A Dangerous Sect – Baptists in Latvia

In the middle of the 19^th century, most people in modern-day Latvia were either Lutheran, Russian Orthodox or Jewish. These had been the established religions for centuries and were highly regulated by either Tsarist officials or the Baltic German aristocracy.  But in 1860, a new Christian sect made its first appearance in Russia, the Baptists.

The introduction of the Baptist faith came to the Russian Empire via Germany. Johann Gerhard Oncken, known as the “Father of Continental Baptists”, spent his life spreading these new ideas across the continent. This new sect had some radical ideas compared with more established mainstream religious groups. Baptists believed in a more direct route to God, bypassing church hierarchies like pastors, ministers and priests. They had no need for fancy church buildings, vestments or ceremony. And most radical of all, they did not believe in the immediate baptism of children. Baptists thought a person needed to be old enough to understand their own mind and consent to their own baptism.

All of these new ideas of how worshipers could interact with God was a clear and present threat to both the Imperial government and the aristocratic clergy, both of which had exerted almost complete control over the peasantry for hundreds of years.

But a new day was dawning. Serfdom had been abolished across the entire Russian Empire in the aftermath of the Crimean War in 1861. Latvian peasants were starting to buy land for the first time and take financial control of their lives. Men like Krišjānis Valdemārs were openly proud of their Latvian heritage and language, paving the way for what was dubbed ‘The Latvian National Awakening’.

Peasants suddenly had access to literacy and education, jobs and mobility. It is no surprise then, that this new Baptist sect was very attractive to those that had long felt oppressed. It is also no surprise that the government and the Lutheran establishment cracked down on it. The tenets of free-thinking, equality and upward mobility were intolerable. Early on Baptists were described by the elite as, “…undereducated, fanatic people providing too free an interpretation of the Holy Writings.” (from the article ‘The Religious and Socio-Political Context for the Establishment of the First Baptist Parishes in Courland’ by Kristīne Ante, 2017)

The Establishment of Baptist Churches in Latvia

The first Baptist parish in Latvia was started Ventspils in 1861 with more to follow. In the 1860s and early 1870s these parishes had to be conducted in secret, in private homes, rural farms or even in the forest. Some Baptists proselytizers and leaders were arrested or deported. Baptism was most popular in the Courland (Kurzeme) region of north-western Latvia with almost 300 adherents as early as 1861. By 1867, there were almost 1500 members and in 1878 over 3500.

In 1876, a Baptist parish was established in the town of Talsi. The Baptists here, and all over the region, must have been extremely relieved when in 1879, the Tsar finally officially acknowledged the Baptist religion. Believers no longer had to hide and membership grew.

Jekob and Magreete Zekants, my husband’s great-great grandparents, faced an unfortunately all-to-common tragedy in 1886, the death of their small son. Fricis was only two when he passed away, probably from illness. We can’t be sure if this played a role, but not long after this the Zekants family left the Lutheran congregation to join this new sect. Were they attracted to turning their backs on the establishment? Did they join to find like-minded free-thinking moderns? Or maybe they were searching for answers as to why they had lost their son. We will never know their motivations, but the family spent the next ten years as part of a local Baptist congregation. Most likely they were members of the Talsi Baptist Church but records for those years are lost.

They had two children during this time, their youngest sons Teodors and Žanis. They did not baptize these sons in the Lutheran church of course and we don’t know if they were ever baptized in the Baptist church since records have been lost. I was very puzzled for several years as to why I could not locate their baptism records.

Eventually I noticed a small bit of faded writing in grey pencil at the bottom of the page of baptisms for the year 1892, the year of Žanis Zekants’s birth. It was a mention of three children born in that year with cross-references to other years’ records. Žanis was one of these. The note referred me to the records for 1897. And there they were! Žanis (born in 1892) and his older brother Teodors (born in 1887) being baptized in 1897. There was a very small note off to the side that a translator told me might mention being Baptists. This was the start of my research into this topic.

There were a handful of other baptisms like this one in the Talsi/Nurmuižas Lutheran church records. It was not uncommon for people who were previously Lutherans to spend time as Baptists and then for some reason or another return to the Lutheran church. There was a heavy push for Lutheran pastors to attempt to regain their congregants using powers of persuasion or even legal means. Whatever the circumstances were, the Zekants family returned to Lutheranism and by the 1897 All Russia Census were actually living on the property with the pastor of the Nurmuižas Lutheran Church.

During the late 19^th century, many communities of Latvian Baptists emigrated to other countries including inner Russia, Brazil and the USA. The local population of Baptists also continued to grow steadily as the country entered the 20^th century with 89 Baptist churches in 1927. The Talsi congregation built a beautiful new building in 1936, which still operates today as an active Baptist church.

During the Soviet years of religious suppression, the number of churches declined but it didn’t die. Since the fall of Communism, the number of Baptists has again increased with 6,500 members in 2005.

I wish I could step inside the minds of Jekob and Magreete Zekants as they made the radical decision to embrace a new religion. I like to imagine they were part of the growing numbers of Latvians at the time that were forging a new path and a adopting a newfound sense of cultural pride.