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Welcome to the new books network. Hello, my name's Roland Clark and I'm here today in the new books network talking to Yomima Proscadio who got her PhD in History from Dublin City University for her research on the topic of Interwar Romanian Evangelicals. She currently works as a managing editor for the directory of open access journals and she's the Assistant Editor for the Journal of Romanian Studies. Welcome to the podcast, Yomima.
Thank you very much, Roland, for the invitation. Yomima, this book focuses on Baptist, brethren, Pentecostals and Seventh-day Ventus who were the four largest evangelical groups in 1930s Romania. And I'd say today as well. Most of these people were fairly poor, ordinary people, mostly tradesmen, factory workers and peasants, not the sorts of people who write lots of books and be on the radio.
How do you find out about them? Like what sorts of sources do we have? Well, yeah, it wasn't easy. I had to find out about them.
I had to go to various types of sources, personal to state archives, across different continents and different languages. And I had to piece all of this information together. But I suppose three types of source groups are what helped me the most. The first were that interwar leaders from the Romanian Evangelical Interwar leaders did save documents and publications.
They wrote them in wires and Alexa Popovitch is probably the best known of these. In the Guimotres School in the Guovena region, these were Baptist leaders. And for the brethren, you had your girlfriend at the Aurora school, or in your next school, Christian Evangelia, brethren, leaders. And these based their later published denominational histories on interwar newsletters or magazines from these published by the respective denominations.
So this was kind of my starting point, but there's a lot of information that they didn't quite get right in there in their histories because then we had access to certain amount of information that archives were closed for them. And I looked at these newsletters that the majority of them had saved. And in these newsletters, we see just glimpses of these ordinary people, as you say, tradesmen, factory workers, peasants. Although the newsletters were put together by the more elite, I guess you could say, the urban believers of these evangelical groups.
We do find out about ordinary people in villages and church villages, churches and villages who was baptized, how many were baptized in a certain village, who had a funeral, who was officiating at these funerals or weddings. You have also ads in these magazines, let's say. So and so has a company that in their hiring, they want to hire believers, or here's a specific, like a believer who has a specific trade and he's willing to to hire out his services. So all these small hints, I suppose, I was able to find and trace through the different issues, some of these newsletters were the Baptist Firewood, Mutea, Firewood Christine, these were published by the Baptist Union in Bucharest.
But then there were also regional publications like Cozentor de Bengelier by the Alba Yulia Baptist. And this was one of the few mentions, I suppose, of a Roman Baptist. It appears on the front page of an issue from the Alba Yulia Baptist's Cozentor de Bengelier publication. And there were also, like in Kishino, the Jewish Baptists had to cooperate in all up until 1924 when it was banned.
And then they started publishing another news that are called the Nivis Teetor. And then also the Adventists had some Nellitim Pului, Kogilimis Sonar, Brother Hachimul, Pentecosto, Sadekum, and the Vogolui. So they did have some publications and in these, we see these glimpses of ordinary peoples. And actually first encountered the story of Lev Abbeau-Busz Jewish convert community, which appears in chapter two of my book, Alternative Evangelicals.
In 1922, of the Baptist Periodicals, Vaglum, Duyuirri at the Aryopaguszarka, Antinishwar. So this is, I guess, the first group of sources is the, what was left from the groups themselves. But this also leaves a lot of questions. And I looked also at Periodicals of Foreign History, organizations, the Archives of Foreign Nations.
These were important because they sometimes gave more details in regards to special events that were happening and also allowed me to see better what was the connection between these groups, these evangelical groups and their co-religions abroad, such as Southern Baptist Convention. The periodical Baptist Reflector is the only place where I found a photo of the Roman Baptist Church, the first Roman Baptist Church in Romania, in Arad. Then there was also Michonzot, which was published by the Norwegian Israel Mission based in Kalat. And it's really fascinating to see the networks between these different groups and the Norwegian Mission in Kalat was Lutheran.
But it was communicating with all these different evangelical groups and supporting Jewish converts in these groups. It's amazing photos and missions a lot of particular guys that find shine. And it gives, gave me information about these evangelical believers in Madon-Langalats, but in Yash, in there are any impa-sakavias. So it was one of my most cool finds, I suppose, from the Danish Israel Mission archive.
So missions, even though it's from, it was published by the Norwegian Israel Mission, I was able to find quite a lot of their issues in in Arhus and Denmark, thanks to Kai Kairhansen. And then there's also the Talfour Botte, which is the publication of the German Baptist of the Daniel region. And Ronald Fleischer has digitized this, which made it very easy for me to be able to find information about Roman communities in Bulgaria, and also a bit about what was going on in Romania with the Roman believers, as well as information on the Baptist in Chernodes, because Moses Richter, who was a, who was originally from Kishino, a convert in Kishino, became a missionary in Chernodes with the German Baptist Church there. And he would send reports that were published in Talfour Botte in the 30s about the community of Baptists, specifically Jewish converts in Chernodes.
And then the final group of sources were the state archives. These were very helpful to me. I looked at police surveillance reports, which described sermons and songs that were taken that were taking place in the religious services of these evangelical groups, the movement of individuals, of individual believers from between cities, between church communities, the number of people in attendance at religious events. They also, the archives also include letters, statements of faith, membership lists that were either given by members of these groups or confiscated from them.
The membership lists in particular, they have dates of baptism, previous religion, the previous religion of each member, the reasons for conversion, economic, marital status, occupation. And I found most of the information at the National Archives in Bucharest, looking especially at the police in Cherndes army phones and at the National Archives in Kishino, as well as in those ones. It sounds like a disown insane amount of sources. Yes.
You've really got a dig for them and they're not actually easily accessible for most people. No, that's true. How many evangelicals were there in 1930s Romania? And were they spread out across the country or do you find them in specific regions?
So in chapter one of the book, Alternative Evangelicals, I provide demographic data from their resources and they do show that evangelicals were spread across the country, but not evenly, with very few in the Moldova region of the Kingdom of Romania and in the Otenia region of South the Southwest of Romania. We see that addentists are mostly in the East in the Montenia area, the Montenia region with much smaller numbers of Baptists in the region. But then we see a much larger grouping of Baptists, Baptist populations close to 20, 20,000 in Basar-Gabia, in the Eastern border of Romania, and just slightly higher than 20,000 in Criciano-Maramuish on the western side. So the highest concentrations were in these border regions, which then becomes a great concern for the state of the 40s.
But in the 1930s, there's about 76,500 Baptists and Adventists and Pentecostals at the time said that they inclined around 7,000, just over 7,000 members. They weren't clear figures for brethren and Nazarenes, but we can say that they're about 1.5% of the population at the time and the majority are indeed in rural areas because the majority of the remaining population was also rural at the time. So these are mostly small peasant communities, but a significant number is in terms of the population as a whole. When you get to Criciano, which today is the capital of Moldova, you talk about a community of Jewish Christians, who's trying to convert Romanian Jews to Christianity during this period?
Yes, this is probably one of my favorite chapters to work on. Almost everyone was trying every group it seemed to be trying to convert Romanian Jews, except the Romanian Orthodox Church. There isn't that much compared to what we see among the the Jewish community, the Protestant missionary groups in Romania, and even the Roman Catholic communities. These were the groups that were trying to convert Romanian Jews.
In chapter 2, I start with an overview of Jewish conversion attempts in different Christian denominations, and the most diligent were the four-nation organizations in the country. That was their purpose really there. The London Society for the Promotion of Christianity on the Jews was based in Bucharest and this was Anglican, but they were not too concerned about making Jews Anglican. In fact, the director of the organization, J.H.
Adney, was working in supporting Baptist and brethren across Romania. There was also the Church of Scotland in the 19th century, which didn't have much success, but then later picked up the work is picked up by Isaac Feynstein later on through the Lutherans in Yash. There was also, as I mentioned, the Norwegian Israel in Galat, these were Lutheran, and there was Mill's main mission to the Jews in Kishino, which was non-denominational, but also London-based. So these worked with, and they sought to empower local converts to continue the work of conversion, and it was these converts themselves who had the most influence.
People like Lev Averbuch, who was a stricter Isaac Feynstein and later, Richard Wiprand. There was also Max Henry in Luben, who was working, who was in Jewish convert, but was a pastor in the Hungarian Baptist Church. What was interesting about them was that they weren't just trying to convert or be used to Christianity by rejecting their Jewish identity, but they were allowing Jewish converts to hold on to certain Jewish traditions while they also adopted a new interpretation, I suppose they would say, of their Jewish heritage, because they did, they presented Jesus as thoroughly Jewish, and that they did not need to reject their their, like, using Yiddish in songs or in Cernan's or praying in Hebrew, so they would continue to do this, and they also, I suppose, the entrance of some converts to their churches, to the different evangelical churches. So one of the biggest congregations you've got is in Kishino, and it's led by a husband and wife team, Lev Averbuch and his wife Maria, and they collaborate with the Baptist Union, but they call themselves Jewish Christians of the New Testament and evangelists.
What sorts of activities do that church get involved in? What do they do each week? Yes, they basically had the same types of activities as evangelical Baptists and brethren, churches, or even Pentecostals and along with the Sunday services, they would also have services on Saturday, and they also had a Shabbat school along with the Sunday school, so they weren't a sense much busier than some of the other groups, because they were catering to both, just Christians of different ethnicities in Kishino, the Ukrainian, the Russians, the Romanians, but then they were also catering to the Jewish community and trying to draw in more Jewish converts. So even they would have evangelistic midweek meetings.
They had invited guests from abroad or from different cities in Basakambiyan, but also in across from different cities in Romania. They had lectures on religious themes in which they used these magical entering slides. They had women's meetings, which they were crocheting or different kinds of crafts that they put in sell and raise money, therefore the church were formed. Those affected by the famines during that time in Basakambiyan in particular, they had they would hold concerts choir, sorry, they would hold concerts and then they would also have choir and band or orchestra practices, because of the long services that they would have, which were filled with music, and they these were also often used as fundraising events that the concerts in different parts of the city.
So not just in Kishino, but in the prayer houses of their different of their group, but also of the and Avarbo, which kind of controlled the Russian and the Yiddish versions and Michael Tharlev, which would edit the Romanian version. It sounds like like Avarbook is the key guy driving this, but with all those activities, it has to be lots of different people, like it's a really functioning community. Yes, definitely. Especially Marie Avarbook is she's writing in these, Minatharlev as well.
They're writing in these publications, they're composing songs, they're helping with the women's ministry with the children's ministry. So they are doing a lot of a lot of work, a lot of evangelistic meetings, like Minatharlev would write that sometimes would go out with the children to sing, and at one time they had Momaliga, or what seems to what was translated as Valenta, thrown at them in the Jewish, I think in the Jewish district, in Kishino. So yes, it's not just Avarbook, but his name comes up a lot because he is the one who's the leader of the community, but they're all working together. Liv, Avarbook also travels around Romania.
How did he travel shaped his ministry? Yeah, he traveled a lot, and not just him, but many of the what would be, I suppose, the elders of the community do so. And you could probably say that the ministry shaped his travels because we have seen it traveled extensively, and in chapter two I have a section that's entitled Travel, a Social and Religious Space to show the importance of travel for Avarbook, in his group. It's interesting that he would seek to visit majority of Jewish towns, which makes sense.
He would go to often to vaults, Chernotes, or any Kiliyanoa, Kohul, Walgad, and Shadda Alba. So a lot of these were visits to the very diverse southern region of Basarbia, the Bluejak region, and for those interested, Vasila Erngus, a novel called Sectansi, describes the growth of these Jewish convert communities in that region quite well. It's true that depending on where Avarbook needed to go, he would stop in places on purpose to meet with believers there and to support, to encourage them. For example, he would often have to go to Bucharest to renew his authorization to conduct religious activity or his authorization to travel.
He would go to Galat's to meet with Norwegian's Royal Mission representatives. He would often go to any to help Isaac Fangstain with the Jewish converts in Arane, and he even went to Bredla a few times to help the Baptist Church there at the request of Adam Cezonov, who was quite a wealthy Baptist during the time. He had an oil factory in Bredla, and Avarbook goes to Bredla at the request of Cezonov to set the wayward Pentecostal pastor straight. They aren't successful, but as Avarbook has like an important figure, even for Romanian Baptists in Eastern Armenia.
He would stop in wherever he had to go. He would take advantage of the travel to stop in different places as well. As he traveled, he met all sorts of people. He would go by train, he would speak at the market or even in the synagogue.
It gives you this image of like a modern day in fossil polity going to these very important meeting places in the cities, in the towns. He would also make new contacts there to visit from different towns and villages, and he would try to do this at a later date, or he would send elders like Isaac Tachman, Vult-san, Moise Darshman, and Kertar Lev. So then these are the people he met during his travels in Demold in his ministry. It influenced the languages that were used in both religious services and in the literature he published.
It influenced where he sent his choir or where the orchestra went, where they organized evangelist meetings. And whenever Gündt didn't receive other conversation to travel, he remained in Kishino and focused even more on the congregation there. Thinking about the congregation there, what's not a holiday to Jewish Christian celebrate? Do they celebrate the Jewish ones or the Christian ones?
They celebrated both. It's just that the Jewish holidays were celebrated very different from traditional Jewish holidays in some ways because of the added Christian symbolism or Christian theology that was added to the holiday. And in chapter 2 again, I look at some of these holidays that they celebrated because they were an important part of their community. They celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas, but Christmas was presented with this symbolism of Jesus's birth, the light of Jesus's birth outshining, the light of the Magadie victory.
So they would celebrate both, but with an emphasis on the role of Jesus in the holiday. Passover and Easter, for example, Jesus was presented as a sacrificial lamb in Singhat Torah. They celebrated God's teaching given to Moses, God's law, that was given to Moses. They would have choirs and bands playing children, citing poems, Dumi Tofen-Shanel, who was a Moldovian singing solos and sokyature, kids as well.
They would, Marian Lev, composed actually specifically for Singhat Torah on the terrible results of alcohol because they were concerned about the excess of drinking that was taking place on Singhat Torah. And actually, the 1936 celebration of Singhat Torah describes well this intertwining of Jewish and Christian things because singing was done in Hebrew with the traditional Singhat Torah festival flags, but on the flags there was added the inscription Yeshua'sar habanim, which means Jesus, the angel of his presence. And the child who was leading this recession in the in the fair house was fittingly named Moses, like the original patriarch who got gave the law to in Jewish history. So yes, it was interesting that this little boy named Moses is carrying the tutorial around the room, but actually he's carrying Joseph Rabinovich's Bible and Joseph Rabinovich is considered the founder of the modern game of the Seonic movement.
He was from Kishinau and by using Rabinovich's Bible in this Singhat Torah celebration, they're equating the Bible with the Christian Bible with with God's teaching and also revealing this legacy, this connection that they still hold to to Rabinovich. Interesting, there's a lot of cooking if you're going to do all those holidays. You also talk about Roman Baptist churches in Iran. What do we know about Roman evangelicals during this period?
Were there churches being with leaders well educated? Actually, in the end we still know very little about into Roman evangelicals. There were few and they were spread among the different churches in Romania. A lot of them were the churches like the Church in Iraq, which is the first room about this church called in it was called Gadinza was under the authority of the Aral-Sha-Gatt church.
and the B'onat Church in the B'onat also. They're connected to some larger churches nearby, but we don't know as I mentioned about Alba Yulia that Kishinau also about his publications, also mentioned Roman members and chapter three of the book I described some of the places where they were involved, and really they're not Roman Church remains the first Roman church in memory and remain inAbsolutelyA because it was the largest and fully Roman-led congregation. though the pastors were lay pastors, they initiated the formation of the group, unlike what was occurring in Bucharest, where it was kind of like an outsider. They are Earl Hester, who was an American missionary, who was trying to start a mission among the Roma, but it did not catch old as the Roma in Iraq, because it was being led by locals by local Roma.
There's no real evidence of Pentecostal, brother in Adventist Roma during this period, and that doesn't mean there weren't any. It's just that they were not recorded, the only the state was recording the ethnicities of the groups, not the evangelical leaders themselves. And Roma leaders, Roman evangelical leaders were not initially well educated. They received training from courses offered by traveling pastors from the Baptist Union of Bucharest, but this is what a lot of lay pastors across Romania have different ethnicities received, because there were very few officially trained seminarians, pastors, the majority of pastors across evangelical churches in Romania were lay pastors, because there were just far too many churches.
But in our gods, Yvonne Kuutsen and Emil Jivah were involved in supporting Roma leaders in our other. If your Jewish or Roma is becoming a Baptist or a kind of good way to integrate into Romanian society? Well, in some ways it was, it did offer more interaction across social gender barriers, provided increased education and job opportunities, but since these groups were also marginalized, integration was more difficult. However, I suppose it did pave the way for more integration after the war.
Chapter, chapter three, I gave the story of Dimituling Gaur, who was the son of Credin's church founding member, Gungun Vengar, and Dimitur became a judge in Siniqua L'Owemare in the blood-nought after World War II. He studies inclusion, he used from what I was able to find out the first Roma to attend the seminary, the Baptist seminary, in progress, but due to family circumstances and passing of his father, he had to return to help support his family. But he still is able to go to a college, get a degree in inclusion, in law, and then he is sent to Siniqua L'Owemare because of his, in the 1950s, because of his evangelical background. For Jewish evangelicals, I suppose in some ways it was more difficult because of a stronger anti-Semitism.
Being Jewish and Baptist or Jewish and further in Christian LaBevangelia was like having a double target on your back, especially in the interwar period, where there was such strong anti-Semitism and anti-sectarianism, especially in the border regions, where local authorities were hyper-vigilant against any possible, revengeous, or communist infiltration from the different from both the western and the eastern borders of Romania. They were not integrating into the wider Romanian society. For example, the other group remains a unique diverse group, a distinct from the majority population, but the way in which they were, the way in which they were communicating with each other, the close bonds that they had with one another. But the lack of, as I mentioned, the lack of interest in ethnic background and evangelical churches meant that they were still interacting across ethnic and linguistic boundaries.
And as the Romanians were the majority, the ethnic minorities and the churches were adopting and engaging more with Romanian culture and society, but I suppose only as much as the wider society was allowing or approving of the sectarians as well at the time. So yes, it produces integration, but it's not a very bright thing to do if your goal is to be integrated. Yes. You don't become a sectarian.
No, exactly. What sorts of songs were these people singing? Where did they get these songs from? Chapter four is where I talk about songs and thank you again, Roland, because you had encouraged me to look at this back when I was doing my PhD.
It is, it's really fascinating how important music is for these groups. And yes, in Chapter four, I impact this musical culture. They sang hymns translated from other parts of Europe and America, German hymns, in particular, were popular, but also hymns composed by Romanians. They didn't have very many of these at the start of the interwar period, but increasingly by the end of the 1930s, they have more of their eventual co-hims, especially the hymns of Yohnkishmoria.
He becomes quite popular in the post-war period, after World War II. The groups also borrowed from renowned Romanian poet Yohnkicuzzi's book, Inor Gerei Jossen, for the Adventist, Petter Paulini, Stavandimetresco, and Nikolayah Jalezco, translated German hymns for the Adventist signals. And then they would also use songs from Wasedan Nolui, or those Abbotlouk Lo Shatachinova was with Huerta by Kosakihi Wannid. And then there was this song that keeps coming up, Goddess De Leba, Goddess Love, or in the Romanian version, it's the post- It's a really nice image of everyone singing in their own native tongue, the same song.
Do you know if they did like one verse in Romanian, in the next verse in Yudish or whether they all sang at the same time in different languages? That's a good question. I think sometimes, most of the time it says that they sung together the same, but I have actually been in churches in the Bayanath where they still do this, but they sing like one verse in Hungarian and then ex-celsing in Romanian, so I'm sure that it was done both ways. Yeah, that'd be wonderful to hear.
To what extent was singing about building community in evangelical churches? Well music was increasingly means by which they were trying to gain audibility for this new faith message in the public sphere, but as you say it's an important form of their lived religion, it was an expression of their faith in which they sang songs both at home and in the church. Songs that again, it was easier to remember the words or to learn the words together, easier to engage with rather than music with more versatile than Bible studies, or other activities. There was also provided in a sense an agency, increasingly opened up social opportunities for those who performed.
It brought people together for the different choirs and bands that they were forming, and as music always accompanied the reading of scripture, prayer and sermons during weekly services. It was a collective, it was a bonding activity, the members were able to relate to one another to their new identity through the words that they were singing together and to help them solidify their shared identity. They were vocalizing communally the tenets of their faith. So the songs had topics, as I mentioned about God's love, about repentance, about being born again, having a new heart, a new mind, about Jesus' sacrifice, about the whole spirit, its an outstanding form in their faith, despite trials, and they were learning these words and melody together.
And as they were communal act of singing brought them together, but the many hours also that some of them spent in choir practice and orchestra practices also added to this, I'm sure to this bonding, this communal, this building of community, especially because they had a lot of singing in their very long church services or evangelization meetings. Jo-en-Koku-Sak-Szili, who was a pastor in Arad and secretary of Baptist Union, in the 1930s he wrote that not singing in a church was a sure way to kill off a congregation. That's why they also had the pith-a-cheforton having a different genre or you want to get more holding courses on music, evangelical music across Romania. So in the book you have this expression that I really like, you got these dabbled communities because they're multi-ethnic and they've got people from all classes and ages and genders.
What does that mean for them when they start persecuting minorities, especially Jews towards the end of the 1930s? Did being a Christian help avoid being deported for the Holocaust? Thanks, Rolong. Yeah, that's a hard question, but this is the study of dabbled communities, the name, the word itself, the dabbled part, comes from a secret police report that describes especially I think other books community as such.
So that's a, they gave me a secret police gave me this really unique word, but I think perfectly just describes them in this very mixed group. In the final chapter of the book and in the epilogue I discuss how and why these evangelical Christian groups were also among the minorities persecuted by the state. So this fear of being being targeted by the state did lead to less ethnically mixed churches, more ethnically homogeneous churches, but also they just do not meet in public often, especially in the 1940s when the majority were forbidden from meeting, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Covina. But they just were afraid of repercussions from the state, from authority to state authorities, local authorities.
There was no outright defense of Jews in Roma. Sometimes in the publications you would see something like this is, they are experiencing difficulties in different parts of the world, but not so much. They avoided saying too much about what was going on in Romania, often because Roman evangelicals were also threatened with mass deportation under international school, and they were also signed and risen, especially in the world. They should be deported to trans-mysteria.
In some cases, though, it did help Jews to leave the country by 1939, because of their connections with religious abroad, so that they were able to leave. Eric Gabe is offered the opportunity to leave, but he chooses not to. And part of his story is also available in the epilogue. There are interesting individuals like Pintas Feigen, Moses, Dreyseman, and Soreth Sahan.
They're all initially spared deportation from Quixino because of conversion, because in the archives they are the proof of their baptists that were baptized in the Baptist Church in Quixino in the 1920s. But even with this, vegans ultimately are deported, and it's not clear why they are deported, but Moses Dreyseman, for example, is in Bursorza, and her daughters. Moses Dreyseman was married to Olga, who was a German from Quixino. That may have also had some teachers with it, but nowhere in the archives it's not actually mentioned, but he's married to a German.
It just says that he's a book winder in the lists of Jews in Quixino during the war. So it's quite a mixed picture of of, it didn't really help Christians. It really did not help them in the end avoid the Holocaust if they remained in Bursorapia. Before the war, some of them were able to escape because they had connections with Christians from England or the US.
But not on such a sad note, I suppose. Really the current evangelical communities in Romania are not aware of how fascinatingly diverse this early part of their history was. And that's because after the Holocaust, you've then got decades of more persecution, which makes history writing and memory difficult. That's about all that we have time for today, but thank you so much for sharing this really interesting story with us.
Thank you, Roland, for the opportunity.