Protestants in Poland stand to gain from frequent clashes between the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Communist regime. Wladyslaw Gomulka’s government indicates it is tired of such “hysteria” as was being brought on this month, for example, by reports of a Madonna-like vision over the steeple of St. Augustine’s Church in Warsaw. If there is to be religion in Poland (now some 95 per cent Roman Catholic), Red officials apparently prefer that it take on the form of quieter Protestantism.
Protestant pastors report more freedom to minister, according to the Rev. Earl S. Poysti, who made a 26-day, 3,000-mile preaching tour through Poland last spring.
Poysti, now working for the Gospel Furtherance Society in West Germany, was born in Siberia of Scandinavian parents, came to America in 1935 and subsequently took U. S. citizenship and a degree from New York University.
“Believers seem to take the spiritual life much more seriously than we do in the prosperous West,” says Poysti, who spoke in 25 churches across Poland before congregations of up to 200.
Unlike other Red satellite regimes, the Polish government allows churches to conduct Sunday Schools. “A goodly percentage of the Christians I found were young people,” Poysti observes.
He had gone to Poland under an invitation from the United Evangelical Church of Poland, which with about 100 churches represents the country’s largest Protestant body.
Poysti added that Polish Protestant pastors must be careful not to touch on political issues. “One never hears any criticism of the government in the pulpits,” he said. “Each church is registered with the government which keeps close watch over its activities and growth.”
Most Protestant congregations seem to worship in buildings which are other than church edifices. The government gave financial aid to reconstruct churches destroyed during World War II, but Poysti says he found none in eastern Poland—closest to the Russian border.
‘Light and Life’
Radio preacher Myron F. Boyd marked his 25th year of broadcasting by reporting on a three-week tour of Russia.
“I am a better American for having been in Russia,” said Boyd, speaker on the “Light and Life Hour,” international broadcast of the Free Methodist Church. He had already been on the air 10 years with a broadcast of his own when the “Light and Life Hour” was launched in October of 1944. The program is now being heard in three languages in more than 65 countries.
Boyd travelled through Moscow, Brest, Minsk, Smolensk, Kalinin, Novgorod, Leningrad, and Vyborg. He said his hosts reported that they were picking up his program, which when beamed to the Soviet Union features Russian speakers and musicians.
“I believe things are ripening for a revival in Russia,” Boyd said on his return last month to America. “The great mass of Russian people know nothing of spiritual things.”
Soviet Concern
“A remarkable reawakening in religion” among the Soviet people, reports a group of Russian scholars, is being accompanied by “ineffectual attempts on the part of the Communist Party Central Committee to suppress it.”
The Soviet scholars aired their concern last month while doing research on their homeland at the “Institute for the Study of the U. S. S. R.” in Munich, Germany. They cited an increasing number of Soviet press reports to the effect that religious beliefs are spreading.
Efforts to suppress religion in Russia have grown consistently more difficult, they say, especially after the publication of the Communist Party Central Committee’s decision of November 10, 1954, which halted punitive measures against religion.
Challenging Communism
Bishop Otto Dibelius incurred anew the wrath of the East German regime last month, then openly defied threats to ban him from the Soviet sector of Berlin.
Dibelius, whose office as chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany makes him spiritual leader of both East and West Germans, has often challenged Red authorities.
In a recent booklet, he denied that either the East German Republic or any other totalitarian state constitutes a “supreme authority” to which Christians owe allegiance. Publication of the booklet occasioned wide controversy climaxed by a discussion over West Berlin radio in which Dibelius and Bishop Hans Lilje were participants. Both agreed that a Christian has the right to offer resistance if a state oversteps its limits by forcing citizens to subject even their thinking to a state ideology. They also affirmed that it is Christian duty, on the other hand, to obey and respect the state’s “outer order.” Lilje opposed, however, a Dibelius suggestion, in reference to the state, to change the phrase “supreme authority” in Luther’s translation of the Bible into “higher powers.”
East German authorities then reaffirmed earlier, unenforced, threats to bar Dibelius from the Soviet sector. The bishop nevertheless drove unhampered past border guards at Brandenburg Gate to make his scheduled once-a-month appearance at St. Mary’s Church, East Berlin. He found the 2,000-seat church filled to capacity.
His Reformation Sunday text? “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
