was being developed by Prokhanov. Andrei Puzynin noted:

According to Prokhanov’s understanding, the spiritual vacuum that followed the fall of the Russian monarchy and the untimely death of embryonic democracy as a result of the Bolshevik revolt, put Russia and the whole world before the choice between evangelical reformation and Marxism (Puzynin, 2010, p. 284).

Prokhanov imagined further developments of the post-revolutionary Soviet society in the choice between ideological values. He was convinced that the Gospel values could and would compete with the values of the Bolsheviks and would attract many people to God.

An important component in the missionary and evangelical vision of Prokhanov was the desire for interdenominational unification. At the beginning of the 1920s, he accomplished significant work in order to achieve unification with the Renovationist wing of the Russian Orthodox Church called ‘Zhivaya Tserkov’ (Living Church). Prokhanov was convinced that the ‘Zhivaya Tserkov’ (Living Church) was an attempt at inter-orthodox Reformation, and this made it close to the spirit of the evangelical movement. However, political intrigues, which the Bolsheviks resorted to in order to split the Russian Orthodox Church, made the development of relations with this church almost impossible (Pospielovsky, 1995, pp. 89- 102). Moreover, even those limited contacts which Prokhanov managed to establish caused disapproval and misunderstanding on the part of the more conservative wing of Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and the Baptists, on the other hand (Savinsky, 2001, p. 97).

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Prokhanov, as well as other evangelical leaders’ susceptibility to social changes that had occurred as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution, became an important element in the development of a missionary vision. The belief that the political upheaval and economic transformation could also bring spiritual renewal in the Soviet Union and even eventually throughout the world became a characteristic indicator of the willingness of believers to perceive these changes as something positive, to interpret them as new opportunities that were given to them by God. Even at that time, Puzynin believed that Prokhanov was in some way a ‘Slavophile’ who prophesied the beginning of the Reformation in Russia and its eventual superiority over the European Reformation (Puzynin, 2010, pp. 296-297). According to Prokhanov:

In Russia the construction of the spiritual home was not from above as it was in the West, i.e., from the upper ruling classes of the clergy, but it happened and is happening naturally, i.e., from below, from the depths of the people, as the Church was built in the time of Christ and the Apostles (Prokhanov, 1933,p.167).

Whereas Puzynin remarked:

How to treat this? Of course, as a gratifying phenomenon. This indicates the progress having been made since the Middle Ages and in the restoration of early Christianity ... It is natural that the Russian Evangelical movement has made many steps forward compared to previous Reformations ... In the meantime, full of humility, faith, and spiritual delight, evangelical reformation can say to the former Reformation: ‘I went forward in the way that you had gone, and I want to go further. Come with me!’ (Puzynin, 2010, p. 296).

Stressing the ‘national ethos’ of the evangelical church, its origin being from the lower social strata, Prokhanov knowingly or unknowingly paid tribute to the communist ideology of the Bolsheviks. He emphasized that the Russian ‘Reformation’ was more progressive than the European one, precisely because of its deep connection with the people that it could truly restore the first Christianity as a kind of ideal state of Christianity. If we consider that the Bolsheviks considered ‘social rank and file’ to be the most progressive layer that is eventually able to build a perfect social order, it becomes clear that Prokhanov largely reflected the paradigm of thinking prevailing at that time. The same applied to other evangelical leaders, particularly Baptists, who tried to understand the connection between the communist ideology inculcated by the Bolsheviks, and Christian doctrine. The main similarity they saw in the teaching about social justice.

During one of the Baptist conferences in Central Russia in 1927, the leader of the Baptist Union, Pavel Pavlov, made a statement that the most fundamental Evangelical ideal of human life is the socialist way of lifeandthat the Bolshevik government had a strong interest in moving in the direction of Socialism. Pavlov even allowed the following remarks, 'We believe that in time peace will come to the whole world. The reason why we do not have

peace is capitalism.’ Conference participants appealed to all Christians to be ready to defend the ideals of the Socialist Revolution and religious freedom. They went as far as urging any Christian serving in state office to abstain from contacts with Baptists that did not support the Bolshevik government. Later Baptist leaders condemned this resolution, calling it heresy (Krapivin, 2003, p. 117).

Pavel Pavlov issued other statements in support of the Bolshevik government. As early as 1919, he spoke about the negative attitude of Christians toward wealth in general. Pavlov stated that when the government takes away wealth from the rich, it actually fulfils the teaching of the Gospel, which supports the view that all earthly riches are given to people by God. He claimed that God loves all people, and therefore wealth is to be equally distributed among them. According to Pavlov, wealthy Christians should not worry when their possessions are taken away from them, for they were not theirs in the first place. They are just managers, while God is the true owner of everything (Krapivin, 2003, p. 33).

Pavlov asserted that the well-being of every human individual is one of the primary tasks of the Socialist society, and therefore he argued that every Christian should be an active Christian socialist (Krapivin, 2003, p. 33). It has to be said in all fairness that the only problem that Pavel Pavlov saw in Soviet Socialism was that its followers were trying to change society by means of violence.24

Therefore, he suggested that Christians were to stay away from any form of violence. Yet, he still thought that the allegiance of every Christian should be to the government that was closer to practicing principles stated in the Bible (Krapivin, 2003, p. 33).

Attempts to somehow adjust their teaching, adapting it to the new political conditions, cannot be solely the result of pragmatism or an unconscious level of engagement. Rather, it is a theological reinterpretation of the situation the evangelicals were in at the time, and the desire to better understand what the Lord wanted to open for them through the changing circumstances of life. On the other hand, it is not less important that the church elite sought to overcome the stereotype of ‘alien faith,’ which was common in relation to representatives of the evangelical movement. This stereotype was particularly developed at a time when the Orthodox Church had political influence. After the Bolshevik upheaval, the communist ideology itself, which was extended by the new government, was like some new faith. Given

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It has to be pointed out that for some time Russian Evangelicals played with the idea of similarity between Christianity and Communism. The only difference, as they thought, was in means by which 'Christian Socialism' could be attained. Violence and revolution were not options that Evangelicals were willing to consider. It took several years before the Bolshevik government realised that the similarities between the two ideologies were significant. They began to see that Baptist doctrines significantly contradicted the ideology of ‘Scientific Socialism,’ in which the priority is given to forcible transformation of social relationships.

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this fact, as well as a regime with some favour towards ‘sects,’ essential prerequisites came into existence, which could overcome this stereotype in the new Soviet society.

The hope of Evangelical believers and, especially, their leaders, was that the evangelical faith would develop freely and would even enjoy special favour with the new government,. In the mid-1920s, among some evangelicals abroad, there even was a common opinion based on the field of mission that the Soviet government treated the Baptists the way the government of the Russian Empire treated the Orthodox Church (Steeves, 1976, pp. 214-215).