Today, it is easy to obtain a Bible in Russia, easy to meet for worship services, and easy to find religious teaching on the internet. Yet something among contemporary Christians has been lost, the old pastor says—something that was held dear by those small groups.
Sipko goes on:
Christianity has become a secondary foundation in people’s lives, not the main foundation. Now it’s all about career, material success, and one’s standing in society. In these small groups, when people were meeting back then, the center was Christ, and his word that was being read, and being interpreted as applicable to your own life. What am I supposed to do as a Christian? What am I doing as a Christian? I, together with my brothers, was checking my own Christianity.
Small groups not only provided accountability, he says, but also gave believers a tangible connection to the larger Body of Christ. “This was so wonderful. This was true Christianity.”
It was startling to hear Sipko say that in Russia today, there are Evangelicals who have returned to the patterns of life their ancestors lived under communism—even though there is far more freedom (of religion, and everything else) since the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991. “They have a very clear understanding that their faith in Christ means they are going to have to reject this secular world,” he says. “Even under free conditions today, we are having to live in the underground.”
Though it’s unlikely that American Christians will be threatened for going to church, it is not only possible, but quite likely, that institutional churches and their ministers will continue to be inadequate to the challenge of forming their congregations for effective resistance. This is where intense, committed small groups styled after those of the Soviet era could be indispensable.
Small groups are not new. In the United States, Evangelical and charismatic congregations have long practiced meeting in small groups outside of formal worship for prayer and discipleship. What the experience of the church under communism, and a discerning read of the signs of the times today, tells us is that all Christians of every church should start forming these cells—not simply to deepen its members’ spiritual lives, but to train them in active resistance.
Solidarity Is Not Exclusively Christian
As important as it is for Christians to strengthen their ties to one another, they should not neglect to nurture friendships with people of goodwill outside the churches. In the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, Christian dissidents had to maintain close contact with secular dissidents because there were so few believers within resistance circles.
As lawyer Ján Čarnogurský puts it, “There weren’t many people in general who wanted to stand up to communism. You had to take allies where you could. The secret police tried to keep secular liberals and Christians apart, and they wanted to keep Czechs and Slovaks divided. They did not succeed because the leaders of the movement had become friends with leaders in other circles.”
In the Slovak region, František Mikloško reached out to liberals not because he had to but because he genuinely wanted to.
“To this day, communicating with the secular liberal world really enriches my views,” he says. “It is important for me to have my home and to be aware that I know where I stand. I know my values. But I have to stay in contact with the liberal world, because otherwise there is the danger of degeneration.”
Mikloško’s close association with secular liberal writers and artists helped him to understand the world beyond church circles and to think critically about himself and other Christian activists. And, he says, liberal artists were able to perceive and describe the essence of communism better than Christians—a skill that helped them all survive, even thrive, under oppression.
In the communist past, secular liberals shared with Christians the conviction that communism was a destructive lie. But today, I put to Mikloško, most liberals seem to think that the kind of oppression coming against religious believers is justified, even necessary, despite its illiberality.
Consider, he says, that good-faith liberals have something to learn from us—and they will only be able to do so if we remain in contact with them.
“I have spent my whole life in the environment of liberals,” Mikloško says. “There came a moment in their lives when these people wanted to talk about something deeper. They realized they were seeking, and needed to have somebody to talk to. We Christians have to be present in the world, and be ready when this happens.”
Under communism, a well-known liberal intellectual who was known for his atheism quietly asked Mikloško to take him to church. “He told me, ‘I tried to pray in my home, but it really didn’t work out. He wanted to try in the church. He told me, ‘I will try to do whatever you do and see if it works.’”
The Christian activist’s point: be kind to others, for you never know when you will need them, or they will need you.
What do you do in a world where you can’t be sure who is trustworthy? One response is to withdraw into circles of confidence. Another response—a risky one, it must be said—is not to worry about it, and to be kind anyway.
“Father Jerzy knew that the whole society was infiltrated by communist agents. The priest who was his neighbor was a communist agent. The priest who announced his death right here in the church was a communist agent,” says Paweł Kęska, curator of the Popiełuszko museum. “But Father Jerzy said one important thing: ‘You can’t worry about who’s an agent and who’s not an agent. If you do, you will tear yourself apart as a community.’”
Kęska tells a story about a stranger who came to Father Jerzy to bring him a
