Protestantism in Bulgaria: Protestantism

Protestantism

Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

 is the fourth largest religious grouping in Bulgaria after Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 and Roman Catholicism. In the census of 2001, a total of 42,308 people declared themselves to be Protestants of different denominations, up from 21,878 in the previous census in 1992. The marked rise in the number of Protestants in the last decade is partly due to a boom in conversions among the Bulgarian Roma. In 2001, the two largest ethnic group among the Bulgarian Protestants were the Bulgarians

Bulgarians

The Bulgarians are a South Slavic nation and ethnic group native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-History and ethnogenesis:...

 and the Roma with some 25,000 members each.

Protestantism

Protestantism

Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

 was introduced in Bulgaria by missionaries from the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1857-58, amid the National Revival period. The two main denominations, the Methodists and Congregationalists, divided their areas of influence. The former predominated in northern Bulgaria and the latter in the south. In 1875 the Protestant denominations united in the Bulgarian Evangelical Philanthropic Society, which later became the Union of Evangelical Churches in Bulgaria. Besides setting up churches, the Protestants established schools, clinics, and youth clubs, and they distributed copies of the Bible and their own religious publications in Bulgarian. The Union of Evangelical Churches produced a translation of the entire Bible into contemporary Bulgarian in 1871 and founded the nondenominational Robert College in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

, where many Bulgarian leaders of the post-independence era were educated. After independence in 1878, the Protestants gained influence because they used the vernacular in services and in religious literature.

The 1871 translation of the Bible was based on the work of ABCFM

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the first American Christian foreign mission agency. It was proposed in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College and officially chartered in 1812. In 1961 it merged with other societies to form the United Church Board for World...

 missionary Elias Riggs, Methodist-Episcopalian missionary Albert Long, and Bulgarian intellectuals P.R. Slaveikov and Hristodul Sichan-Niolov. Translation was not sponsored by the Bulgarian Evangelical Union, but by the British and Foreign Bible Society

British and Foreign Bible Society

The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply as Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world....

.

The communist regimes subjected Protestants to even greater persecution than the Catholics. In 1946 church funding was cut off by a law curbing foreign currency transactions. Because many ministers had been educated in the West before World War II, they were suspected automatically of supporting the opposition parties. In 1949 thirty-one Protestant clergymen were charged with working for American intelligence and running a spy ring in Bulgaria. All church property was confiscated, and the churches' legal status was revoked. Most of the mainstream Protestant denominations maintained the right to worship nominally guaranteed by the constitution of 1947.

Like the practitioners of the other faiths, Protestants in Bulgaria enjoyed greater religious freedom after the fall of the Zhivkov regime in 1989. Due to the work of new, mostly U.S. missionaries, the number of the Protestants in the country almost doubled by 2001 and is soon to overtake the number of the Roman Catholics in the country.

According to estimates in 1991, the 5,000 to 6,000 Bulgarian Pentecostals made that denomination the largest Protestant group. The Pentecostal movement was brought to Bulgaria in 1921 by Russian emigrants. The movement later spread to Varna, Sliven, Sofia, and Pleven. It gained popularity in Bulgaria after freedom of religion was declared in 1944, and the fall of Zhivkov brought another surge of interest. In 1991 the Pentecostal Church had thirty-six clergy in forty-three parishes, with sufficient concentration in Ruse to petition the government to establish a Bible institute there.

In 2006 the Advent Christian Church

Advent Christian Church

The Advent Christian Church is a "first-day" body of Adventist Christians founded on the teachings of William Miller.- William Miller :Though the first Advent Christian Association was founded in Salem, Massachusetts in 1860, the church's formation is rooted in the adventist teachings began by...

had 7,637 Bulgarian membershttp://www.adventistatlas.org/viewCountry.asp?CtryCode=BG. The Adventist movement began in the Dobruja region of Bulgaria at the turn of the century and then spread to Tutrakan, Ruse, Sofia, and Plovdiv. It gained momentum in Bulgaria after 1944. Under the communist regimes, mainstream Adventists maintained the right to worship. Some twenty parishes with forty pastors remained active through that era, although a breakaway reformed group was banned because of its pacifist beliefs. Some Adventists were imprisoned for refusal of military service.

External links

• Institute for Bulgarian Protestant History, offering a rich online archive of publications and documents on the topic