Baptists in Turkey

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Logo of the Alliance of Baptist Churches in Turkey

There has been evidence of recent Baptists in Turkey since the second half of the 20th century. In April 2014, the national federation Türkiye Protestan Baptist Kiliseleri Birliği ( English Alliance of Baptist Churches in Turkey , Federation of Turkish Baptist Congregations ) was founded. There are also two independent Baptist churches. The first attempts to found Baptist churches on Turkish territory took place in Bucharest and southern Russia in the 1860s .

history

Baptist missionary August Liebig

In 1863 August Liebig (1836–1914), "one of the best craft preachers" of the Baptist church founder Johann Gerhard Oncken , went to the Black Sea region . He began his missionary work in Bucharest , but also worked in southern Russia and undertook missionary trips to Turkey as far as “widely”. He found open doors especially among German exiles who had fled from Russia to the Turkish Black Sea regions. In Dobruja , which at that time still belonged to Turkey, congregations and preaching stations were established. On the occasion of his inspection trip to southern Russia and Dobruja, Oncken was able to inaugurate the chapel of the 111-member congregation in Catalui near Tulcea . On this occasion he sent Martin Heringer and Jakob Klundt out as biblical porters. With the help of the British and Foreign Bible Society , they were supposed to spread Christian literature in European Turkey. In 1873 the Baptist regional association of the South Russian-Turkish Association was founded , but a few years later it was renamed the South Russian-Romanian Association due to the shifting of national borders . For a long time, both terms were used side by side. The minutes of the Twelfth Federal Conference of Baptists, which was held in Altona in 1882 , document (probably for the last time) the presence of Turkish parishioners.

It was not until 1966 that new Baptist reconstruction work began in Turkey, this time in the Asian part of the republic. The Foreign Mission Board of the US-American Southern Baptists sent the mission couple James and Jean Leeper to Ankara to start an English-speaking church work in the capital and the surrounding region. The target group were initially US-Americans living in Turkey, especially military personnel and their families. The Galatian Baptist Church came into being , and employees of the non-denominational organization Operation Mobilization helped build it up . On September 22, 1978, James Leeper was arrested by the Turkish police and expelled a week later. Melih Esenbel (1915–1995), then Turkish ambassador to the USA and former Turkish foreign minister, justified the expulsion of Leeper with his dissemination of “religious propaganda”. After the Leepers finished their ministry, Canadian Baptists attempted church planting in southeastern Turkey. The results of this experiment are not known.

Former Anglican All Saints' Church in Buca, church of the Izmir Baptist congregation since 2001 (drawing from 1871)

In the 1990s, a Baptist church planting work initiated by Turks developed in Izmir . Among them was Ertan Cevik . He had spent his youth in Germany, had come into closer contact with Christianity through the YMCA and had been baptized in a Stuttgart Baptist congregation . After his painting and varnishing apprenticeship, Cevik completed a Bible school education with the torchbearers and in Wiedenest . In 1989 he went back to his Turkish homeland - he was now married. Together with his wife, he distributed Christian information material and founded house groups . Renting or even building public meeting rooms is not easy for Christians in Turkey. More surprising was that the small Baptist community at Christmas 2001 by the state authorities in Izmir city district Buca one entwidmetes Anglican church building was free of charge provided. However, the requirement was to carry out the necessary renovation and property work with your own resources. The church, built in the middle of the 19th century, has the floor plan of a cross and is therefore unsuitable for conversion into a mosque from an Islamic point of view . With the inauguration of the historic church, the Baptist congregation Izmir-Buca was officially founded. Cevik was ordained her pastor .

From 2007 to 2012, by order of the police, Cevik was protected by a personal bodyguard. This was due to the 2007 Eastern Anatolian Malatya the happened attacks in the Christian Zirve publishing house where three Christians were killed. In connection with their investigations, the security authorities also came across a terrorist cell in Izmir and arrested its members. In the subsequent house searches, they found a so-called “death list”, on which the name Ertan Ceviks was also listed.

From Izmir-Buca, further congregations were founded in the following years. In April 2014 the congregations in Adana , Istanbul , Izmir-Buca and Samsun joined together to form a Turkish Church Federation. In the meantime five more communities have emerged, including two Persian-speaking ones.

In July 2014, the Council of the Baptist World Federation with 450 delegates from 95 countries took place in Izmir. The meeting received a lot of attention from the Turkish public.

organization

The association Türkiye Protestan Baptist Kiliseleri Birliği , founded in April 2014, belongs to the European Baptist Federation and since 2016 to the World Baptist Federation . The office of the association, to whose president the aforementioned pastor Ertan Cevik has been elected, is located in Izmir. The general secretary is the pastor of the Samsun parish M. Orhan Pıçaklar.

There are also two independent Baptist congregations in Turkey, an international one in Istanbul and another in Ankara.

literature

  • Ian M. Randall: Communities of Conviction. Baptist Beginnings in Europe . Neufeld-Verlag: Schwarzenfeld 2009. ISBN 978-3-937896-78-6 . Pp. 189-190
  • Albert W. Wardin (Ed.): Baptists around the World. A comprehensive handbook . Broadman & Holman Publishers: [no location] 1995. ISBN 0-8054-1076-7 . P. 175
  • Baker J. Cauthen et al. a .: Advance . Broadman Press: Nashville 1970. p. 235

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Balders : Timeline 1800–1945 . In: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. 150 years of Baptist churches in Germany. 1834–1984 (Ed. Günter Balders). Oncken Verlag: Wuppertal and Kassel 1984. pp. 290-300; here: p. 293
  2. ↑ Quoted from Rudolf Donat: The growing work. Expansion of the German Baptist congregations for sixty years (1849–1909) . JG Oncken Published by Kassel 1960. S. 163
  3. ↑ CMBS.Mennonitebrethren.ca: Liebig, August GA (1836-1914) ; accessed on December 12, 2017
  4. ↑ For the biography of August Liebig see GAMEO.org/Abe J. Dueck: Liebig, August GA (1836-1914) (2012) ; accessed on December 12, 2017
  5. ^ Albert W. Wardin: On the Edge: Baptists and Other Free Church Evangelicals in Tsarist Russia. 1855-1917 . Wipf & Stock: Oregon 2013 (eBook)
  6. ^ Günter Balders: Timeline 1800–1945 . In: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. 150 years of Baptist churches in Germany. 1834–1984 (Ed. Günter Balders). Oncken Verlag: Wuppertal and Kassel 1984. pp. 290-300; here: p. 294
  7. ↑ Union of the United Congregations of Baptized Christians (Ed.): Minutes of the twelfth federal conference, held by the delegates of the united congregations of baptized Christians (Baptists) in Germany, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Poland, Russia and Turkey, at Altona , from August 14th to 17th, 1882 . Verlag JG Oncken: Hamburg 1882. S. 62; however, the Turkish communities mentioned here are not within the borders of today's Turkey.
  8. ^ Albert W. Wardin (Ed.): Baptists around the World. A comprehensive handbook . Broadman & Holman Publishers: [no location] 1995. p. 175
  9. ^ Ian M. Randall: Communities of Conviction. Baptist Beginnings in Europe . Neufeld-Verlag: Schwarzenfeld 2009. S. 189
  10. ↑ Washington Post.com: Southern Baptists Protest Ouster Of Pastor of Only Church in Turkey (December 29, 1978) ; accessed on December 12, 2017
  11. ^ Albert W. Wardin (Ed.): Baptists around the World. A comprehensive handbook . Broadman & Holman Publishers: [no location] 1995. p. 175
  12. ↑ EAD.de: Turkey: A pastor with bodyguards (20 September 2011) ; accessed on December 12, 2017
  13. ↑ EAD.de: Turkey: Terror warning in Izmir (28 October 2013) ; accessed on December 12, 2017
  14. ↑ EAD.de: Turkey: A pastor with bodyguards (20 September 2011) ; accessed on December 12, 2017
  15. ↑ EAD.de: Turkey: Evangelicals look confidently into the future (July 29, 2014)