THE GROUP BAPTISM:

Armenia � France � Russia

The Western tradition, coming from XVI c., made the conversion of Constantine the Great in 312 AD a symbol of the "fall" of the Church to the temptations of the State, the turning point in the history of Christianity. The conversion of Constantine was most prominent, according to this view, because the State began using force (direct and indirect, as different privileges and even tax-exumptions) for promoting Christianity and exterminating the freedom of conscience.

This view on history was born in the Protestantism, but it is popular not only among Protestants, but among people of very different religious views, even among agnostics and atheists. It is popular because freedom is one of the most popular life value in the modern world. Each man can imagine himself living in the state which forces him to be Christian, and this is a frightful idea even for modern Christians. Stories about the forceful "baptisms" of different nations in the Early Middle ages seems to be the darkest pages of the Church history.

Such fear is well-based because the idea of using force to promote one�s religious views can never die. It is alive in many countries of the modern world, where religion (although not only Christianity) is still thought to be simultaneously a public and a private matter. It is alive in the most democratic countries of the "free world", although only as an abstract idea. It is alive in the each soul which has some firm convictions, deep faith, as a constant temptation to use at least some personal force, may only a force of personal example, to promote one�s own convictions and believes. It seems to be a part of human nature, as we know this nature in the given world.

It is unchristian to lie and say that Church never used force for conversion, or that the Church never praised this method of conversion, or that such method is justified by the goal. But it is also unchristian to condemn millions of people, thousand years of history, dozens of countries and cultures as completely alienated from Christ by using force in the matters of faith. Christian is what is wise and kind: to try to look upon these people and countries and to judge them without fear.

Fear makes us blind. We remember only about Roman empire and the conversion of Constantine. But first "state conversion" happened outside the Roman empire, in the end of the III c. in Armenia. Armenia them was a part of the Persian empire. The king of Armenia, Trdat II, was converted to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator (born c. 257). According to one legend, Trdat had been holding Gregory in prison for 14 years before he was converted. After the conversion of Trdat followed the conversion of the upper classes of the country and then of the whole nation.

Conversion of Armenia differs from "conversion" of Roman empire as one experiment differs from other. As a result, we can see what is an essential in the whole matter. First, it come out that neither state nor direct enforcement are main heroes of the story. Armenia as the state was not in a position to enforce any of her inhabitants to be Christian (sad to say, this is true in modern Armenia.) Not the Armenian state, but the Armenian nation was the subject. These was no direct enforcement. Moreover, many Armenians became Christian martyrs (most famous are "Forty martyrs of Sebaste," killed c. 300.) We can only speak about an indirect enforcement of the collective (nation) over its member.

Such indirect enforcement is the part of the nature of all alive beings. Social pressure is present in the pride of lions and in human family. Humans differ from animals only in their ability to overcome this pressure, to become personalities, in which external pressure is less prominent than pressure of the inner spiritual life. But this change comes only in the course of many centuries and with the help of Christianity.

Whether the conversion based on the indirect enforcement of the social environment must be judged as insincere, null and void? At any case, the first Church didn�t think so. When Paul preached in Thyatira, a certain woman named Lidia was converted. The Acts tell us nothing about the reaction to the Paul�s preaching of relatives and slaves of this woman, which constituted what then was called her "house". The Acts simply tell us, that "she and her household had been baptized." (Acts, 16:16). Moreover, in the same town Paul converted the jailer, who released, and preached to him. saying: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved, you and your household." (Acts, 16:31). Paul have baptized "he [the jailer] and all his [household]" (Acts, 16:33). The apostle took for granted that the "household" can be addressed and converted as one unit, one body. The same conviction determined decision of the Church to look upon mass conversion as some natural phenomena.

The conversion of Constantine and his empire is not most striking, because it was not as forceful as conversion of barbarous kings and their nations. The baptism of franks after the baptism of Clovis (498) seemed to be as natural as the baptism of "the household" after the baptism of pater familias, as the baptism of childs in the Christian family. Many centuries of reading the Gospel, prayers to Christ, formation of live in accordance with His commandments have been needed to understand that humans are more free and independent than it seemed in the pagan world or in the first centuries after Christ.

The problem of the mass conversions is the problem of changing human�s understanding of his own nature. It is an oversimplification to look upon child�s baptism or the baptism of Rus� only as some mistake, perversion of Christianity by the ill will of some people. Basic ideas about human nature changed in the course of history due to Christianity. The will came out to be a personal characteristic, not something which can be attributed to a nation. Nations (households, tribes, families) simply don�t have any "will." Modern Christians can speak about "will of the nation" only in metaphorical sense, and never can we put this "will of the nation" higher than the will of any member of the nation.

The coercion of the collective, from family to nation, is indirect in a sense that it is unperceptible to people who don�t have an experience of personal self-being. This fact is nicely seen in the story about the baptism of Rus� in 988. When prince Vladimir ordered to his people to come to be baptized, they "came with joy, exalting and saying: "If this will be not good, our prince and boyars would not accept it." Most frightening feature in the medieval history is not the atrocities with which Christianity sometimes had been implanted, but easiness and joy with which it was received without any genuine faith, only because of the slavish attitude of people towards authority of tribe and powers of this world.

Man, not a family or nation, is the basic unit of life, � this is the main discovery made by Christians in the course of two millenniums of history. This means that faith must be first of all connected with the human abilities to feel and to think, it must be more voluntary and conscience than it was held thousand or two thousands years ago. It is an anachronism to forget about these two hundred years, which have been needed to make the majority of Christians understand this truth. Not all Christians understand it even now. It is most impressive that Protestantism which had been born from the upheaval of personality against collective coercion for many centuries used the indirect enforcement. Protestant confessions which deny the baptism of children and the necessity of the nation to be religiously united are only a part of Protestantism.

Even today many Christians, Protestants, Catholics, or Eastern Orthodox can easily slip in the anachronistic view on the salvation as something which happiness with collective, whether the individual members will it or not. Such slipping always ends in coercion of some kind. It can be based on the Bible, especially on the Old Testament. The passage of Jews through Red Sea towards freedom wasn�t the result of the unanimous agreement of all Jews (children included). It was the result of the decision of tribe leaders, automatically supposed to be the decision of each member of the community. Which is most striking to the modern understanding of personality, the decision of leaders really became a sincere decision of the tribe. Why, then, must we condemn the passage of the Romans, or Armenians, or Franks, or Russians to Christianity according to the decision made only be the national and state leaders of these people?

Our judgment over such historical events as mass conversions is our judgment over our understanding of the Gospel. It not by chance that those people who condemned enforced conversions have been very strict in proclaiming themselves as the best interpreters of the Gospel, as ultimate interpreters of it. Any such pretensions tends to ignore the sub-rational content of the Gospel, the Gospel art of addressing at one and the same time peoples of very different epochs and views, the Gospel art of upbringing not only by what is said but also by what is passed over in silence.

Nowhere in the Gospel Jesus directly condemn collectivism or nationalism, nowhere He bothers to prohibit "national baptisms." First, people would not understand Him or even manage to fix these words. Second, it was possible to condemn collectivism, but it was impossible to replace it simply by preaching the true idea of personality. Jesus made the only possible thing: He preached personalizm indirectly by preaching to personalities. It worked. Jesus was much more quiet about the inevitable perversions of His teaching than most of his followers. He knew that many nations will take the Gospel on political or cultural grounds, not because of the true religious zeal. He knew what most of His followers are still unaware off: that only personalities, not nations can have a true religious zeal. But He knew also that there is no choice to introduce the Gospel in the world with pagan habits. If He wanted and could to prevent the nation baptisms without violating human freedom, He would done it. But there was no other choice than introduce Gospel in the history of the world than through usual ways of the world. Only God knew that the Gospel, however accommodated to the world, will sooner or later explode it and change it.

A lot of lies and injustices are connected with the history of the Church, not only Western or Eastern, but any group of believers in Christ, whoever tiny. The question: "How God tolerate the sins among His faithful?" is as widespread as the question: "How God tolerates the pain and sufferings of His faithful?" There are many true answers to both questions, and only one answer is false: "Those Christians who sin by coercion, lie and injustices, are only nominal Christians, and must be looked upon as servants of Antichrists, not as servants of Christs." Such an answer is natural and pardonable at the times of the revolt against phariseeism, but it is never just and true.

The comparative analyses of the "national baptisms" of Armenia, Gaul and Rus� shows that understanding of the personal character of religious freedom have been growing up from century to century. The legend about "conversions" of Armenia and Gaul created by contemporaries are pure gold and ecstasy. The story of the baptism of Rus�, fixed in the first Russian chronicle, contains a lot of rhetoric praises, but it also contains open and bitter understanding of the fact that prince Vladimir, who baptized Rus�, behave according to the norms of this world and not the norms of the Gospel. This understanding is fixed in two brief remarks. First, the chronicler St. Nestor inserted an explanation of the fact that Russians obediently followed the order of Vladimir to come to be baptized: They done this, "because his faith was connected with power." More strong is the remark in the story about the baptism of the northern part of Rus�, where governors of Vladimir Dobryinya and Putyata threatened to kill those who refuse to be baptized and to fire their houses. The chronicler fixed the Russian saying about this history: "Dobryinya baptized with the sword, Putyata with the fire." It is most important that this condemnation of the coercive baptism of the whole nation was fixed and approved not by pagan, but by Christian writer. This became possible only because Rus� had been baptized and people � this writer included � received the Gospel, which addressed them in such a way that idea of personal freedom step by step came into human�s souls.