Innocent Abroad?

To the religious groups with which the Russian Government is playing footie--Arabs, Orthodox, Jews, assorted small groups from Moscow to Khabarovsk--Joseph Stalin added another: the Baptists, U.S.A.

The Rev. Louie De Votie Newton, 54, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, a native, resident and leader in the South, might be expected to be somewhat anti-Soviet. But last week when he came home to Atlanta from a whirlwind trip through the U.S.S.R. he was brimming with enthusiasm for what he had seen and been told. In 25 short days, the Russians had made Dr. Louie Newton a booster.

He went to Russia at Government invitation to investigate the status of its 2,000,000 Baptists. For the visit the Russians rolled out the Red carpet. The visitor had two nice visits with onetime seminarian Joseph Stalin, to whom he gave a leather-bound copy of the New Testament and two pipes. He also got permission to preach hellfire-&-damnation sermons in churches in nine cities, from Moscow to Stalingrad. Before he was through, his hosts had even persuaded the alcohol-hating Baptist to try a sip of vodka. (His judgment: "It tasted like kerosene mixed with stump water.")

"Overwhelming." During his stay, Baptist Newton said, he preached to "throngs of workers--Red Army men, professors, scholars." * Said he: "The reception to my sermons was overwhelming. I never saw anything like it before. Why, at the end of one of my sermons in Moscow, an Army captain in full uniform came to the pulpit and read a poem which he had dedicated to me. . . . The congregation cheered him. It was most impressive."

Against this backdrop, the status of the Russian Baptists looked fine to the visitor from Atlanta. Baptist missionaries had struggled hard since the 18th Century to break the monopoly of the Russian Orthodox Church, finally succeeded in getting a real foothold only 40 years ago. Their biggest boost came during the revolution, when the Reds used them to undermine Orthodoxy.

But the big Baptist chance lies ahead, says Dr. Newton, because there are many Russian young people to whom "the Baptist sense of freedom appeals." Already, he says, their churches are open seven days a week, carrying on highly active programs of religious instruction, culture and recreation.

Field for Freedom. They also cooperate with the Government in social services, such as caring for war orphans and promoting health. Rationalized Newton: "The Baptists stand for the same thing as the Russian Government--renouncement of, and resistance to, coercion in matters of belief."

Newton's overall conclusion will surprise most churchmen. Said he: the future of religion is as bright in Russia as anywhere in the world. "Religiously, we should regard Russia as our great ally. It is a virgin field for freedom . . . because Russia never knew freedom of religion until the present regime. When the U.S.S.R. was first formed, religion was contraband, but now the Government has discovered that religion cannot be destroyed, so it has invited the church to come in the front door."

No doubt there was a certain amount of holy innocence in Dr. Newton's appraisal of Communism in practice. No doubt the Soviet Government was far more worldly and realistic. But the fact of being a Christian implies a faith that in the end all mankind, including Russia, must be pervaded by religious belief. It was just possible that in adding to their list of religious well-wishers, the hardheaded commissars were inviting the innocence of doves to triumph over the wisdom of serpents.

* Newton preached in English, was translated by UNRRA interpreter Mrs. Mary Naimark.

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