The Development of Russian Evangelical Spirituality

A Study of Ivan V. Kargel (1849–1937)

Nichols

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879631
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Today, many evangelicals in the Russian-speaking world emphasize sanctification as a distinctive mark of their Christian faith. This is a unique characteristic, particularly in the European context. Their historic tapestry has been woven from a number of threads that originated in the second half of the nineteenth century. Missionary efforts of the German Baptists, a revival sparked by a British evangelist, and a pietistic awakening among the Mennonites in the South converged to form a tapestry that displays Protestant, Baptist, and Anabaptist heritage. Ivan Kargel uniquely participated in the formation and ministry of each of these threads. His life spans from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union. Kargel refused to adhere to a systematic view of theology. Instead, he urged believers to go to Scripture and draw from the riches of a life united with Christ. Kargel's influence today is keenly felt across the Russian-speaking evangelical world as they seek to identify the roots of their spiritual identity. This book examines the influences on Ivan Kargel and offers insights into how his life and work are expressed in the tapestry of Russian evangelical spirituality.

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Introduction

Johann Kargel and the Evangelical World

Johann G. Kargel1 (1849–1937) was one of the most formative leaders in the Russian-speaking evangelical world, where he is known as Ivan Veniaminovich Kargel. He wrote and taught in German and Russian, using either of the above names depending on the language in which he was working.2 His writings and teaching in the later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century period helped to shape the Russian evangelical movement and Russian Baptist expressions of evangelical spirituality. His influence was not limited to the Russian Empire but spread to other countries that bordered on the Empire. There are evangelical movements in several countries that claim Ivan Kargel as a major contributor to their formation.3

When Johann Kargel is examined in the light of contemporary understandings of Christian spirituality, he is clearly to be identified with the evangelical Holiness stream of spirituality within Protestant life.4 The evangelical spirituality that took shape in the eighteenth-century English-speaking world was to spread and significantly impact Christianity in other countries.5 Kargel was shaped by a view of spirituality that was not only generally evangelical, but was also particular to the Holiness stream. His writings exhibit traits similar to the Holiness spirituality of the English Keswick Convention.6 Kargel developed a particular perspective on Christian spirituality: he called people to personal trust in Jesus Christ for both justification and sanctification; focused in his teaching on “abiding in Christ” in order to live a life of victory; stressed the power of the Holy Spirit; and saw the life of discipleship as involving following Christ on the pathway of suffering. This book will examine the various influences on Kargel’s life and seek to show how he developed a unique expression of evangelical spirituality in the Russian setting.

Johann Kargel and the Russian Baptist Context

Four Russian authors have written on the life of Ivan Kargel. Marina Sergeevna Karetnikova7 and Irina N. Skopina8 both divide his life into two periods, a Russian period and a Ukrainian period. Because of the inaccessibility of German documents to these writers, they have not been able to give much attention to the other aspects of Ivan Kargel’s life among the Germans, Bulgarians, Finns, and Estonians.

The third writer, Dimitry Turchaninov,9 is apparently unaware of Kargel’s life prior to his arrival in Saint Petersburg in 1875. In his biography, Turchaninov claims that when Kargel first appeared there in his mid-twenties he was not yet an evangelical believer. Turchaninov describes how the young Kargel was wandering the streets of Saint Petersburg when he stumbled across some Pashkovites (named after Colonel Vasily Alexandrovich Pashkov). The young man listened to their evangelical message, repented, and began a life of ministry.10 In reality, however, when Johann Kargel arrived in Saint Petersburg in 1875, he had already been a student at Johann Oncken’s Baptist Mission School in Hamburg and had served as a Baptist pastor in the Volhynia region of the Russian Empire.11 Johann Kargel committed himself to full-time Christian ministry while in the Molotschna Settlement in 1873 when attending a conference convened by the emerging Mennonite Brethren, a revivalist offshoot of the Mennonite movement.12

These three biographies of Kargel, because they were researched during the Soviet period, did not have access to the primary sources that are now available. A fourth work on Kargel, however, was completed recently. In 2009, Miriam Kuznetsova completed her doctoral dissertation “Early Russian Evangelicals (1874–1929): Historical Background and Hermeneutical Tendencies based on I. V. Kargel’s written Heritage.” Her purpose was to explore the “hermeneutical principles [which] guided the reading and understanding of Scripture by the Russian evangelicals, specifically by I. V. Kargel.”13 The work contains some very useful material as it examines the writings of Kargel to define his hermeneutical approach to Scripture and theology. Because of the focused nature of her work, Kuznetsova chose to rely on the writings of Karetnikova, Skopina, and Turchaninov for much of her background material. She does however manage to challenge or reconcile some of their findings in light of newer evidence.14

Some details of the early years of Johann Kargel’s ministry were reported among the many stories about the German Baptists that were printed in journals such as Missionsblatt aus der Brüdergemeine (Missionsblatt), Wahrheitszeuge, The Baptist Missionary Magazine, and Quarterly Reporter of the German Baptist Mission.15 Missionsblatt described some of Kargel’s time in Volhynia.16 Accounts of his early years in Saint Petersburg in the 1870s were published in Quarterly Reporter of the German Baptist Mission,17 The Baptist Missionary Magazine,18 and Wahrheitszeuge.19 His move to Bulgaria in 1880 was extensively depicted in Wahrheitszeuge20 and Quarterly Reporter of the German Baptist Mission.21 By 1884, when Kargel moved back to Russia, the German Baptists were no longer reporting on his ministry. Beginning in 1895, Zionsbote, the German-language journal published in the United States by the Mennonite Churches of North America, began to publish numerous works by Johann Kargel and these were still being published in 1904.22 These publications were not about his life and ministry, but were theological writings that exhibited the strong influence of the evangelical Holiness tradition. At no time has anyone been able to bring together the German and Russian sources to produce a comprehensive narrative and analysis of the life and thought of Johann G. Kargel.

As I have examined the sources and attempted to piece Kargel’s history together, I have perceived two perspectives regarding the beginnings of the Russian Baptists.23 One perspective tends to downplay the international connections: this protected the Baptists...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Shaping of a Baptist Leader
• Chapter 3: First Saint Petersburg Period
• Chapter 4: Bulgarian Period
• Chapter 5: Second Saint Petersburg Period
• Chapter 6: Reaching the Russian Empire
• Chapter 7: Third Saint Petersburg Period
• Chapter 8: Teaching on the Sanctified Life
• Chapter 9: Kargel as a Spiritual Guide
• Chapter 10: Conclusion
• Appendix One: 1913 Confession of Faith by Ivan V. Kargel
• Appendix Two: Timeline
• Appendix Three: Map of German Baptist Churches in Eastern Volhynia
• Appendix Four: Kargel’s Map of his Trip to Siberia in 1890 from Zwischen den Ended der Erde
• Appendix Five: Map of the Caucasus Region
• Appendix Six: Map of the Provinces of Western (European)Russia, c. 1900
• Appendix Seven: Map of the Historic Russian Provinces in Modern-day Ukraine
• Appendix Eight: Photograph of Ivan Kargel
• Appendix Nine: Sketching of Ivan Kargel
• Bibliography