GERMANY

Recognition of Outstanding Baptists continued

who has made us, who has given us life, gifts, courage, credibility and spiritual awareness. He has called us free from fearfulness and from distortion in ourselves.” Guderian paid tribute to those who contributed to

his life and work and named several past Baptist leaders in Germany and his wife, Astrid. “All that I have been able to achieve is only because of many others who also deserve to be recognized in a similar way,” he said. “I owe a lot to them and good friends in my church and my country.”

Russell Response Russell is a former seminary president, lecturer and

pastor in Jamaica, and is regarded as the authoritative church historian in the Caribbean. He left Jamaica in

Horace and Beryl Russell the 25th

n GERMANY n GERMANY n GERM

Celebrating the Fall: O

Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Hans Guderian

anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not only German Baptists but the people of Germany in general marked the occasion with a great festivity in Berlin.

n November 9, 2014, German Baptists celebrated in a special commemorative worship service the 25th

What is the reason that this date is so important for the German

Baptists, and even more for the Germans and for the Europeans at large in East and West Germany? For decades people in Europe lived with the reality of separation, of

an iron curtain, dividing families and friends from each other. People in East Germany had to suffer under an autocratic communist regime, limiting freedom and human rights. In 1989 this all came to a fortunate end. Besides the transformations

1989 to become professor of historical theology and dean of chapel at Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary) near Philadelphia. He began involvement with the BWA at the Jubilee

Congress in London in 1955, giving a Bible study at the Tokyo meetings in 1970. He served on several BWA commissions including the Commission on Baptist Heritage and Identity, the Commission on Baptists against Racism and the Academic and Theological Education Workgroup, and contributed the first chapter in Baptists Together in Christ, 1905-2005. Russell expressed gratitude for the recognition he

received. “All of this would not have happened had it not been for the culture of the Jamaica Baptist Union, which made this possible,” Russell stated. “Whatever I am today, I owe it to the ordinary people of Jamaica, those Baptists who loved us, and still love us, prayed for us, cared for us.” Russell paid tribute to his parents and early mentors,

especially British Baptist missionary Keith Tucker, “a gentleman who gave us a vision of what we could become, who put his own life and money on the line.” It was Tucker, he explained, who ensured that his passage was paid for to study at Oxford University in England in the 1950s. Russell eventually returned to Jamaica with both a masters and a PhD degree from Oxford. Russell, who has retired, expressed gratitude for

the support he received from his wife Beryl, and three children, stating that “being away from home means my wife had to pick up the slack and my children had to forgive me.” He believes that whatever he has accomplished is all God’s doing. “It is God’s work and God be praised.”

18 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE

in the political sphere, prayers in hundreds of churches and the candle lights were signs of hope that brought a change of mood. The communists lost control and the frightening wall of separation broke down. In 2014, we celebrated this wonderful story of liberation. We did so

in thankfulness toward God the ruler of history, with the understanding that this liberation creates an obligation toward the future. Many Germans feel obliged to search for peaceful solutions, avoid violence, calm developing tensions and frictions, and put our trust not so much in military and economic force but in prayers and in our hope toward God.

Front page cover of the January/ March 1990 Baptist World magazine on the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.