Evangelical Christian Baptists of Georgia

The History and Transformation of a Free Church Tradition

Malkhaz Songulashvili

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781481301107
• eBook ISBN: 9781481301121
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Asian History

Malkhaz Songulashvili, former Archbishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia (EBCG), provides a pioneering, exacting, and sweeping history of Georgian Baptists. Utilizing archival sources in Georgian, Russian, German, and English--translating many of these crucial documents for the first time into English--he recounts the history of the EBCG from its formation in 1867 to the present.

While the particular story of Georgian Baptists merits telling in its own right, and not simply as a feature of Russian religious life, Songulashvili employs Georgian Baptists as a sustained case study on the convergence of religion and culture. The interaction of Eastern Orthodox, Western Protestant, and Russian dissenting religious traditions--mixed into the political cauldron of Russian occupation of a formerly distinct eastern European culture--led to a remarkable experiment in Christian free-church identity. Evangelical Christian Baptists of Georgia allows readers to peer through the lens of intercultural studies to see the powerful relationships among politics, religion, and culture in the formation of Georgian Baptists, and their blending of Orthodox tradition into Baptist life to craft a unique ecclesiology, liturgy, and aesthetics.

Table of contents

• Cover
• half title page, series page, title page, cip data, dedication
• Series Foreword
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction: Religion in Georgia and Baptists in Europe
• 1. The Setting for Religious Renewal in Georgia
• 2. The Early Activity of Georgian Evangelical Christians and Baptists‌ 1919--1941
• 3. The Formation of the Georgian ECB’s Institutional Identity (1942--1989)
• 4. Evangelism in Post--Soviet Georgia
• 5. Reforms in the Life of the ECB Community
• Conclusion: The Missiological Experience of the ECB
• Appendix 1: The Russian Baptist Congregation in Tiflis
• Appendix 2: The Russian Congregation of Baptists in Tiflis
• Appendix 3: Letter of the Exarch of Georgia, Pavel Lebedev, to the Governor of Tiflis
• Appendix 4: Draft for the Restructuring of the Baptist Communities in Transcaucasia
• Appendix 5:Ilia Kandelaki’s Plea for the Translation of the Bible into the Modern Georgian Language
• Appendix 6: Preaching the Gospel among Georgians
• Appendix 7: The Death of Brother I. M. Kandelaki
• Appendix 8 Dialogue between the Representatives of the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Georgian Eva
• Appendix 9: Memoirs of Some of the Oldest Members of the Georgian EBC Church in Tbilisi
• Appendix 10: The Likani Resolution
• Appendix 11:Common Declaration of the Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Georgia and Evangel
• Appendix 12:Common Declaration of the Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Georgia and the Eva
• Appendix 13:Letter to the Union Leadership and the Ministers of the Evangelical Christian-Baptist Ch
• Appendix 14: The Liturgical Vision of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia
• Appendix 15: The Social Doctrine of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia
• Appendix 16:Letter of Bishop Rusudan Gotziridze to the Religious Leaders of Georgia and the Letter o
• Appendix 17: Georgian Eucharistic Liturgy
• Bibliography
• Index