Soviet Evangelicals Detail Membership

The Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists in the Soviet Union has issued detailed membership statistics for the first time in its 45-year history.

The first issue of the denomination’s new Information Bulletin reports that there are 260,000 believers in evangelical churches in the Soviet Union. This includes 15,000 in unregistered churches and almost 8,000 in independently registered churches--congregations that have registered with the government but do not belong to the evagelical union.

The group also reported that there are 40,000 Soviet Pentecostals, equally divided between unregistered and independently registered, and 2,000 Mennonite Brethren in independent congregations.

Keston College, the British-based center for the study of religion under communism, noted that the statistics raise almost as many questions as they answer, because Soviet Baptists have reported figures for membership and number of churches for the last 20 years that are more than double the new figures.