Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 14, 1990 TAG: 9007140077
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One of the most recent to make such a visit was an East German pastor, the Rev. Johannes Richter, who spoke in June at Christ Lutheran Church in Roanoke.
In two sermons, the pastor of a church in Leipzig identified himself as "not a hero nor a revolutionary, but a representative of God's grace." After 40 years of oppression by Marxists, faithful church people on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain are rejoicing in their deliverance as did the ancient Jews from their bondage in Egypt, he said.
It is a common refrain heard also from Romanian Baptist pastor Peter Dugulescu during a visit to First Wesleyan Church in February and from a Russian Orthodox archbishop, Basil Rodzianko, in Lynchburg in December.
Many who heard these religious leaders' messages were moved to tears and given hope despite their discouragement over a seeming lack of influence of the church in the Western world.
But even as American-style freedom continues to emerge in Eastern Europe, the newly liberated church people say they must get busy solving new problems related to religion as much as to money, power and politics.
Richter noted that in affluent West Germany, pastors are paid by their church, as in America. The catch is that the church is supported by taxes paid by an often unwilling population.
Though in America there are constitutional protections against establishment and support of religion by the government, the practice is still the norm in many Old World nations.
But in emerging East Germany, where church activity has been undercover for the past 40 years, church and state are entirely separate.
The Lutheran leader said he hopes any unification of the nations - which he supports for economic reasons - will include a rejection of tax support for churches.
Richter said during a forum at Christ Church that the East German Christians stood for non-violence as well as for submission to the law of God's love rather than the power of people. Their churches have been comforting places of fellowship and prayer, especially over the past decade as communist politicians grew more removed from their constituents, a factor that led to their downfall.
Today, Richter said, the novelty of the triumph of several monthas ago is wearing off. As in the years after World War II, East Germany faces a struggle in everyday living.
The most recent visitor to the Roanoke Valley to relate changes in his country's religious life was Ulo Niinemagi, who serves as a deacon/evangelist on the staff of a rapidly growing Baptist church in Talinn, Estonia.
Niinemagi is visiting Roanokers Betty and Calvin Aliff, who are members of Roanoke's First Baptist Church on Third Street Southwest. The former construction worker described a different kind of religious practice from that in East Germany. Though Estonia is historically a Lutheran nation, groups such as Baptists and Methodists are well represented there, he said.
Niinemagi, like most evangelists, is skilled in relating his story of how God, in the person of an old woman, plucked him out of a meaningless life 16 years ago when he wandered into a cathedral.
The Estonian deacon, now 36, showed scars on his wrists as evidence of suicide attempts he said were the result of an an upbringing without ideals.
In just 18 months since Estonians began demonstrating an independence of Soviet domination, advertising church services has become acceptable and revival meetings common, Niinemagi said.
"The churches are packed. We have 10 choirs in St. Olaf's and we are baptizing young people all the time."
by CNB