Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 26, 1992 TAG: 9203270425
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE RELIGION WRITER
DATELINE: BLUE RIDGE LENGTH: Long
Though the addresses on their business cards read "Czechoslovakia," the men are quick to point out that they are Slovaks, not Czechs.
When newspaper headlines proclaimed "Czechs beat U.S." in Olympic ice hockey, they wanted to write a letter informing the editors that many on the team were Slovaks.
The two men also are Baptists, in a Slovakia that is more than 80 percent Roman Catholic and about 10 percent Lutheran.
But through 40 years of Communist rule and the 2 1/2 years since the "velvet revolution" that threw that government out, the families of Jozef Kulacik and Albin Masarik have kept their religious faith and their ethnicity intact.
And now these sons of Christians are among the leaders of the 2,000 Baptist Slovaks, struggling to deal with new economic realities and the competition from an influx of dozens of new religious faiths.
The Communist experience was both very bad and somehow good, the ministers said this week while participating in a missions conference at the independent Colonial Baptist Church in Blue Ridge.
During Communist rule, admitted Christians could not be lawyers, doctors, teachers, military officers or company directors, Masarik said. They were barred from much university training and were compelled to spend two years in military service instead of one.
On the other hand, Kulacik said, "I was personally happy to live through that time. The Christian life was not something cultural" but intentional and well-thought out, he said.
Some of the changes since the fall of communism have been pretty much a wash, as well.
It used to be that it was impossible to get political permission to add a nursery to a church, for instance, Masarik said. Now it is impossible to raise enough money to have one built.
The "new world order" is bringing a new economic order throughout Eastern Europe that is strapping churches as well as individuals.
The pastors - who like most workers are paid by the state - receive small stipends from "unofficial" collections from their congregations to have enough money to get by, they said.
Dan Ferance - a retired missionary to Czechoslovakia and now a member of the Colonial congregation - said that although goods are extremely cheap by Western standards, wages likewise are artificially low.
He said a missionary friend on a trip to Czechoslovakia recently refused to buy the cheap clothes and other goods, fearing that his purchases would unfairly rob the country's citizens of their own goods.
Ferance introduced the Slovak pastors - who speak English - to the Colonial congregation, and served as translator and occasional tour guide along with Pastor Don Eade.
Though Westernization has caused some problems, both Kulacik and Masarik said, they see the U.S. model of independent Baptist churches as a good one to follow.
There is now a "union" of Baptist churches in Czechoslovakia that exercises some central control over individual congregations.
If you ask the two Slovak pastors, they'll say the recent invasion of Western religious groups in their homeland has been a mixed blessing.
In the past year, Kulacik and Masarik, both 33, have watched their churches split after some members were drawn to new religious influences.
There were several reasons for the break, Kulacik said, but primary among them was that many members of his Bratislava congregation "caught Pentecostalism."
"The emotionalism was the only thing they were affected by," Kulacik said. "They didn't go into the theology."
Some of the newly Pentecostal members of his church came to "think they were better Christians, closer to God" than the others, Kulacik said. They eventually left to form their own congregation focusing on the expressive "gifts of the spirit" the movement emphasizes.
At Masarik's Poprad church, it was the attraction of the so-called "health and wealth" Pentecostalism that fractured his congregation.
"People in Czechoslovakia are not very rich," he said, and promises that God wanted them to be financially prosperous and physically healthy were very attractive, he said.
"Now somebody was telling them they could have it all."
The Union of Baptist Churches is debating how best to co-exist with the new onslaught of competition - cooperating where possible and countering where they believe necessary.
Masarik said he wishes evangelists would have the courtesy to come and see him and talk about their mission, rather than attempt to covertly siphon off his church members.
"I wish they would see Czechoslovakia as a mission field - not as a field for the expansion of Western thinking," Masarik said.
"Some American and Canadian missionaries try to make disciples of Western church culture," Kulacik said, rather than simple biblical Christian teachings.
Another example of that would be in the Southern Baptist Convention's treatment of the Rushlikon Baptist seminary in Switzerland.
Kulacik, a Rushlikon graduate, said he disagreed strongly with the decision of the U.S. group to withhold promised funds from the Swiss seminary. The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board said the hiring of an out-of-favor U.S. professor by the Swiss seminary was the last straw in a controversy over what it considers the liberal theological bent of the school.
There were protests of the action from Baptists all over Europe, except those in Romania, said Kulacik, who defended the quality of the seminary's instruction.
Memo: CORRECTION