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Book Reviews / Pneuma 30 (2008) 147-191
Rimantas Kupstys et al., eds., Lietuvos Sekmininkų Bažnyčia: Istorine Apybraiza (Vilnius, Lithuania: Apyausris, 2002). 110 pp., illus.
Lietuvos Sekmininkų Bažnyčia: Istorine Apybraiza , which translates as The Pentecostal Church of Lithuania: A Historical Sketch, was published in 2002 upon the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the earliest known Pentecostal church in Lithuania. This history provides a detailed grassroots account in the Lithuanian language of the development of Pentecostalism across the Baltic nation. The volume was assembled by an editorial committee headed by Rimantas Kupstys, Bishop of the Union of Pentecostal Churches of Lithuania.
The publisher notes that the work is not an exhaustive scientific study. T is historical sketch is, however, a valuable written account of stories that, until now, were largely available only in scattered documents or in oral form. Research for this book was based on archival materials, memories of eyewitnesses, published articles, and government documents.
Lietuvos Sekmininkų Bažnyčia begins by tracing Pentecostalism’s roots in the trans-Atlan- tic revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that resulted in a significant evan- gelical and Holiness movement in England and America. The traditional version of Pentecostal origins is retold, with Charles Parham and the Azusa Street Revival identified as central to the emerging movement. T omas Ball Barratt, the Methodist minister from Oslo who received the Pentecostal message while visiting New York in 1906, is commended for helping to nurture Pentecostal leaders across Europe upon his return to Norway. The Pentecostal Movement in Lithuania began in the Birzai region, home to the estab- lished Evangelical Reformed and Evangelical Lutheran churches. According to this render- ing, Pentecostal origins in Lithuania can be traced to the formation in 1912 of a church called The Evangelical Christian Fellowship of Birzai, led by Petras Viederis. In the late 1890s or early 1900s, Viederis was associated with Vikentas Tučas, a preacher in Birzai who taught personal salvation and adult water baptism. Tučas and his small band of followers were ridiculed by members of the region’s dominant churches.
Viederis eventually took a job working on the railroad in Liepoja, Latvia, where he con- gregated with other believers of “deep faith.” After the Russian czar issued a decree that all persons holding state jobs must belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, Viederis moved to North America, where he associated with an unidentified Pentecostal congregation and was Spirit-baptized. In 1911 he returned to Birzai, but found great scorn for his new beliefs in his boyhood Evangelical Reformed Church. He formed a congregation which, in 1912, he was able to register as an affiliate of the Union of the Evangelical Christian Churches of the Whole Russia, led by I. S. Prochanoff.
Lietuvos Sekmininkų Bažnyčia proceeds to recount the spread of Pentecostalism in the Vilnius region, beginning in about 1924 with the ministry of Stanislavas Nedveckis. A Lithuanian immigrant to New York who was part of Ivan Voronaev’s church, Nedveckis returned to his homeland as a Pentecostal missionary. This volume contains additional congregational histories and testimonies of leaders. The Union of Pentecostal Churches of Lithuania was forced to disband when the Soviet Union took control of Lithuania. Many of the Pentecostal congregations had to register as Baptist churches. In May 1989 the Pen- tecostal churches withdrew from the U.S.S.R. Evangelical Christian Baptist Union, and in
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/157007408X287957
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Book Reviews / Pneuma 30 (2008) 147-191
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1991 the Union of Pentecostal Churches of Lithuania was reestablished. Approximately half of this volume details the expansion of Lithuanian Pentecostalism since 1989. Lietuvos Sekmininkų Bažnyčia is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the development of Pentecostalism in Lithuania. To aid those unschooled in the Lithuanian language, an English translation in manuscript form has been deposited at the Flower Pen- tecostal Heritage Center in Springfield, Missouri. The stories of believers in Lithuania, long neglected by Pentecostal histories, will be of interest not only to those who lived the history, but to scholars and church leaders worldwide.
Reviewed by Darrin J. Rodgers
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