In this chapter, I focus on the turbulent political and religious context within which Romani evangelicalism took root and became influential in Bulgaria. I want to consider how the missionaries from different Protestant and neo-Protestant congregations advanced among the Roma and how the Roma came to experience themselves as evangelists during several historical epochs: from the country’s liberation from Ottoman rule in 1878 to the beginning of the 20th century, during interwar Bulgaria, the communist, and post-communist periods. First, I present the growth of evangelicalism among the Gypsies in Europe, to show that the missions organized among this minority group in Bulgaria were part of a common endeavor of converting them to the evangelical faith. I also focus on the dissemination of Protestantism in the Bulgarian lands during the 19th century, to explain why, after sending Bible workers to the Bulgarians, the missionaries turned their attention to the Gypsies. A look back in history and a view of this multi-layered context is important to understand religious conversion both at the individual and group level, for seeing the position of Romani evangelicalism as an adaptive movement that created stable relations with the dominant culture.
1.1 The Call for Reformation of Gypsies in Europe
During the 19th century, preachers from Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries, where Protestantism was the traditional religion, began to take interest in the Gypsies, perceiving them as potential converts. Yet, these missionaries’ attitude towards the Gypsies was not always positive. Prevailing at that time was the Christian-centric idea that faith in God is based on the existence of a certain religious organization; and according to the evangelicals, such was entirely lacking among the Gypsies. The call for Reformation related to the desire to convert them to Christianity according to the missionaries’ own standards; because the Gypsies had been “long neglected, houseless, wanderers”, as Samuel Roberts wrote (1830,
In the mid-1830s, George Borrow, an associate of the Bible Society, was sent to the Iberian Peninsula, where he remained nearly five years, spreading the Word of God (Borrow, 1843, Author’s preface). Along with other translations he made, he translated The Gospel of Luke into caló, the Iberian Romani language, in 1836 in the Spanish city of Badajos (Borrow, 1836). It is not clear whether the first printed copies of this book came out in 1836, as indicated in the title, or were published later, in 1837 (cf. van den Heuvel, 2020, pp. 459–486). In any case, this was the world’s first printed book in the Romani language. Borrow also wrote several works describing the Gypsies of the Iberian Peninsula; these texts influenced the development of scholarly studies at that time (Borrow, 1843; 1846).
In keeping with the call for Reformation, there followed various attempts to pursue civilizing, educational, and humanitarian activities among these people in several countries. Although all agreed the Gypsies should be helped to find the way to a more diligent existence, the missionaries hesitated whether to use firmer approaches to make progress or, instead, be flexible in their judgment of the Gypsy way of life. The evangelicals saw a connection between the practice of religion and the settling of the Gypsies, changing the way they made a living; the missionaries attempted to rectify the moral looseness of the Gypsies – a task that they believed should be achieved foremost through religious education (Mayall, 2009, p. 98).
In Norway, the Norwegian Missionary Society organized propaganda among this minority, attempting to turn them into settled citizens (Strand, 2014, p. 112). In England, the foremost concern of the Quaker John Hoyland, a member of the Society of Friends, was to turn them into “useful citizens” (Mayall, 2009, p. 100). When he first spent time with them in 1814, Hoyland was surprised at their miserable outward appearance and complete illiteracy, yet continued to be intrigued by them (Cressy, 2016, pp. 67–68). Hoyland did not approve of their nomadic way of life, of what he called their lack of faith and immoral conduct, but he also expected the citizens around them to overcome their antipathy and to begin hiring Gypsies for work. He proposed that children between the ages of 6 and 14 should be taken care of in children’s homes and start attending school (Mayall, 2009, p. 101).
The Home Missionary Society and the Southampton Committee, active at that time, established sub-committees targeted at this community. The Methodist preacher James Crabb, from the Southampton Committee, who was more inclined to accept the Indian instead of the Egyptian theory as to the origin of the Gypsies, assumed by many before him, was very enthusiastic in his missionary work. Nevertheless, like others, he wavered in his attitude towards this minority: many of his written comments swung from approval of some to hostility towards others of their habits (Cressy, 2016, pp. 73–74). He proposed, besides teaching the children, to conduct daily visits to their settlements to communicate with the parents as well, instructing them in how to live a righteous life (Fraser, 1995, p. 199; Mayall, 2009, p. 107).
Another missionary, John Baird, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, was appointed as minister of the parish of Yetholm in 1829 and achieved some success among the local Gypsies in Kirk Yetholm. Like Hoyland, Baird advocated more drastic measures: he wanted to turn them into useful members of society by coercion (Mayall, 2009, p. 113). Baird’s Christian project included the children, whom he wanted to separate from their families, getting them to attend school throughout the year; as for the parents, they should stop traveling and find steady work. During the 1830s, the Society for the Reformation of the Gypsies in Scotland was founded in Edinburgh, which relied on the active work of Baird (Fraser, 1995, pp. 198–199; Mayall, 2009, pp. 115–117).
At the same time, ministers of the London Gypsy Mission proceeded in a similar way, visiting Gypsy settlements, organizing tea parties, indoor religious meetings and Bible readings and discussions in the open. These missionaries put less emphasis on sedentarization and more on spiritual and moral change, trying to eliminate various vices of the Gypsies, such as drinking alcohol, smoking, gambling, getting into fights, fortune-telling, as well as their musical inclinations.
Similar work was pursued by the New Forest Good Samaritan Charity, created in the 1880s, which offered spiritual and humane assistance and could boast success in convincing some Gypsies to marry and in educating and finding work for others (Mayall, 2009, pp. 119–125).
The missionaries clearly only achieved results in a few cases. To talk about a mass practice would certainly be inexact. For their part, the Gypsies were not inclined to accept without reservation the attempts by the Bible workers to change their daily lifestyle and turn them into Protestants. The situation changed through the activity of Rodney “Gypsy” Smith (1869–1947), the best-known evangelist and preacher of Gypsy origin (Lazell, 1997).
He was born in 1860, in a tent near London, in the family of the convert Cornelius Smith. His family made a livelihood by fashioning and selling various kitchen utensils, baskets, and laundry pins. His father was the first to become an Evangelical, and the son followed in his steps while a youth. He began serving as missionary in a Christian Mission in London (which was later renamed Salvation Army); he could also sing well. During the first half of the 20th century, he became a world-renowned preacher under the name of “Gypsy Smith”, touring Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.
Although he was a Methodist minister, he maintained ties with preachers of various denominations. Like other preachers before him, he had a pragmatic approach and saw the Christian life of the Gypsies as connected with their sedentarization, which was the only way religion could take root among them. In addition to several books he authored, various publications about him describe the total change that had taken place in his life: from a poor boy, he had turned into a missionary and preacher who devoted his whole life to the evangelical faith and its dissemination (Lazell, 1997).
For the evangelicals, the 20th century began with more intense activity among more and more varied Gypsy communities. Missionary work continued in the Scandinavian countries, Great Britain and Switzerland, or in places where there was already a Protestant tradition. Unlike in the 19th century, missionary workers in the early 20th century tried to attract Gypsies to the large Protestant churches but also to the less popular revivalist groups.
The Gypsy Mission was established in Finland in 1906 as part of the revivalist movement in the Finnish Lutheran State Church (Thurfjell, 2013, pp. 37–38). The Mission’s founder was Anders Oskari Jalkio, who was not of Gypsy origin himself and was a preacher of the Free Church of Finland. The Mission attempted to turn the Gypsies into useful members of society, applying various approaches for this purpose. In addition to intensive work for their spiritual awakening, it conducted educational and social activities for them. Schools for children were created, courses in the Romani language were organized, an orphanage was founded, and publication began of the journal Romani Boodos (Roman, 2016, p. 27; Marushiakova & Popov, 2021, pp. 674–694).
This Mission still exists today (under the name of “Romani Mission”) and care for children is still one of its basic aims, although it has changed its policies and organization over the years. It appointed its first president of Gypsy origin in the 1980s (Thurfjell, 2013, p. 38).
In Switzerland, Benjamin Niederhauser, a Sunday school teacher, together with his followers established the Schweizerische Zigeunermission (Swiss Gypsy Mission) in 1913 (SZM, 2013, p. 1). This Mission conducted activities in Western Europe, the Balkans and India, and published SZM-news.
The Swedish Gypsy Mission Foundation, established in the 1940s, aimed to support Gypsies primarily through education and spiritual enlightenment, but also by providing them with material support; most of the funding came from the state (Al Fakir, 2024, p. 211).
In Great Britain, the Scottish Committee and the New Home Mission continued their mission work among the local Gypsies. Thomas Wilson and his wife were active in the Mission. He visited Gypsy settlements and preached there while his wife played the harmonium as an instrumental accompaniment to the singing of spiritual hymns (Trigg, 1968, p. 83). In the middle of the 20th century, William Webb, who had done missionary work for the Church of Scotland, expanded this activity by creating a society of his own, the British Gypsy Gospel Mission. He did so after meeting with other preachers at a conference in Helsinki initiated by the Gypsy Gospel Mission of Switzerland, which encouraged him to create his own mission (Trigg, 1968, pp. 83–86).
The International Evangelical Gypsy Mission was created after the successful first conference, held in Helsinki in 1958 and attended by 45 delegates from different countries. The Mission, supported by the wife of the President of Finland, organized annual conferences, and published the monthly journal the Gypsy Friend (Trigg, 1968, p. 91).
At that time, a few missionaries in Great Britain preferred to work alone among this minority rather than under the protection of various organizations. These were Romany Rye (Gypsy Mister), “Gypsy” Williams, with whom Webb had tried to collaborate, and Will “Dromengro” Smith (Will of the Road Smith), who was not of Gypsy origin but used a Romani name. In his sermons, Romany Rye stressed, for instance, the harm of tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, dancing, fortune-telling, going to the movies and watching TV (Trigg, 1968, p. 89).
The first attempts at converting the Gypsies in the 19th and 20th century were motivated not so much by compassion towards them but by the desire to bring their way of life closer to that of other citizens by making them righteous Christians. The prevailing notion among missionaries was that religion is linked to a certain level of organization, and the Gypsies should become part of society through religion – best of all, by becoming members of Protestant congregations. The Bible workers also had a growing pragmatic desire to learn more about the culture of the Gypsies to conduct successful religious work among them. Some of the written data about this group, though largely influenced by the missionaries’ prejudices towards the Gypsies, may serve as sources for further research. Unlike the Protestant reformers who attempted to impose their principles to change the Gypsy way of life, the neo-Protestant Pentecostal missionaries in the middle of the 20th century, and later, were more flexible in what they offered.
1.2 The Rise of Pentecostalism
The Pentecostal movement among the Gypsies was born in Northwestern France in the 1950s, when the non-Gypsy Breton pastor Clément Le Cossec, from the congregation Les Аssemblées de Dieu de France (the Assemblies of God of France), made conversions among the Manuš (Acton, 1979, pp. 11–17; Williams, 1984b, pp. 49–51; Ridholls, 1986, pp. 28–39; Williams, 1987, pp. 325–331; Le Cossec, 1997).
Conducting religious revivalism among the Gypsies was not exceptional but part of the general spiritual Pentecostal awakening in the 20th century. It is assumed that of key importance for the start of the movement was the series of revival meetings held on Azusa Street, Los Angeles, in the beginning of the century. Several believers, gathered for a religious service led by the Afro-American pastor Seymour, became filled with the Holy Spirit and started speaking in an unknown language (the practice called “glossolalia”). Subsequently, this preacher’s mission sent its workers throughout the world (Robeck, 2013, pp. 42–62).
Gypsies were only one of the communities that attracted the interest of Pentecostal missionaries, along with other communities in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The missionaries offered various practical and spiritual benefits: healing through faith in the power of the Holy Spirit, the possibility of appointing pastors from their own communities, the creation of independent churches, and, not least, the possibility of implementing their own view as to how the local evangelical community should develop.
Various missionaries expressed various attitudes towards the Gypsies. Some idealized this group; for instance, the preacher Ridholls saw them as “the seemingly uninhibited children of nature, unpolished by the false veneers of our civilization” (Ridholls, 1986, p. 40), while the French pastor Le Cossec described them as rejected people who are transformed by accepting the Gospel and pray to Jesus Christ with great enthusiasm: “These poor people, rejected by the society, despised, outcasts, bowed their heads and prayed with Fervor” (Le Cossec, 1997, p. 18).
Le Cossec’s book My Adventures with the Gypsies (1997) is an important source of information on the missionary movement among this minority. The narratives about the start of missionary work begin with the conversion of the Duvil family, who were itinerant Manuš. This event is considered of key importance, as it attracted the attention of Pentecostal missionaries to the situation of the Gypsies and their religious needs (Acton, 1979, pp. 13–14; Ridholls, 1986, pp. 28–39; Laurent, 2014, pp. 31–40).
According to Le Cossec’s account, in 1950, Zino, the son of Madame Marie Jeanne Duvil (Reinhard), contracted tubercular peritonitis and entered the hospital in the city of Lisieux. After operating on him, the doctors informed his mother there was no hope of recovery. She recalled that a few months earlier she had met a man selling Bibles in that city, who had invited her to attend an evangelical meeting, explaining that her son could be healed through faith in Jesus Christ. On the next day, while shopping with her sister-in-law, she happened to see the invitation in her bag. She went to the address on the invitation and told the pastor about her misfortune. The pastor promised to go to the hospital, lay hands on her ailing son, and pray that he be healed. Afterwards, Zino left the hospital in good health. Madame Duvil sent a letter to her other son, Mandz, telling him his brother had been healed and entreating him to come and personally become convinced that God is alive. That was when Mandz first met with pastor Le Cossec (Le Cossec, 1997, pp. 9–11).
Two years later, as he was preaching in the city of Brest, the pastor noticed among the audience a group of swarthy men wearing mustaches, accompanied by their wives, who were dressed in vividly colorful skirts. The group invited him to visit them at the place where they had settled temporarily with their caravans; Madame Duvil’s son Mandz and his wife Pounette told pastor Le Cossec that other Evangelicals had refused to baptize the couple in water because they were not legally married. Le Cossec helped them get married at the municipality and then performed the rite of baptism for the Mandz family (Le Cossec, 1997, pp. 18–20). Mandz became the first Gypsy preacher (Acton, 1979, p. 13).
Pastor Le Cossec became aware that missionary work among the Gypsies had to be improved and, in the 1950s, established the Mission évangélique des Tziganes de France, METF (Evangelical Mission of the Gypsies of France), a society of Pentecostal origin. He knew that, after the creation of this Gypsy mission, he had to train preachers recruited from among them; this was an innovative decision, as most missionaries in the previous century had assumed that only they could serve as preachers, and not the Gypsies themselves.
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the mission already had 3,000 adherents and approximately 20 preachers, who had attended training courses in the colleges of the Assemblies of God in Belgium and Germany (Acton, 1979, p. 14). In the 1960s, the organization separated from the Assemblies of God and, under the name Vie et Lumière (Life and Light), began publishing its own journal of the same name and founded a Bible college for preachers.
During that same decade, a Bible school was founded in France; such schools were later created in other places in that country (Zanellato, 2002, p. 1). In the 1970s, the Gypsy Mission became a member of the French Protestant Federation (Zanellato, 2002, pp. 1–2; Laurent, 2014, p. 38). Various pastors headed the mission after Le Cossec, one of whom was Georges Meyer, known as “Jimmy”. For his contribution to the development of the Romani Pentecostal movement, he was awarded the National Order of the Legion of Honor by the French Minister of the Interior (Le Jan, 2020).
In addition to appointing preachers and missionaries to work among their respective groups, religious services, in the open or indoors, were held for separate audiences based on group origin. This was because a religious society could be more easily established among Gypsies sharing the same language, culture, and religious tradition (Fraser, 1995, p. 315). In some cases, however, evangelical congregations included members from various groups to eliminate the traditional dividing barriers between them (
French Gypsy missionaries spread the Word of God in neighboring countries (Spain, Italy, Belgium, etc.) and in more distant ones (the US and others) through missionary activity and laying of hands by preachers (Ridholls, 1986). Gypsy missions were created in each country. Some of the pastors are newly baptized, while others have passed from Methodist, Baptist and other traditional congregations to the new (Pentecostal) churches. For instance, La iglesia evangélica de Filadelfia (The Evangelical Church of Philadelphia), currently the most influential church among the Gypsies in Spain, was created thanks to the active missionary activity of French preachers. It developed separately in Spain and was registered in 1969, towards the end of the Franco era (1939–1975) (for more about the life of Gypsies under the regime of General Franco, see San Román, 1976; Cañete Quesada, 2020,
The greatest dissemination of evangelism among the Spanish Gitanos occurred during the 1980s and 1990s (Ridholls, 1986, pp. 62–81; Wang, 1989, pp. 423–432; McLane, 1994, pp. 111–117; Gay y Blasco, 1999; Cantón Delgado & al., 2004; Mena Cabezas, 2006).
In England and the Scandinavian countries, the Pentecostal movement also spread successfully in the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, the Free Gypsy Mission Life and Light was created in Finland in 1964 (Roman, 2016, p. 28).
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Pentecostals began to penetrate the Gypsy communities of Eastern Europe. After the end of the communist regimes there, the movement spread on a mass scale in Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia and former Soviet republics; in fact, Methodist, Baptist and Adventist churches had long before had influence among the local population of these countries (Coleman, 2002,
The largest Serbian congregation, Zajednica Roma (Romani community), which still exists today, was created in the 1970s and 1980s. It is in the city of Leskovac, in the south of Serbia (Ridholls, 1986, pp. 104–109; Starešinstvo Protestantske evanđeoske crkve, 2007, pp. 173–176;
In the 1990s, there were about 500,000 followers of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches among the Gypsies of Europe, and over 4,500 trained preachers (Thurfjell, 2013, p. 41). Some of the pastors became important figures of the Pentecostal movement, who contributed to the development of Romani evangelical culture; these include el Hermano Emiliano (Brother Emiliano), Jesus Jimenez, Matéo Maximoff, Loulou Demeter, Stevo Demeter, Sam Mitchell (Savka), Bebi Zanko, Selim Alievich, Asen Hristov, Ivo Koychev, Iliya Panov, and many others.
The Pentecostal movement spread throughout Europe and beyond, among the Gypsy and Gypsy-like groups Manuš, Roma, Rudari, Sinti, Kaale, Calé (Gitanos), Calons (Ciganos), Yenish, Travellers, Romanichals, etc. There is practically no Gypsy/Romani community today which has not in some way been influenced by this religious movement, although evangelism has spread among them with varying success.
Despite the well-developed religious networks and the various missions and churches created for work among the Gypsies – often so numerous as to defy listing – the creation of associations was not intense. In most cases, the associations had influence primarily at local and regional level; few of them were internationally active on a wide scale. They helped develop church planting, provided support for the training and career growth of pastors, organized coordination meetings and seminars for preachers and their wives, created Bible schools, supported translating and publishing activities, projection of movies, broadcasting of radio and TV programs, social and humanitarian activities.
One of these organizations is Gypsy(ies) and Traveller(s) International Evangelical Fellowship, G.A.T.I.E.F., founded in the 1990s under the French METF, and headed by René Zanellato. It functions as a missionary organization working in Europe, America, Asia, and Australia. According to Zanellato, there are approximately 800,000–900,000 Roma in the world who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, and over 5,000 preachers who come from Romani communities (2002, pp. 1–2).
G.A.T.I.E.F. conducts educational, social, humanitarian, and medical activities in countries where Gypsies live in precarious conditions. Romania is a country in which the Fellowship is working actively (Laurent, 2014, p. 39). A home for abandoned children and orphans of Roma origin was founded in Transylvania and medical aid is provided by a mobile medical center; food and clothing are periodically supplied to poor families (Zanellato, 2002, pp. 1–4).
In addition to social and humanitarian activity, G.A.T.I.E.F. supports publishing activity. In 1994, Matéo Maximoff translated the New Testament into the Kalderaš dialect of Romanes with the cooperation of G.A.T.I.E.F. and the London Bible Society (Zanellato, 2002, pp. 1–4). With the association’s support, television and radio programs in the Romani language are broadcast in Ukraine, Russia, Estonia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. The association works with various churches and societies around the world: Full Gospel Fellowship of America, The Cornerstone Church, Gypsy Christian Churches Movement, Los Angeles Romany Church (USA), Gypsy Work Fellowship Trust of India, etc. (Dawson, 2002, pp. 1–10).
Centre missionnaire évangélique rom international, CMERI (International Romani Evangelical Missionary Center), an organization with headquarters in France, was created in the 1990s when it separated from the Life and Light Mission. Its members are preachers from the mutually related groups of the Kalderaš, Lovara, and Churara. Its members originate from France, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Canada, the US and other countries (Strand, 2001, pp. 58–59).
Partners of CMERI are various churches and organizations, such as Le Devleski Romany Kangheri (Romani Church of God, UK), Toronto Gypsy Christian Church (USA), and many others. CMERI is devoted to evangelizing among the Gypsies of Europe and North America and to establishing Bible schools.
The creation of special Romani missions attached to various non-Roma churches and associations is a continuing trend that already began in the 19th century. Some of these churches conduct targeted activities in poor regions, where it is assumed, Gypsies live in a difficult social and economic situation. They pursue evangelical, educational, humanitarian, and publishing activities. For instance, working within the Baptist organization Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), the European Romany Team was created in the early 1990s, with headquarters in Atlanta (USA) (Dawson, 2002, pp. 1–10). Its work strategy is oriented to creating independent churches through the support of pastors, and to implementing media programs for Roma in various countries of Europe (including Bulgaria), North America, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The CBF has published several Bibles in the Romani language with the support of the United Bible Society (heir to the British and Foreign Bible Society).
There are many other evangelical organizations focused on work among the Gypsies/Roma in Central and Eastern Europe, such as the Romany Gospel Wagon Mission and Inasmuch in Romania; the SunFlower Trust, which conducts charitable and evangelical work in Hungary and Romania; the Lutheran organization Liebenzell Mission, which founded the School for Education of Roma Christians in eastern Slovakia, and many others. They cannot all be enumerated here, nor is it necessary, for while some are being created, others are closing; in any case, they all have similar principles of activity.
In the next section, I shall discuss how the first evangelical missions developed among the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire; this will give the reader some knowledge of the atmosphere in that time and show why the missionaries later turned their attention to the Gypsies.
1.3 Early Missions in Bulgaria
In the period 14th–19th century, Bulgarians lived under Ottoman rule and had no state or church of their own. They lived outside the influence of the Reformation in Europe. In the 19th century, after the Ottoman Empire began constitutional, economic, military, and religious reforms, the Bulgarian population encountered Protestants for the first time (
These first missionaries came from Great Britain and North America, and their activity in the Empire was a continuation of their work in the Middle East (
A new stage in the dissemination of Holy Writ among the Bulgarians began after the Crimean War (1853–1856), which ended with the victory of France, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and their allies over the Russian Empire. Organized missionary activities began then, conducted by the American Board of the Commissioners for Foreign Missions (henceforth: the American Board), which was predominantly Congregationalists, and the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (henceforth: the Missionary Society) (
These two American evangelical societies deployed their preaching activity in separate geographical regions so as not to interfere with each other and to be as effective as possible in proselytizing. The members of the Missionary Society worked in the north of the land, between Stara Planina, the largest mountain of Bulgaria, and the Danube River, while those from the American Board worked south and west of the mountain in territories that are now not all part of Bulgaria (
The Methodists founded missionary stations from which they pursued evangelization in the northern cities Shumen, Varna, Veliko Tarnovo, Svishtov, Ruse, Lom and others. Gavril Iliev is considered to have been the first Bulgarian Protestant; he traveled as a colporteur for the British and Foreign Bible Society, later becoming a preacher at the Methodist society in Svishtov, founded in the 1860s (
Due to the growing importance of the American Board’s activity among Bulgarians, an independent mission was created, called “European Turkey Mission”, which had stations in Stara Zagora, Plovdiv, Samokov, Odrin, Istanbul, and later in Thessalonica (Nestorova-Matejić, 1985, p. 21;
Bulgarians were not the only community among which the missionaries of the American Board were working. As their own sources mention, activities were conducted among various communities; in addition to Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Mohammedans (at that time, the popular designation among adherents of Islam was Mohammedans, not Muslims), they worked among nominal Christians and pagans (Anderson, 1872, p. viii;
Other authors also point out that the first missionaries were impressed by the fact that part of the population was Christian only in name, which motivated them to think they should double their efforts to pursue evangelizing activity among them. For instance, in the 1850s, in touring the southern Bulgarian lands, the American preachers Elias Riggs and Theodore Byington were impressed by the lack of religious fervor among the local people; but a positive fact they noted was that the Bulgarian language, in which a complete translation of the Bible was later made, was spoken not only by Bulgarians but also by Turks, Jews and Gypsies (
Bible colporteurs were appointed as local aids to the foreign missionaries. They were paid for their work and were quite often the first emissaries of Protestant teachings not only among Bulgarians in various villages and towns but also, a little later, among the Gypsies. They usually worked for the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible Society. Although the two societies had common goals, the British Society worked mostly in the north, and in the late 1860s, established its first station in Ruse, while the American Bible Society collaborated with the American Board and the Bulgarian Bible Society, created in 1875 (The Missionary Herald, 1893, 89, p. 312; Wardin, 1991, p. 148;
In most cases, the foreign missionaries were accompanied by their wives, who were also their assistants. The preachers and their wives were usually educated young people who had graduated from prestigious colleges and universities in America (Reeves-Ellington, 2004, pp. 146–171). The women missionaries in the Bulgarian lands visited various settlements Bible-in-hand, focusing on the members of their own sex and, along with teaching religion, taught skills in reading and writing, in domestic work and the education of children (
At the time the first Protestants arrived, the growth of national awareness had begun in many regions of the Ottoman Empire. The initial national revival movements later grew into a struggle for political independence and ultimately led to the creation of modern nation-states in the Balkans. That was the time when the movement for restoring an independent Orthodox Church developed in the Bulgarian lands, in opposition to the monopoly of the Patriarchy of Constantinople and the Greek clergy. In 1870, the legitimacy of the Bulgarian Exarchy was recognized by a decree of the Sultan (
The Protestants were met with hostility by the Bulgarian population due to their foreign origin and their proselytizing intentions; they were able to reach the hearts of the local people mostly through their educational work. The creation of schools for boys and girls, often combined with boarding houses, proved a successful means of involving the missionaries in the local society during the national revival; this was the only unproblematic way for them to disseminate their religious ideas. There were such boys’ and girls’ schools in Plovdiv, Lovech, Stara Zagora, and Samokov (
Youths were also sent to be educated in Europe (Malta and other places) and North America (
In addition, Sunday schools were established at churches and kindergartens, evening literacy courses were taught for adult men and women, and language courses for youths. Summer Bible schools – both separately and jointly run by clergy of the Congregationalist and Methodist churches – were organized for men and women to keep them connected to the Protestant faith (Nestorova-Matejić, 1985, p. 32–33).
Printing also gained force in the Bulgarian lands at that time; newspapers and journals were published, and the Protestants contributed to this development. The purpose of their publications was to edify, educate and evangelize. Elias Riggs, from the American Board, together with the Methodist missionary Dr. Albert Long, began publishing the journal Zornitsa in Constantinople in 1864 and, a little later, a weekly newspaper by the same name, which was the first Protestant periodical in the Bulgarian lands (
Efforts continued to produce a translation of the Bible in vernacular Bulgarian that would meet the standards of the translators and of the people supporting their work. In 1871, after twelve years of labor, the first translation of the whole Bible came out with the support of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The people who worked on this translation were Hristodul Kostovich Sechan, Petko Slaveykov, Dr. Elias Riggs and Dr. Albert Long. The translation of the Bible was very important with regard to the standardization of the national language. Through this book, the Eastern Bulgarian form of the language became common to all Bulgarians (
Baptist missionaries also came to the Bulgarian lands before the Liberation (1878); these were most often travelling colporteurs from the British and American Bible Societies. The first Baptists to arrive came from the Russian Empire and did not abide by the agreements made between the earlier missionaries here. They mostly preached on the territory of the Methodists. In 1866, the German-speaking family coming from the village of Rohrbach, Nikolaevski District in present-day Ukraine, were chased away from there because of their Protestant beliefs and asked permission to settle in Northern Dobrudja, in the city of Cataloi (in present-day Romania) (
After the Russian-Turkish War (1877–1878), Ivan Kargel, a Baptist of German descent arriving from Saint Petersburg, visited the society in Kazanlak and was influential for strengthening the Baptist identity of the faithful there (
The achievements of the missionaries in the years before the Liberation were moderate and uncertain due to various factors. They had taken advantage of the favorable religious-administrative millet system in the Ottoman Empire, which allowed religious self-governance of the subjected population. The different ethno-confessional communities practiced their faiths in their own temples under their own ministers on the territory of separate neighborhoods in towns and villages.
The most varied of all was the Orthodox Christian millet, whose official representative was the Patriarchy of Constantinople; the Greek clergy gradually prevailed over other Orthodox clergies and imposed the use of Greek in religious services. In the middle of the 19th century, the Protestants were officially recognized as a separate community, designated as the Protestant millet (
Although in some cases the first missionaries – those of the American Board and the Missionary Society – used an individual approach to the local populations, attempting to win over the better-educated and wealthier Bulgarians, they generally used the ethno-cultural approach. They looked upon the people they were evangelizing as separate ethno-cultural communities, each with its specific way of life, and they hoped to reach the minds and hearts of the more literate among them, making of them local Christian elites, who, in turn, were expected to have a positive influence on their communities. The missionaries attempted to engage in conversation with the local population in places where people gathered, such as marketplaces, taverns, fairs, etc. (
It should be noted that the missionaries offered what, for those times, was a relatively good education, addressed to both genders and to various age groups: children, youths, and adults. They also made a considerable contribution regarding printing; the large-scale translation of the Bible, dating from this period, has always been recognized as an important event for the consolidation of the nation insofar as it established the standard for vernacular Bulgarian.
Despite these achievements in the fields of education and publication, no more than several hundred people became adherents of the Congregationalists and Methodists (
1.4 The Encounter of the Bulgarian Gypsies With the Evangelical Missionaries
The missionary efforts undertaken among these minority communities did not follow a straight course but had their ups and downs: while some people were converted, others wavered and left. Some of these later returned to the church community, while others did not or moved to some other evangelical community. The Gypsies were expected to become righteous Christians according to the preachers’ understanding of the term. In any case, both the missionaries and the Gypsies had things to learn about one another through their cultural encounters in the evangelical field, which ultimately created advantages but also gave rise to misunderstandings (more about the idea of the contact zone, see Pratt, 1991, pp. 33–40).
The missionaries adopted a civilizing approach, as they believed themselves superior to this minority group, deemed to be a sinful nation lacking in faith and culture. They believed the Gypsies had no religion of their own but simply adopted that of the surrounding population. The Gypsies had their own explanation for their lack of a religion. A story current among the Balkan Gypsies explains why they do not have a Church: “God made a church of cheese [or homemade bacon] for the Gypsies and a church of stone for the non-Gypsies, but the Gypsies got hungry and ate theirs” (
In the Bulgarian lands, the Gypsies were either Orthodox Christians like the Bulgarians or Muslims like the Turkish population, the Muslims among them being more numerous than the Christians. An 1877 survey of the population in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Thrace recorded 10,762 Christian Gypsies and 120,000 Muslim Gypsies in these territories (Crowe, 2007, p. 11).
The problems that the preachers came up against when designing their strategies for active work were based on the Gypsies’ nomadic way of life, illiteracy, and the goal of inspiring them with a sense of moral engagement. Unlike the situation in Western Europe, the initiative to establish a sedentary way of life did not come from the preachers. Sedentarization came because of economic changes in society (whether in the Ottoman Empire or, later, in the independent Bulgarian state) that gradually led to settlement, a trend that was desired by the Gypsies themselves. When the Protestants began their missionary work among them, many of these people were no longer nomads or were in course of settling in one place. Nevertheless, the problems related to sedentarization were long discussed in the periodical press and nomadism was pointed out as a Gypsy cultural feature that had to be eradicated.
The next problem the Bulgarian and foreign missionaries faced was Gypsy illiteracy. How were these people to be taught the good tidings and given religious literature when they could not read?
The Protestant preachers followed an ethno-cultural approach targeted at the whole group and began creating schools. However, they chose members of the community with a certain level of literacy, albeit not high, and then increased their literacy with a view to making them proselytizers. In times when not only the Gypsies but also the Bulgarians were not particularly well-educated, the Protestants offered training to young people of both genders; some individuals were even given the opportunity to study abroad to attract followers and light the spark of faith throughout the whole local community.
Missionaries preached to the Gypsies the rules of full abstinence from and rejection of alcohol and tobacco consumption: this proved a long task. Even today, this is a live topic in some churches. Abstinence is linked to moral engagement with the Protestant religion: people are expected to devote themselves to the faith and not to satisfying their bodily desires.
The missionaries – for instance the Baptists – in many cases began activities among the Gypsies spontaneously; later they felt encouraged by what they had achieved. Though they were influenced by prejudices, the desire to turn these people into righteous Christians prevailed and the preachers developed a certain tolerance towards them. The preachers were encouraged to pursue evangelizing activities among Bulgarian Gypsies, considering this a neglected group; they felt this to be a worthwhile mission. Here is what a foreign Baptist missionary in Bulgaria wrote in his report:
As far as I know, we are the only people who are doing any mission work among that strange race. And more than that, we are working among them with considerable success. Gypsies are indeed the most neglected people in the world as far as mission work is concerned … This work has been entrusted to us by the Lord and we shall do our best to bring them to Jesus. There is no country in the whole world where there is such a large number of Gypsies as in Bulgaria. We have more than 150,000 of them …
C.E. Petrick (The Baptist Herald, 1923, August 8, p. 12)
On the other hand, the Gypsies were not definitely opposed to being qualified as “the poorest of all mankind”, “the most despised”, etc. (The Baptist Herald, 1941, January 15, p. 27). They used this “play” with identification to their advantage, thereby manipulating the missionaries to obtain additional funding for their cultural and social projects. In their reports, some pastors used these qualifications to reinforce their demands for funding of ecclesiastical and cultural initiatives, such as the publication of hymn books in the Romani language, as well as various forms of support for Gypsies, such as building dwellings for them (The Baptist Herald, 1941, January 15, p. 27). They agreed to carry the negative image (albeit formally) that foreigners had ascribed to them, so long as this might serve higher aims, such as cultural growth and the general well-being of the community.
The Bulgarian missionaries had similar concerns related to certain ethno-cultural habits of the Gypsies that might possibly obstruct the task of evangelization. Various articles in the Baptist journal Evangelist emphasized the importance of the Gypsy mission; respectively, recommendations were made about how preachers should work with these people (
One of our holy songs tells us to go forward and upward. That is how our work among the Gypsies in Bulgaria may be characterized. The history of the mission among this people is a history of progress …
(Евангелист , 1931, 5, p. 2)
Some of the cultural specificities of the Gypsies raised concern among the missionaries. In the article “Some Remarks in Principles Regarding the Gypsy Mission”, published in issue 6 of the journal Hristiyanski priyatel, successor to the journal Evangelist, the author outlined the basic tasks of the missionaries and what they should pay attention to when doing evangelical work among the Gypsies: “Their nomadic way of life, their division into clans, and the common ownership of property, the practice of fortune-telling and their gift for music” (
Regardless of these concerns of Protestant preachers, missionary work has continued throughout the 20th century and to this day. In fact, the ones to achieve some successes were those who showed tolerance to what was different about the everyday life of the Gypsies, as we shall see in the next section. This was difficult for the foreign missionaries, although they assessed their activity positively on the pages of their periodicals; but their successors, the Bulgarian preachers, were able to do this better than them. Of course, this latter success would not have been possible without the evident spiritual and material support of the foreign missionaries. The first Bulgarian missionary workers among the Gypsies took a dialogical ethno-cultural approach, which, later, was further perfected by the neo-Protestant movements.
1.5 First Missions Among the Bulgarian Gypsies
Bulgaria gained its independence in 1878 after the Russian-Turkish War; thus, the Gypsies, together with others, became Bulgarian subjects (citizens). The country’s territory was divided into the Principality of Bulgaria, a vassal state to the Ottoman Empire, and Eastern Rumelia, an autonomous region within the Empire. The two united in 1885 under the rule of the first Bulgarian prince, Alexander I Battenberg, who remained in power for one more year. Other regions of Bulgaria, such as Pirin Macedonia and parts of Thrace, were joined to the Bulgarian territory in the early years of the 20th century. Alexander I was succeeded by Ferdinand I Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who was at first prince and, starting from 1908, tsar of Bulgaria.
The missionaries enjoyed privileges in the new state due to Batenberg’s favorable attitude to them: he was a Lutheran who worshiped in the Protestant church in the capital city Sofia. But Protestants were still few. In 1886, the Methodists had 65 full members, 24 probationers and around 150 people attending their Sunday services. The Congregationalists, for their part, had 553 members, 8 churches and about 1,400 persons attending their services (Wardin, 1991, p. 148).
After the country’s liberation, the number of Gypsies registered by regular population censuses gradually grew as increasing numbers of them became sedentary. In 1880, for instance, there were no officially registered people of this community in large cities like Varna and Sofia, but a few years later, in 1887, there were 618 in Varna and 1,231 in Sofia. In 1910, they numbered 3,534 in another large city such as Plovdiv and 2,360 in Sofia (Crowe, 2007, p. 12). At that time, however, most Gypsies lived in villages. According to the census in 1905, their total number was 99,004, of whom 20,545 lived in cities and 78,459 in villages (Marushiakova & Popov, 1997, p. 28).
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, some newly established missionary societies in North America and Europe, attracted by the possibility of expanding their activities, turned their attention to Southeastern Europe and Bulgaria, including the Gypsy population there.
The German Orient Mission, created in 1895, aimed to preach the Gospel among Mohammedans in Turkey, Persia and Bulgaria; it later undertook charitable activities as well. The mission’s leader was Dr. Johannes Lepsius, son of the founder of Egyptology in Germany. The city of Varna, in northeastern Bulgaria, was chosen to be one of the centers of religious activity among the Muslims (The Missionary Review of the World, 1911, 34, January, p. 66).
Pastor Johannes Avetaranian was sent to that city as missionary and preacher. A Turk by birth, Mehment Shukri later converted to the evangelical faith and adopted his Armenian name in honor of the man who had shown him the way to truth. His translation of the New Testament into the Uyghur language was printed in Bulgaria; this became one of the most important achievements of his life. He preached in Turkish and Armenian in Varna, Ruse, Shumen, Balchik, etc., while his German wife and main assistant taught German there. In the northern Bulgarian cities, he cooperated well with the Methodists (
Another missionary station among the Muslims was established in the city of Plovdiv, where pastor Avetaranian also worked, collaborating with the Congregationalists, and preaching in Turkish once a week (
A new German Mission was established in 1903, with headquarters in Katowice (today, Poland), where a school for missionaries was opened. The mission aimed to evangelize in regions with mixed population in southeastern Europe, among “Bulgarians, Magyars, Servians, Gypsies, Croats, Ruthenians …”. The newspaper does not make it clear whether the mission had concrete achievements among the Gypsies (The Missionary Review of the World, 1911, 34, April, p. 314).
At that time, the Gypsies were also an object of research interest. The well-known researcher Bernard Gilliat-Smith, who was British vice-consul in Varna, translated The Gospel of Luke into Romanes at the order of the London Bible Society (1912). He also published several articles on Romani dialects in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (Gilliat-Smith, 1914; 1915–1916; 1935); these works influenced further research. He was the first to classify the Balkan Romani dialects into two groups – Vlax and non-Vlax (Gilliat-Smith, 1915–1916, pp. 1–109).
At the beginning of the 20th century, Bulgarian Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists attempted to pursue missionary work among the Gypsies; they had some success in the borderline Danubian region. In 1909, a national union of united evangelical churches was established, with three denominations as members.
The first Adventist preachers arrived after the Liberation. They were of German origin and came from the Russian Empire. Settling in northeastern Bulgaria (
The history of the spread of Protestantism among the Gypsies began in Golintsi, a village in northwestern Bulgaria (
Golintsi was identified as a unique settlement in which the missionaries could exercise their evangelizing skills in a new, unfamiliar community; more importantly, the missionaries were encouraged by the fact that the Gypsies themselves had shown interest in the Protestant faith. The foreigners began their religious work here upon the foundation which the local Protestants had already laid. At that time, Methodists and Baptists were working among Bulgarians in Lom and the surrounding villages, sporadically turning attention to the Gypsies there. The latter included Orthodox Christian Rešetari, a group in course of settling and the first to be attracted to the Protestant faith, as well as a settled Muslim group – the Kalajdži. Although these Gypsies were generally illiterate, some of them had attained some level of literacy and were drawn to religious meetings out of curiosity, as to something new and interesting. The first missions were involved in small-scale development work; their interest in making progress with Gypsies was a core point that has continued to characterize evangelical activities to this day.
Petar Punchev, from the village of Golintsi, was the first ordained pastor in the world to preach in the Romani language (
Haskell, a missionary from the American Board, was the founder, in 1929, and director of the “Folk School” in Pordim, northern Bulgaria (today, it is a vocational agriculture high school named after him) (
As for Petar Punchev, he was born in 1882 in the nomadic family of Puncho and Nayda and was a duduk player (Fig. 1). Data on his personal life are scarce.
The first ordained Gypsy pastor, 1920s.
Source: Evangelist, 1924, 13–15, p. 1.
In 1903 he fell in love with “a young Gypsy girl, black like him”, aged around 20 years; they were wedded that same year in an Orthodox church (
Punchev’s first sermon was in the Romani language; in it, he asserted that one can preach in any language (
During the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), one of his followers, Todor Petrov went to fight in the war (he is also mentioned as Todor Petrov Erin(k)in in archive materials and in interviews with local people). He created two unique collections of translated or personally authored religious hymns in Bulgarian and Romani language, written in notebooks. Most of the songs were composed/translated between the 1930s and the 1960s; he signed them as composer and conductor. In the late 1920s, he indeed became the conductor of the church choir in the Golintsi church, most members of which were women (
To this day, a legend is told among the Gypsy residents of Mladenovo quarter in Lom about how they accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. This legend was frequently related in Baptist periodicals. The story goes like this: a Gypsy by the name of Bogdan Markov Selimov stole a Gospel (probably The Gospel of John) at the time he was working for two Bulgarian evangelists in Golintsi. Being illiterate himself, he gave the book to the brothers Todor and Georgi Erinkin. The brothers turned to the most literate Gypsy in the village, Petar Punchev, as pastor Lyuben shared in a conversation with me in 2003 in Lom, who pastored the Romani church at that time.
A briefer story is presented in issues 13–15, 1924, of the journal Evangelist. According to this version, a Gypsy named Bogdan, servant of a Bulgarian in the same village, stole a Gospel from the man’s house, but being illiterate, gave the book to Petar Punchev, who could read (
This legend was still written about in the 1990s. An article in Vitaniya, a journal published by the Baptist Union, specifies that the book was stolen by the Gypsy Todor, not Bogdan; the rest of the story is the same (
The legend, refashioned into a myth, relates events that happened “in the beginning”, in an initial moment lying outside time. For modern people, some of these myths are true, because they emphasize the importance of the described events (
The Methodists also held religious services among Bulgarians and Gypsies in Golintsi. Samuil Vasilev, in his brief history of the Methodist Church, gives interesting details about activities among the villagers. He writes that more than ten Gypsy families joined the religious society; but a man appeared (it is not clear whether this was Petar Punchev), who proclaimed himself pastor and bishop of all Bulgaria. He assured the locals that salvation can be achieved only through his church and appealed to them to join him, promising to appoint them as preachers and colporteurs; this caused some hesitation among the believers who had recently joined the Methodists (
At that time the Methodists expressed their support for building a chapel for the Gypsies. This was confirmed in December 1911 on the pages of the journal Hristiyanski sviyat, which published an appeal to its readers to donate money and aid the Gypsies of Golintsi, because “although they are very poor, they have undertaken to build a house of prayer” (
The first stage of formation of a religious society in Golintsi involved the legendary “theft” of the Gospel by Gypsies, who thereby discovered their new faith, and Petar Punchev, the first Gypsy to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior. It is not coincidental that he figures as the most important character in the story of the theft, for he was also the most literate of his people. Possession of knowledge was a key element in why Punchev was specifically the one to reveal the faith to other Gypsies, who had until then been looked upon as undesirable people by the surrounding population.
This legend became popular among the Baptists throughout the world. On May 28, 1931, the Canadian newspaper The Arnprior Chronicle published information about a play, The Stolen Testament, which portrayed how the Gypsies of Golintsi discovered the faith after stealing the Bible (1931, May 28).
1.6 Evangelical Outreach in Interwar Bulgaria
Bulgaria found itself in a situation of new political turbulence after the country’s involvement in a series of wars in the Balkans. According to Maria Todorova, the Western World turned its attention to this region after becoming concerned about the military clashes that came to be known as the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). The meaning of the geographical designation “Balkans” changed, and it began to be used in a broader political, cultural, social, and ideological sense. The adjective “Balkan” acquired a pejorative meaning both in daily and academic language (2009, p. 7).
Bulgaria took part in the First World War (1914–1918) on the side of Germany and Austro-Hungary. The country suffered two national catastrophes. Tsar Ferdinand I, accused of rashly involving his country in the Second Balkan War out of ambition to expand the territory of the monarchy (1913), abdicated from the throne in 1918 in favor of his son, Tsar Boris III. The latter held the throne until his death in 1943. In 1920, the Bulgarian Agrarian People’s Union, a party that had opposed the country’s entry into World War I, came to power (
The Gypsies lived in poverty, similar in this to the rest of the population. At that time, they numbered 98,451 people, most of them still living in villages (Marushiakova & Popov, 1997, p. 28). In general, the government did not meddle with the Protestants, except on a few occasions, when the state adopted policies of stronger national unity – for instance, after the coup d’état in May 1934, when, the Kimon Georgiev government banned all political parties. Protestants were subjected to some persecution but only episodically and mainly at the local level, by local authorities.
The religious context in the interwar period, however, was marked by intense competition between evangelicals, designated as “sectarians”, and the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church, through its clergy, sharply opposed local attempts at conversion of the population and the opening of new Protestant churches; in some cases, there were organized campaigns against the Protestants, and even of attacks on their houses of prayer.
Such campaigns were not exceptional, because in that period, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was interested in the Muslim Gypsies as well as in the Turks and the Bulgarian Muslims (called “Pomaks”). Attempts at conversion and renaming of these Gypsies were made occasionally; in fact, action to attract Muslims to Christianity had already started in the first years after the Liberation of Bulgaria and continued into the time of the Second World War (
The Baptists had about 350 followers in their churches in the early 1920s (The Baptist Herald, 1923, May, p. 12). We learn more about the other Protestant communities in the 1930s from information provided by the Bulgarian pastor Pavel Ignatov. The Congregationalist churches had more than 20 pastors, who led more than 4,000 members; the Methodist Church had 12 preachers in 20 churches and approximately 1,800 members, while, in 1934, the Adventists had about 420 members. In addition to these, there were two independent pastors – P. Minkov, pastor of the Gypsies, about whom I shall have more to say further on, and M. Prokopov, pastor of the Russians (
During World War Two, under the influence of Nazi Germany, new political inspiration and ideologies in Bulgaria had an impact on the lives of the Jews and Gypsies. Although the Jews were those most affected by the Law for the Protection of the Nation, published under the reign of King Boris III and in effect since 1941, and although the Gypsies were not specifically mentioned in it, the law had a negative impact on this community. Various decrees-imposed restrictions on hiring Gypsies to work, and their marrying Bulgarians was prohibited (Crowe, 2007, pp. 17–20).
The pastor of the Golintsi church mentioned cases when Gypsies had lost their jobs because of their ethnicity. The missionary press informed readers that porters and carriers employed on the docks along the river Danube had been left without a livelihood due to the anti-Semitic law (The Baptist Herald, 1941, p. 27). Although some Jews and Gypsies in the Bulgarian lands perished in Nazi concentration camps, the Bulgarian state and politicians became famous in history for successfully saving Bulgarian Jews and Gypsies from mass deportation (Crowe, 2007, p. 19).
1.6.1 Advancement of Evangelical Propaganda
Significant changes took place in the spread and organization of evangelical propaganda in Bulgaria in the interwar period. After the end of World War I, contacts with foreign countries were restored and a new stage began, characterized by the creation of many new missions, by plans and ideas for evangelization that appeared along with the gradual improvement of the country’s economy.
Besides the already established Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist and Adventist congregations, some new religious movements also spread at this time, such as the Pentecostals, who emphasized the shared experience of faith but also its meaning for the individual. The arrival of the American Russian Pentecostals in Bulgaria in the 1920s was met with concern by all the traditional Protestants, who feared the newcomers would attract part of their adherents.
The New York Pentecostal community sent some of its members to preach and create religious societies in Soviet Russia; these missionaries included I. Voronaev, D. Zaplishny and E. Kolshovsky (
The Pentecostals were quite flexible in their approach to evangelizing the population and to applying the innovative idea of healing through faith and the power of the Holy Spirit. They first worked among the population of southeastern Bulgaria and later expanded their activity throughout the whole country; at that later stage they managed to attract Gypsies to their religious communities.
A constituent council of the movement was held in 1928, at which a Union of Evangelical Pentecostal Churches in Bulgaria was created; its president was a Bulgarian who had returned from America (
Stoyan Tinchev declared his independence from the Union and from several related church societies in the region of the cities Pleven, north Bulgaria, and Pernik, near Sofia; he initiated a new Pentecostal current in a Bulgarian environment. There may quite possibly have been some Gypsies in the Bulgarian Tinchevist society in Pernik from the very start of its creation in 1929 (
The Tinchevists referred to their societies as the Church of God. The movement had a considerable development during the time of the communist regime, when it formed two separate groups: the Bulgarian Church of God and the United Church of God. In 1934, the Pentecostals had a total of about 2,900 followers in their churches (
In the interwar period, two seemingly contradictory ideas crystallized. On the one hand, the Gypsies were encouraged to create their independent religious societies, which were often led by trained pastors from their own community, while women were actively drawn into the churches. At the same time, it was assumed that Gypsies should be well-integrated into the Bulgarian evangelical movement. Although of a different ethnicity, they were seen by all, and not only by the Protestants, as part of the Bulgarian civic nation (Marushiakova & Popov, 2021, pp. 33–179).
Important changes took place in the world organization of Baptists. After the meeting in London in 1920, the evangelical work among the Gypsies in Bulgaria was assigned by the Baptist World Alliance to the General Missionary Society of the German Baptists in the US (The Baptist Herald, 1935, February 1, p. 48). A newly established Danubian Gospel Mission Field, with headquarters in Vienna, sent missionaries to work in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and other countries, mostly among Germans, Bulgarians, Turks, Gypsies, Jews and Russians living there (The Baptist Herald, 1935, March 1, p. 80).
In Bulgaria, the Danube Mission worked among Gypsies of all confessions; it also had influence in the border regions. Independent Baptist societies grew in the village of Golintsi and the city Ferdinand (today, Montana) in northwestern Bulgaria. Along with this, missions were sent to the Orthodox Christian Gypsies and Muslim Gypsies in the largest Bulgarian cities: Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, and Ruse (The Baptist Herald, 1926, February 15, p. 13;
In the 1930s, evangelical work began among the Catholic Gypsies in the region of Ruse, and among Muslims in the city of Vidin in northwestern Bulgaria, and Sliven and Chirpan in southern Bulgaria (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5,
At that time, female Bible workers from the Bethel deaconess home in Berlin offered to cooperate with the Danube Mission. They sent deaconesses among the Gypsies in Golintsi (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5,
The Bulgarian Baptists launched special missions to the Gypsies. In the 1920s, an Evangelical Baptist Mission for work with Bulgarian Gypsies was established in the city of Lom. Headed by the Bulgarian Baptist Petar Minkov, it published the monthly newspaper Svetilnik (
1.6.2 Gender Roles in Conversion
The publication of accounts of male and female conversions in the evangelical press was part of the notion of evangelization. It was assumed these stories would reach many people and make them believe in the power of God. The stories emphasized the struggle each believer had to wage daily. The conflicts these people engaged in were based on relations with husband/wife or other relatives, who usually opposed the decision to convert; but there were also stories of inner conflict, an individual’s struggle to resist worldly temptation and continue on the path of faith.
Men were attracted to the idea of entering churches as providing an opportunity for personal religious growth and material security, while women’s motives were both emotional and pragmatic. The women also lived in poverty, but they seemed to have a need to believe in God as a way of meeting daily challenges; additionally, religious participation gave women access to education, something that no one else was offering them at that time.
Other ethnic communities on the Balkans were also attracted by Protestantism and men and women had different motives for converting to this faith. The conversion of certain Ashkenazim Jews, as Bornstein-Makovetsky explains in detail, was influenced by the general secularization trend in European society in the last years of the Ottoman Empire and also had economic motives. Jewish men decided to convert for reasons related to career advancement, while most of the women converts took this step due to social distress or because they wished to marry non-Jews (2019, pp. 112–113).
Gypsy Petar Punchev from Golintsi received baptism in the Baptist church in Lom from Jacob Klundt, previously a colporteur of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Punchev’s life as a convert did not run a smooth course but wavered: he first rejected evangelicalism and, after the death of his mother, gave himself up to worldly life, but later returned to the church. He also had problems with his wife, who sharply opposed his decision to convert. She went so far as to tear up and burn the Bible. But with much patience and prayer, he succeeded in coming to terms with her (
Although Boyana, Punchev’s wife, at first did not accept her husband’s decision to convert, she later took the path of faith. She performed a good deed for the missionary C. E. Petrick. Petrick had arrived in Bulgaria in 1914 as the first inspector of the General Mission Society of the American German Baptists and served as pastor at the church in Sofia. In The Baptist Herald, he talked about the hardships he had experienced during World War I while living in Sofia (1923, August 8, p. 12). Hearing about his difficulties, that he was sick and hungry, Boyana sent him a large loaf of bread every week for about half a year; Todor, a Gypsy colporteur of Bibles, brought the breads to him in Sofia (Ibid.). Admiring Boyana’s care for him, Petrick called her a “missionary and benefactress” (The Baptist Herald, 1926, March 15, p. 7).
Baptism was usually performed in the open. Full immersion usually took place in natural water sources, such as rivers, under the guidance of a preacher and at no fixed time of the year: it could be performed in the winter season as well. Here is a description of baptism of men in Golintsi during the 1920s (Fig. 2); the story emphasizes that these men had a strong desire to be baptized.
The brother Gypsies in the village of Golintsi, who were added to the church during the month of February, in the greatest cold, through their baptism, carried out in the river Lom.
(Евангелист , 1925, 10, p. 77)
Water baptism of a man, the village of Golintsi, 1920s.
Source: Evangelist, 1925, 9.
The journal Evangelist related various dramatic stories aimed to impress the readers with the strong character of the people who had decided to follow the path of faith. One of the published articles talks about the baptism of three women from the Kalajdži Gypsy community (Евангелист, 1927, 7, p. 7). Petar Minkov, the author of the article, mentions a serious conflict that arose in the family of one of the women; on the day before the ritual, her husband forbade her to be baptized, threatening that he would chase her from her home. But she boldly insisted that she wanted to be baptized, and he later conceded and stopped opposing her faith (
The same issue of the journal Evangelist emphasized that baptisms were continuing in this region and indicated that two women and one man from the “Rashatari” (sieve-makers) “tribe” had been baptized in the month of June in Golintsi. Interestingly, the man in question had long expressed his desire to be baptized but this had not happened earlier for reasons beyond his control. It is mentioned that he once “traveled on foot almost 60 kilometers during the night in order to come and be baptized, but this too proved impossible” (Ibid.).
In a case that took place likewise in Ferdinand, a woman by the name of Marutsa had a non-believing but relatively tolerant husband, who allowed her to attend evangelical meetings. But when she wanted to be converted, he opposed her decision and said he would leave her. The Islamic religious leader in the city supported her husband’s words and told her that if she renounced her father’s faith, her husband would have the right to marry another woman (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5,
The power of these women, who dared to oppose their husbands despite the threat of abandonment, made a strong impression at that time, when evangelicalism was yet to spread among the Gypsies; most probably, the evangelical ideology was not fully understood and accepted by the converts or by their relatives and friends. Regarding women, the emphasis of newspaper articles was on how steadfast they were in opposing their husbands and the Gypsy tradition, the stories concerning men desiring to be baptized emphasized the firmness of their decision and their courage in fulfilling their intention.
Both in the past and today, water baptism of adults is the most important ritual, representing a personal promise before God that they will devote themselves to the faith, but also a public demonstration of their will. Although men and women will play different roles in the religious community after being baptized, during the ritual they are clothed alike, in white, symbolizing the purity of the person regardless of gender. The heads of women were covered with white scarfs, while the men wore hats, but they were all dressed in long shirts reaching down to their ankles, as we see on the photographs published in The Baptist Herald (Fig. 3).
Water baptism of men and women, the village of Golintsi, 1930s.
Source: The Baptist Herald, 1939, July 15, p. 266.
The Baptists were not the only ones to baptize men and women alike. The document “List of Actual Members” for the period 1929–1941 is part of the archive of the Evangelical Pentecostal Church “Vetil” (Bethel) in the city of Yambol, southeastern Bulgaria. The documents indicate that in the 1930s, four men and three women were accepted as new members in the church; they lived in the Rasheva neighborhood, and most of them had Muslim names, which makes me think they were probably Gypsies (
1.6.3 Church Life
Men were dominant in the life of the church because of their powerful position of missionaries, spiritual leaders, founders of the societies and organizations, and more generally, their role in evangelical propaganda in this period and later. Women, however, were important members of the church, a position that came naturally and not from purposeful efforts on the part of the missionaries. Women also held positions of power, albeit secondary ones. They were active as evangelizers and female missionaries, and in some cases held organizational positions in the religious associations, whereby they contributed to the development of evangelism. They also gave indispensable support to their preacher husbands.
The Gypsy religious groups founded in Golintsi and led by Petar Punchev continued to attract new members. In 1921, it officially became a branch of the Bulgarian Baptist Church (
According to information contained in a manuscript by Evtimiy Yolov, in May 1923, a group of men, consisting of five Bulgarians (three of whom later left and became Eastern Orthodox Christians) and 17 Gypsies (among the latter, Petar Punchev and Todor Erinin) gathered with the intention of registering the evangelical church. But the September Uprising, which took place that same year, prevented them from fulfilling their plan. The September revolts, organized by the communists, were an unsuccessful attempt to bring down the regime of Andrey Lyapchev’s Democratic Alliance (1923–1934), established after the coup d’etat of June 1923. It is pointed out in the manuscript that the meeting of the founders was held in the home of the Gypsy Rangel Manchev; later they gathered in the home of Petar Punchev. Domestic religious services continued until 1927, when the church was registered (
Punchev fulfilled certain duties as a preacher even before his ordainment in 1923. He had been appointed as a colporteur (
Punchev acquired a certain level of education, as befitted a preacher, but his early death prevented him from going beyond it. He may have been sent for religious training at the Bible school St. Andrä, founded in the 1920s near the city of Villach (southern Austria). Other preachers from Golintsi were also sent to this school. According to the Congregationalist pastor Hristo Kulichev, Punchev was sent for training abroad before he was ordained as a pastor (
Petar Punchev’s ordainment ceremony was held on 11 November 1923 in the church in Lom; this Gypsy temple continued to have a branch status. He appointed three deacons: Ivan Milenkov (Harti), Trayko Georgiev Tsaklov, and Ivan Kirkov (Chirikliyata), as my informant, pastor Lyuben, shared this information with me in 2003.
Punchev acquired the official authority to perform the sacraments of marriage, communion, baptism, and burial. For instance, in 1924 he performed the betrothal ceremony for pastor Georgi Stefanov and Todora Kostova, a Gypsy woman from the same village, who became the pastor’s second wife (
Punchev died at the age of 42 in 1924, but his wife Boyana remained a fervent evangelical. The memory of this Gypsy preacher, called “the Bulgarian Gypsy Smith”, was honored by the audience with rising to their feet at the annual conference of the Baptist Union held from 5 to 7 September 1925 in the village of Kovachitsa (Lom district) (
After his death, the religious society continued to develop, although without a preacher. Another 14 members joined, and the Baptist Union in Bulgaria was proud of this fastest-growing Baptist church at the time (
Todor Petrov was another young man who was encouraged to develop a religious career. He was the brother of the future pastor Georgi Stefanov (mentioned in archival materials and interviews under various family names, such as Erinkin and Irinin). Todor had completed elementary school. He was mentioned in the periodical press as a talented composer of spiritual hymns (Täufer-Bote, 1933, 1,
In the early 1920s, Todor Petrov was appointed as colporteur and sent to pursue missionary work in the districts of Sofia and Pernik. Besides being a musical conductor, he became the president of the Young Christian Society, founded in the late 1920s by the Bulgarian Petar Minkov (with Secretary Boris Avramov, cashier Zayko Marinov and councilors Yolo Traykov and Marin Petrov) (
The representatives of the Danube Mission Carl Füllbrandt (inspector at the mission and member of the board of editors of the periodical Täufer-Bote) and C. E. Petrick first visited the Gypsy community in 1925. In the photograph taken during their visit to Golintsi, the three men seated together on the bench are C. Füllbrandt, C. E. Petrick and Todor Petrov. Standing behind them are Boyana, Punchev’s widow, and other men and women from the congregation, some of whom are holding children in their arms (Fig. 4). These foreign missionaries, who came from the US, later continued to visit the church, which was the object of great interest for the international Baptist society (Täufer-Bote, 1930, 10,
Visit of missionaries from the Danubian Gospel Mission Field, the village of Golintsi, 1920s.
After Punchev’s death, a period of controversy began among the Gypsies, who were divided as to whether the church should remain independent or become a branch of the Bulgarian Baptist church in Lom. The pastor of the temple in Lom temporarily preached and performed religious services, such as the Lord’s Supper, in Golintsi (
Heated sessions took place in early 1926 to decide the future of the religious group (now numbering 41 people). Conflicts arose, accusations of indecent behavior were made and there was even fighting (
The group that insisted on independence numbered 20 people (six of them women), who signed the petition (Marushiakova & Popov, 2021, p. 143). Ultimately, on the session held on 29 February 1926, it was decided the religious society would become a branch of the Baptist Church, an opinion that won by a slim majority. Those members who disagreed with this decision had no right to form a separate church and none of the Baptist pastors would preach for them or provide the sacraments of communion, baptism, matrimony, or burial, although they could continue performing independent religious services in the neighborhood under the supervision of the Bulgarians (
Missionary activities among Muslims also grew. During the 1920s, an evangelical society was established in the city Ferdinand, with the Gypsy Baro Boev as preacher (
Minkov’s interest in the Gypsies arose in the summer of 1924 while he was on a professional trip to Sofia. He decided to visit the Gypsy neighborhood there, which then numbered 7,000 people, and distribute copies of the New Testament. His visit ended with very little success, for he found they were illiterate and could not read the Holy Writ. That is why he tried to engage them through oral testimony (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5,
Returning to the city Ferdinand, Minkov organized evening literacy courses there; he was aware that the Gypsies could not be made true Christians if he did not first educate them (
Baro Boev himself had a rather interesting story about his dedication to God, about which I found information in various sources. He had moved to Ferdinand from the village of Rasovo in 1924 and married Musti’s sister Velika. It is not clear whether he was a Baptist before settling in the city, but he may well have been, as there were some evangelists in his native village. He began his career as a colporteur (
Hanna Mein, one of the first deaconesses to come to Bulgaria to work among the Gypsies, who came from the Bethel deaconess home in Berlin in the early 1930s, knew Boev and collaborated with him; they visited various settlements together (Täufer-Bote, 1932, 5, p. 7). He was sent abroad for training, during which time his family lived on his preacher’s salary. When I talked with Boev’s 91-year-old son, Ezekiya, in 2019, he recalled a certain Sister Lydia, who had visited their home. This was probably the deaconess Lydia Döllefeld, who arrived from Berlin after Hana. Sister Lydia had visited the home when Ezekia was still a child, to convince Baro Boev to go abroad for training.
Writing about Baro Boev, Stoyan Markov describes the religious society led by Boev as Adventist; this is the earliest mention of the existence of a Gypsy Adventist church at that time. However, the author is probably wrong. Still, it is worth mentioning that in 1941, members of the Gypsy church in Ferdinand numbered 16 people, mostly young men and girls, who preferred to marry other evangelists. They believed their lives should be modeled after the lives of the apostles Peter and Paul (
We also learn about Boev’s preaching activity from a collection of published archive materials kept in the City Archive of Montana (formerly, Ferdinand). A letter from February 1940 sent by the district governor of Ferdinand to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religious Confessions informs that a total of 22 people confess the evangelical Baptist faith; their church was established in 1935. Their regular pastor was the Bulgarian Ivan Angelov, resident of Lom, and the usual prayer sessions on Sundays were led by his deputy Baro Boev (
According to the Bulgarian pastor Velichko Velev, the first Gypsy of this faith in Ferdinand was not Baro Boev but Tatar Shanov Arifov (
At the same time, during the 1920s and 1930s, evangelical work went on among Muslims in the regions of Plovdiv and Kazanlak (central Bulgaria); the missionary was the young Natanail Nazifov, a former Muslim, who had been baptized by the pastor Avetaranian. On the pages of the Baptist press, he talked about his activity among the Mohammedans in Plovdiv and the village of Stolipinovo (now a Plovdiv neighborhood with a predominant population of Millet), without, however, mentioning that he had worked among Gypsies (The Baptist Herald, 1926, February 15, pp. 12–13). In the 1930s, in Kazanlak, he published evangelical journal in Turkish and founded a school for illiterate Muslims (
Travelling preachers from various churches in Europe also showed interest in converting Muslims, which was a true challenge for them. Among them was the Dane Godfrid Peterson, who came in the 1920s to evangelize Muslims and began work in the same village of Stolipinovo, where he founded a school for Gypsy children. There he taught the children to read, sing spiritual hymns, and quote Gospel verses (Atanasov, 2008, p. 325).
In the 1930s, a pastor from the Hungarian Reformist Church also worked among the Muslim population in northeastern Bulgaria. Visiting Gypsy neighborhoods, he did not try to create a suitable setting to attract them to the faith but preached in the streets (
After his successful work in Ferdinand among the Muslims, Petar Minkov went to work in Golintsi, together with his wife. The conflicts in the Gypsy religious society ended when he was elected pastor; the representatives of the Danube Mission played a positive role in this development. The Minkov’s ordination ceremony took place on 13 June 1926 (
Under his leadership, church life really flourished. Minkov served as pastor of the Gypsy church, as Secretary of the Bulgarian Baptist Union, and as a missionary to the Gypsies. He was also editor-in-chief of the journal Evangelist. Minkov probably learned the Romani language (
In addition to the Young Christian Society, created at Minkov’s initiative, with Todor Petrov as president, a temperance group, a sister ministry, and courses in German at the Sunday school, were organized. Minkov began to prepare a Romani-language collection (
An important event took place in 1930: the building of the Gypsy church was completed that year. Members of the Danube Mission had provided funds for the purchase of a lot and the construction of the house of prayer. The Gypsies themselves contributed volunteer labor and made bricks for the building (Fig. 5) (Wardin, 1991,
The construction of the First Gypsy Church, the village of Golintsi, 1920s–1930s.
Source: The Baptist Herald, 1982, July–August, p. 13.
The opening ceremony took place on 28 September 1930:
The Gypsy Baptist Church in the village of Golintsi, Lom District, considers it a pleasant privilege to invite all evangelical churches in Bulgaria, through their representatives, to attend the ceremony that will take place on 28 September this year in connection with the consecration of a new house of prayer. Brothers and sisters may our joy be your joy as well! (Rom, 12, 15
From the church (а Ps. 133).Евангелист , 1930, 7,р . 12)
Due to the growing importance of the mission working among the Gypsy population in Sofia, in the 1930s Petar Minkov and his wife, left the Golintsi church (
At Minkov’s initiative, a Committee of the Gypsy Evangelical Mission was created; its constituent assembly was held in Minkov’s home in October 1932 (
Although the Committee did not include Gypsies in positions of leadership, it was oriented to their interests and to their development as an ethnic community within the evangelical movement. Its main objective is to:
[s]pread Christian morality and provide assistance for the spiritual, cultural and moral rise of the Gypsy nation. By creating and maintaining cultural and educational institutions – evening schools and other schools, orphanages, homes for the elderly, hospitals, etc., depending on the resources and in the exclusive interest of the Gypsies (art. 3)…
(КЦЕМ , 1932–1933,р . 11)
The Committee set itself the task of conducting a wide range of activities, but these efforts were like the ones Minkov and his wife had already begun in Golintsi: the creation of new religious groups, publication of periodicals, publication of religious literature, organizing courses for women (Fig. 6).
Members of the Committee of the Gypsy Evangelical Mission, 1930s.
In Sofia, religious gatherings of Gypsies are held in a rented room. The Committee established a Sunday school, which is attended by 70–80 children (
Bishop Neofit justified his refusal before the Holy Synod by stating that the Vidin Gypsies were not Americans but Bulgarian subjects, and he believed this mission was only meant to justify the large subsides received from America. Underlying this strong reaction of representatives of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was concern over the growing activity of evangelical preachers among the Gypsies and missionary intervention in the field of the Bulgarian Church’s religious work (Marushiakova & Popov, 2021, pp. 153).
The Committee carried out vigorous publication activity and News of the Gypsy Evangelical Mission was issued in 1933. An important part of this task is occupied by publications in the Romani language and Minkov was enthusiastic about working in this direction. The Bulgarian pastor Hristo Kulichev believes Minkov was the main driving force behind the translations of Gospels, booklets, collections of songs, etc. (
Not much is known about Atanasakiev but he was probably a Bulgarian who had good knowledge of the Gypsy dialects (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5, p. 8). The Gospel of Mathew was translated by him into the Kalajdži dialect. According to N. Boretzky’s, the language was Kalajdži mixed with some Erli words (Boretzky, 2000,
A new collection of songs was published in 1933 with the support of Petar Minkov (
In the next editions of songbooks supported by the Gypsy Evangelical Mission, a new name appeared as their compiler: Ioto Tatarev (
Various religious books, published in the 1930s and 1940s, were also used in missionary work among the Gypsies: Duvare Bijanipe (Double birth), 1933; O Del Vakjarel (God said), 1933; O Drom Uxtavdo (Te way upwards), 1938; E Saisko Kuibe, 1940, translated by Ioto Tatarev (
In the 1930s, Petar Minkov did missionary work in Romania (Ploscariu, 2020,
After the Minkov family moved to Sofia, another man took part in the management of the prayer house in Golintsi, continuing the tradition of maintaining an independent Gypsy church there but considerably extending the scale of its activities. This was Georgi Stefanov, the brother of Todor Petrov. Stefanov was born in 1900 in an Orthodox Christian nomadic family and attended elementary school.
Georgi had probably started his career as a Methodist preacher: a picture of him and his first wife, which dates from 1923, is found in the Archives of the Dr. Long Methodist Episcopal Church in Sofia (
According to his personal testimony, published in the Baptist periodical press, Georgi had decided to read the New Testament when he became seriously ill. This testimony contains no information whether he had been a Methodist before that. In 1917, his parents chose for him a wife, who proved to be a faithful Christian; he was later baptized in the Bulgarian Baptist church in Lom (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5,
According to his own testimony, after Punchev’s death, the Gypsies had chosen Georgi as their spiritual leader, but he left the faith, due to personal difficulties and gave himself up to a mundane life. After yet another serious illness, he promised to devote himself entirely to God (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5,
A story about the departure of the future pastor is current among Georgi’s relatives in the Mladenovo quarter. One night, as his daughter Magdalena told me in 2001, he dreamed that an angel appeared to him and told him to go to the train station on the following day and travel far away. It was a difficult decision to make, for he had a wife and little children to look after. When he went to the station next morning, he had neither money nor a train ticket; he did not even know where he was going. At the last moment, before the train departed, a man approached and gave his own ticket to Georgi. When the train arrived, there were people waiting for Georgi at the station, who lodged him in their home (
In his own narrative, however, he explains that he had thought of a practical way of finding resources for his trip: he had sold some of his work instruments to get money for a ticket (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5,
After graduating, he was appointed missionary to the Gypsies (Täufer-Bote, 1931, 5,
During his visits, Stefanov occasionally got into trouble, being driven away by local authorities. For example, he was called to conduct a wedding ceremony in the village of Archar, near Vidin. He first went to the village mayor to announce his mission but the mayor called the policemen, who “drove their fists into my face and into my body until I fell over in a stupor and could no longer cry out” (The Baptist Herald, 1937, February 15, p. 53).
He served as a preacher at the church in Golintsi (
The present certification is awarded to Georgi Stefanov, from the village of Golintsi, Lom district, 38 years old, a Bulgarian subject, in confirmation that he is ordained with the rank of pastor of the Evangelical-Baptist confession.
(Свидетелство за свещенослужителство , 1938,р . 41)
Georgi Stefanov was an able church leader, with a good education compared with others. Although a rather controversial figure, with rising and falling in the practice of a righteous Christian life, he considerably increased the influence of the Gypsy church thanks to his innate good sense and ambition. During his ministry, the religious community increased considerably in number; many of the local people attended his church and recognized it as their own. In the late 1930s, the church had 76 members (The Baptist Herald, 1938, November 15, p. 424), while on the eve of the Second World War, it had approximately 100 regular members (Wardin, 1991,
Pastor Georgi Stefanov summoning people to a religious service, the village of Golintsi, 1930s.
Members of the Young People’s Society in Golintsi, 1940s.
Two Sunday schools operating in those years, one in Golintsi and one in Archar, were attended by a total of 150 children (Täufer-Bote, 1934, 1,
The church in Golintsi continued to arouse the interest of foreigners and attracted quite a few visitors. For instance, in the early 1930s, travelling musicians from Czechoslovakia came to the village (Täufer-Bote, 1933, 11–12,
Another Gypsy youth, Aleksandar Georgiev Toshev (Shanko), a member of a church group studying German, was sent for training in Munich, Germany, but soon returned, as Europe was on the eve of a new world war (
Shanko played an important role in the management of the Golintsi church for several years, with interruptions probably due to his hesitation whether to continue working as a preacher or seek realization in another sphere. He impressed people by his good manners and erudition, although he was a cobbler by profession. He was the most respectable of all the Gypsy pastors, as pastor Lyuben highlighted this in 2019. His wife was a Bulgarian. A photograph of their wedding, published in the Baptist press, shows foreign missionaries attending the ceremony (The Baptist Herald, 1940, June 1,
Collaboration between Baptists and Methodists continued, as evidenced by the fact that, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Gypsy church in Golintsi was visited by Etzler, a Swiss missionary probably from the Gypsy Mission created in 1913 (SZM, 2013, p. 2). On a photograph dating from the 1940s, preserved in the Archives of the Dr. Long Evangelical Methodist Episcopal Church in Sofia, Shanko and his wife stand together with two Methodist pastors, one of whom is accompanied by his wife and by the missionary Etzler (Fig. 9).
Visit of the Swiss Gypsy missionary Etzler to Golintsi, 1940s.
1.6.4 The Role of Women in Church Life
Women were among the first regular visitors to the churches, which is why an attitude of tolerance and respect was established towards them. Foreign missionaries were impressed that the prayer hall in Golintsi was full of female believers enjoying the religious service (The Baptist Herald, 1938, November 15, p. 425).
Many of the successful missionaries and preachers owed their success to their wives. Such was the case of Petar Minkov, who received strong support from his wife Anna (Anka). Besides being a pastor’s wife and the mother of their child, Anna became very active among the women in Golintsi. At first, she had some prejudice against the Gypsies. In her reports, sent and published in the Baptist press, she mentions that she had been reluctant to sit at their tables and eat with them when visiting their huts to read the Word of God to them (Täufer-Bote, 1931, February, p. 7).
Over the years, she not only changed her behavior and way of thinking but also learned valuable lessons from the Gypsies. She aimed to train them, reeducate them in evangelical morality, and help them develop as women of the faith. Anna gathered with women at religious assemblies and taught domestic skills; at that time, she believed that, in order to be a valuable evangelical, a woman must undergo a complete change, and not only learn to read and write and pray to God several times a day (Slavkova, 2023a, pp. 79–105).
The Gypsy Christian Women’s Society “Romni” (“romni” meaning “woman” or “wife” in Romanes) was created in (probably) 1926. The choice of the name of the society headed by Mrs. Minkova indicated her intention to promote God among this minority community and to apply the approach of having Gypsies serve among their own people, which at that time was perceived as the only successful way to do missionary work (Slavkova, 2023a, pp. 94–95).
By the end of 1927, the society had 19 female members (Fig. 10). It organized women’s gatherings, evening parties, and charitable activities (
Members of the Christian Women’s Society “Romni”, the village of Golintsi, 1927.
Source: Evangelist, 1927, 12, p. 5.
In 1929 and 1933, Anna assisted her husband Petar Minkov in the translation and publication of collections of Romani spiritual songs. According to Wardin, Minkov’s wife, helped by Georgi Stefanov (1991, p. 153) did the main work on the publication of the first hymnbook (
In the meantime, the temperance society at the church elected a new board of trustees at its annual session in 1929, including the chairman Petar Minkov, the secretary V. Georgiev, and a woman, the cashier A. Marinova.
Anna Minkova was mentioned in the Baptist press as playing another important role, that of a healer. For example, on one occasion, when holding a meeting with the other women, she was asked to visit a sick woman and pray for her recovery (Täufer-Bote, 1932, 3, p. 8).
After the Minkovs settled in Sofia in the 1930s, Anka continued her activity among Gypsies and organized courses in sewing and knitting for girls as part of the work of the Gypsy Evangelical Committee (Fig. 11).
Anka Minkova and Gypsy girls at a training course in sewing and knitting, 1930s.
The evangelical press in this early period mentions one other woman as having the power to heal through her prayers. This was Keva Stefanova, daughter of Georgi Stefanov. She visited sick people with her father and, on one occasion, prayed for the healing of a girl who attended the Sunday school (it is not clear whether this healer was indeed Keva, as the woman is not mentioned by name in the report, but it probably was; at that time she was the only one receiving specialized training) (Täufer-Bote, 1933, 1, pp. 7–8).
This Gypsy woman had an interesting life story. Keva was born in 1917 or 1918. Thanks to the assistance of the deaconess Hanna Mein, the girl was sent in the early 1930s to take a special course in the Bethel Deaconess Home in Berlin (Täufer-Bote, 1933, 5,
Having become a trained missionary, she was a cause of pride for the Baptist community and one of the first Gypsies to hold the title of “sister” (in the sense of a woman of moral purity) (Fig. 12). Her dedication to God was an achievement of the Danube Mission as well, as she exemplified the mission’s successful work among the Gypsies. Keva was introduced at various religious services of sisters in the churches in Budapest, Bratislava, etc. Thus, a film about the mission to the Gypsies, shown at a meeting in Budapest, presented the activity of “our dear Gypsy sister”; the audience was interested to personally meet this “dark brown” sister, about whom they had read in Täufer-Bote (1933, 6–7, p. 9).
In 1935, Keva married Zlatko Zlatkov Manchev (Kotlar), who was a coppersmith. Carl Füllbrandt married the young couple, and Lydia Döllefeld, who had come from Berlin at that time to work with the Gypsies, was an honorary guest at the wedding. The ceremony was described as an example of cultural and spiritual blessing coming from the Gospel. After the ceremony, Zlatko’s father invited the guests to his home and expressed his pleasure that his son was marrying a “European” (The Baptist Herald, 1935, September 1,
It is not clear whether Keva had assisted in the deaconess home in Lom, but after it was opened in 1939, Lydia Döllefeld and Emma Hermann continued to organize meetings there, at which young women from Golintsi were taught sewing, knitting and housekeeping skills (
Keva had another daughter, Frieda, named after the Baptist pastor Theodor Angelov’s mother, an Austrian woman who had come to Bulgaria in the 1930s to look for a job as a teacher of German and had married the Bulgarian pastor Ivan Angelov, who had also studied in the Bible school in the city of Villach; the family lived in Lom and were often invited to the Gypsy church as honored guests. Theodor Angelov himself remembered these visits to the church as one of his best childhood memories, as he shared in 2022 because when it was winter, after the end of the service, he went home with a sleigh since Golintsi is located at a height and the road to city descends along the river Lom.
The Baptist church in Golintsi became an institution of Gypsy self-governance; while there were cases of acceptance and rejection of the faith, the church organized the cultural and social life of these people. Most of the time, the prayer house was led by Gypsy preachers who were in close or kinship relations with one another. This means there was continuity in the leadership and indicates the church had become an authoritative institution for the community. The temple continued to function during the socialist period, and the women continued to stand by their husbands and help them in work for the church, as we will see in the next section of this book.
1.7 Establishing Home Churches Under Communism
The establishment of the socialist regime of government for a period of 45 years (1944–1989) had an impact on the life and social development of the Gypsies. The policy pursued during the years of communism was modeled after the Soviet one and the attitude towards this minority was similar to that towards the other ethno-confessional groups in Bulgaria. But it was not a consistent policy. The initial idea to recognize the Gypsies as an important ethnic group in the composition of the Bulgarian nation, involving support for their cultural and educational initiatives, was replaced by complete denial of their existence as a community (
In any case, the ruling Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) strived to instill in them a feeling of ethnic and civic socialist consciousness separate from their religious identity. The freedom of religious belief and the practice of rituals were severely restricted for all citizens, including by through repressive measures.
During the 1940s, the Gypsies experienced several years of cultural revival, for they were supported in creating their own cultural and educational institutions, in which the Romani language was used. Such were the United Common-Cultural Educational Organization of the Gypsy Minorities in Bulgaria “Ekipe” (Unity), headed by Shakir Pashov, who became known as the first Gypsy national parliamentary representative. The Roma Theater was established, as well as several Gypsy schools (
The policy of promoting the development of the Gypsies as a specific ethnic group included the publication of periodicals, such as Romano Esi (Romani Voice), substituted in the late 1940s by the Nevo Drom (New Way), which later, in the 1950s, was renamed Neve Roma (New Roma), and then got back its old name Nevo Drom. The editor of Neve Roma was Sulyo Metkov (
During the 1950s, the policy of the BCP abruptly changed. The official mention of Gypsies in population censuses was eventually prohibited. The 1956 census, the last in which they were mentioned as a separate ethnic group, registered 197,865 persons declaring themselves as Gypsies (Crowe, 2007, p. 22). Decree No. 258 of the Council of Ministers, published in 1958 and devoted to “Regulating Issues related to the Gypsy Population in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria”, prohibited vagrancy and begging. All citizens were obliged to be occupied in socially useful labor. This was one of the state’s most important acts related to nomads; in fact, it coincided with the sedentarization that had already begun: at the end of the 1940s, the nomads numbered no more than 15,000 (Stoyanova, 2019, p. 473). Some of them, however, were displeased with this.
New decisions of the Central Committee of the BCP issued in the 1960s and 1970s aimed to prohibit the display of Turkish identity among the Gypsies and other Muslims and referred to the active inclusion of the Gypsies in the construction of socialist society (
The 1980s were the time of the last phase of a specialized policy towards the Gypsies; it coincided with the so-called Revival Process. This campaign, begun in the 1970s and ended in 1989, aimed to coercively assimilate the Muslim population of Bulgaria. The obligatory replacement of the Muslims’ Turkish-Arabic names with Bulgarian names included the Gypsies at one of its peak moments in 1984–1985 and affected approximately 180,000 people of this ethnic group (
The Revival Process ended in 1989 when approximately 350,000 Turks submitted requests to be issued passports and left for Turkey; among them were several Gypsies identifying as Turks. Some Turks returned after the end of the socialist regime, but others remained in Turkey (Eminov, 1997;
Along with the assimilatory policy applied during certain periods towards all ethno-confessional communities in Bulgaria, we should point out the contribution of the socialist government to the education of the Gypsies. School attendance became obligatory for all, just as work employment became obligatory for all able-bodies citizens of the socialist state (
We cannot understand the development of Gypsy communities and churches and their situation today without considering the specific attitude of the communist government towards them. It was aligned with, and no different from, the attitude towards all Protestants.
Protestants in Bulgarian were still looked upon as “sectarians”, moreover, it was believed they were very active in maintaining their faith and, thus, particularly dangerous. All denominations faced very difficult times. The contacts of local religious communities with centers abroad, from which they received spiritual and material support, were interrupted. The Law of 1949 placed the churches under the control of the Committee for Religious Affairs, which regulated the international relations of the religious bodies. The Danubian Gospel Mission was closed. The communist regime allowed no communication with foreign missionaries and forbade foreigners to speak at religious services (Wardin, 1991, p. 154). Their periodicals were stopped, and no literature was published (
Some religious buildings were closed or were expropriated by the authorities and used for other purposes. Other churches went on working, but with pastors imposed by the ruling power.
For the families of Bulgarian Protestants, the most traumatic events under communist rule were those when their fathers and husbands were sent to prison or to labor camps. In February 1949, during the so-called “trials of the pastors”, 15 Bulgarian preachers holding key positions in their denominations were brought to trial. Eight of them received the harshest sentences – life imprisonment in four cases and 15 years of prison in the other four (
Some of the Bulgarian pastors were sent without trial to communist labor camps and their families were interned, i.e., forcefully relocated in faraway towns or villages, which they had restricted rights to leave. Such was the case of the family of pastor Bozhidar Igov, whose father, a Baptist preacher, was sent to a labor camp in the late 1940s (Angelov, 2001, p. 15). The 14-year-old Bozhidar, his mother, and his brother were interned in Golintsi; the Gypsies from the church aided the family during those years of hardship.
The Union of United Evangelical Churches was abolished in 1949. The communist authorities exercised severe pressure on the churches. In spite of this, the evangelical movement among the Gypsies did not disappear. Although it was prohibited to hold meetings in private homes, the existence of the so-called “home” churches was typical for the majority of evangelists. They provided a place for establishing close relationships in praying together and learning about the Christian worldview. These groups continued to exist under the communist regime regardless of whether their church buildings had been closed or not, because it was in any case safer to meet in private houses. The Gypsies, as well as the Bulgarians, gathered in private homes (usually the pastor’s home) under various pretexts, such as family holidays or birthdays.
They met regularly to pray, sing, read passages from the New Testament, and share meals and soft drinks. Participation in a domestic service meant that one was keeping faith in God and growing as a Christian. In some cases, the women outnumbered the men in these home churches, and the situation was in a way favorable for the female participants. Although men were the heads of these churches, the female believers gained confidence that they were an important part of these societies, maintaining the faith not only by praying several times a day but also by attending the services and leading some activities such as collective singing and others. The wives of pastors played an important role in helping their husbands organize religious services and in carrying out some practices such as services for sisters. Without making any special efforts in this respect, the pastors’ wives became equal partners with their husbands in maintaining the faith and preserving the religious societies.
The home church movement was typical not only for Bulgaria: it has also developed in Latin America. Elizabeth Brusco asserts the importance of domestic worship services, which are usually attended by female believers. Most importantly, the female members often take responsibility for leading the prayer, Bible reading, and hymn singing (1995, pp. 129–134).
The first Gypsy church in Golintsi was not permanently shut down. It went through dynamic events, involving dismissal and change of pastors, followed by comparative stabilization of church life and assertion of the role of women in the church – all this, under the surveillance of the communist authorities. In 1946, the congress of Baptist Churches, held in Varna, decided that the Bulgarian pastor Ivan Angelov would assume leadership of the Gypsy prayer house (
According to some informers, before Angelov, the Gypsy Aleksandar Toshev had headed the church in Golintsi upon returning from Sofia, where he had worked as a musician in the Tsiganski Tabor orchestra, as pastor Lyuben from Lom told me in 2019. The Gypsy activist Sulyo Metkov from Sofia was personally acquainted with Aleksandar Toshev; according to Metkov, Toshev had been an actor in the Roma Theater in the late 1940s.
Whether he assumed leadership before or after the Bulgarian pastor, Toshev did indeed lead the religious society for a short while. In 1948, the name of the village was changed from Golintsi to Mladenovo, and in the 1950s, the village became a neighborhood of the city of Lom.
In the early 1950s, Georgi Stefanov took over leadership once again, but unofficially, as he had been dismissed by the Baptist Union for improper conduct; however, there was no one else to fulfill the function of preacher at that time. In the mid-1950s, Georgi’s brother Todor Petrov was preacher there for a short while. This is confirmed by evidence in one of the songbooks kept in the archive of the Gypsy church in Lom. Under one of the songs (“Weeping of the Gypsy Church”, no information about the year), the composer T. Petrov wrote that the song was “revealed” to him in his sleep one night (Fig. 13). Upon waking, he wrote down the words the spirit had sung to him and composed the music to the lyrics. According to him, this happened at the time when Georgi Stefanov was pastor of the church; but Stefanov had been condemned and excluded forever. Petrov went to the prayer home that day, preached and sang the new song, which made all present weep (
Collection of religious hymns, 1910s–1950s.
There was one more Baptist (Bulgarian) church in Mladenovo at that time. Its building was officially opened in the 1950s but was later closed when the pastor was sent to prison for his faith. There was a plan to turn the building into an Atheist’s Club, but this did not happen, and the church remained shut. After the changes that began in 1989, the church was revived by local people and became known as Second Baptist Romani Church, with preacher Natsol Zaykov (Nachko), who recognized the Bulgarian Petar Trashliev, the church’s first pastor, as his spiritual teacher and mentor (Fig. 14). Pastor Zaykov mentioned that he had been harassed by the authorities under the communist regime. He had been summoned to the police for being an evangelist and threatened to be sent to the labor camp in Belene; this remained only a threat.
The pastor of a Romani Baptist church, Lom, 2021.
Meanwhile, Baro Boev continued to lead the church in Ferdinand, a city that was renamed Mihaylovgrad during the socialist period. From the data contained in the document “Declaration under Oath” (
Pastor Baro Boev and his wife, circa 1920s.
During fieldwork among the Roma in the city of Montana in 2019, I talked to the daughter of Musti, a brother of Baro Boev’s wife. Persida added the information that Musti had been the pastor after Boev’s death. The religious society in Mihaylovgrad continued to be ethnically mixed after the Changes led by the Romani pastor Rumen (son of the pastor Shakir), as Bulgarians and Gypsies both took part in the religious services, but then it was divided into Romani and Bulgarian Baptist church.
The leadership of the Gypsy church in Lom was assumed by Georgi Stefanov’s son-in-law Zlatko Manchev in the 1950s. Religious life seems to have become stable, as he was preacher for approximately ten years. According to interlocutors from Lom, despite his controversial position as both a religious leader and a member of the neighborhood Fatherland Front committee, Manchev was respected by the Gypsies and a good preacher.
After Ivan Angelov was released from prison in the 1950s, he returned to Lom and resumed leadership of the Bulgarian Baptist church. He was occasionally invited to the Gypsy prayer house together with his family, and while he preached, his wife Frieda dealt with the women and children. Angelov and his wife supported the Gypsy women in their efforts to continue the path of righteousness and devotion to the faith (
Although visits from foreign Protestants were generally prohibited, scholars and missionaries made a few visits to the church in Golintsi during this period. For instance, in the late 1960s, the Baptist historian Albert Wardin came to Lom, met with Ivan Angelov, and visited the Gypsy religious community, as pastor Theodor Angelov remembered (
Before Zlatko Manchev’s death in the late 1960s, Keva carried on missionary work together with her husband; after his death, she continued to play an important role in the community. Despite her poverty, she took care of her large family; she also looked after the church. She kept the keys to the building, which was supposed to be closed, kept the hall clean and in order, and looked after the yard. More importantly, her opinion carried weight and she was able to give advice to the men and replace them in the performance of services, although she was not officially appointed to any position. The only thing she could not do was to make decisions on behalf of the religious society without consulting the men. At that time, in the 1970s, the services were occasionally led by her father and Keva helped him maintain the church (Slavkova, 2021,
According to pastor Lyuben from Lom, before his death, Aleksandar Toshev had once again taken part in the management of the church. According to the Gypsy activist Gospodin Kolev (an instructor from the Central Committee of the BCP), who visited Mladenovo neighborhood in October 1980, the church preachers at that time were Zlatko Manchev (assistant pastor) and Aleksandar Toshev (pastor). Most probably, this information refers to a slightly earlier time, if we compare it with data provided by informants. The author describes Toshev as a tall, blue-eyed, 55 or 56-year-old man with a calm and gentle voice (
The weather was bad for the season: a cold wind, muddy streets … The worshippers, dressed in slightly more official clothes, headed for the church … We did the same … We found ourselves in an incredibly clean hall … Aleksandar talked in this vein for about 40–50 minutes. The women listened to their pastor very attentively – not a sound, complete silence …
(Колев , 2003, p. 183)
Kolev visited the neighborhood and the church again a few years later, and in his memoirs, mentions a woman who kept the keys to the church, took care of the building and cleaned the hall; he does not mention her name, but this was probably Keva. He expresses his positive impression of the coziness and cleanliness of the house of prayer; yet, the woman apologized to him several times that, as she had not been informed of his visit, she had not prepared the hall for guests; all this was in contrast, Kolev writes, with the situation in the neighborhood Fatherland Front club, which was dirty and had cobwebs (
The 1970s, which were unstable years for the church, ended with the appointment of Yosif Todorov Petrov (son of Todor Erinkin) as preacher. He had been ordained in Varna and remained in in the position of preacher in Golintsi until his death in the early 1990s (
The evangelical movement among the Gypsies expanded outside Golintsi as well, even incorporating relatively new denominations such as Pentecostalism, which created societies in several new regions. Pentecostalism continued to develop and strongly took root among the Gypsies in the region of Yambol. Pavel Pavlov, who came to be known as Brother Shaban, became an important figure in the movement during the 1940s (Atanasov, 2008,
Shaban insisted on the importance of a modest way of life and was opposed to the celebration of personal feasts, watching TV and other modern amusements. He preached to domestic groups in the Gypsy neighborhood of Yambol together with Ibryam. Two other followers of his in the 1970s were Mehmed and Yusuf, with whom he went on missionary trips throughout the country. Brother Shaban’s fame quickly spread among Bulgarians and Gypsies, for it was believed his sermons and prayers could heal even seriously ill people. Sister Duda also did missionary work, and the personal archive of Pastor Shaban’s daughter contains a photograph of Duda with two other Gypsies from the village of Semchinovo, southern Bulgaria, and a blind child in a wheelchair. Judging by the photographs preserved by his daughter Anna, Shaban maintained ties with other Romani pastors, including those in Lom, whom he visited in the 1970s (Fig. 16).
Pastor Shaban (standing on the right) with fellow pastors, Lom, 1960s–1970s.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Pentecostal ideas spread among the Gypsies in Sofia, in cities in northwest Bulgaria (mainly Lom, Montana, and the region of Vidin), as well as in the regions of Pleven, Lukovit, Kazanlak, Kotel, Sliven, Stara Zagora, Nova Zagora, Sandanski, etc.
Gypsies in various Sofia neighborhoods became members of illegal churches led by Bulgarians. For instance, people gathered in domestic religious services in the home of Pastor Boris Ignatov; the first Gypsy to attend was Gana Mitrova, who went there in 1979; her family were Baptists from Lom (Atanasov, 2008,
After the changes that began in 1989, independent churches in the Gypsy neighborhoods were formed out of domestic religious groups. Such were the Gornitsa Church of God in the Hristo Botev neighborhood, the religious society in Filipovtsi neighborhood, and many others.
The penetration of Pentecostalism in Lom related to a concrete case. One of the first believers was Iliya Cherniya (the Black One), who was diagnosed with brain tumor. Thanks to God, he was cured. A Gypsy religious society was formed around him; their meetings were held in the neighborhood Humata, near Mladenovo. Humata was established as a Gypsy village of settled nomads in the 1930s. Georgi Stefanov, who was pastor in Golintsi at that time, began to preach among them. Women there were the first to be interested in listening to the Word of God (The Baptist Herald, 1939, July 15, p. 266).
Adventist missionaries worked with some success in the city of Kyustendil, western Bulgaria, during the 1960s and 1970s. Lyato Bayramov Usev, from the Gypsy neighborhood Iztok, became acquainted with a Bulgarian Adventist family. For several years, he was the only follower of this faith in the Gypsy community of Kyustendil. Later, his brother Nedo Usev met other missionaries and formed a domestic worship group. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nedo Usev’s son began to do missionary work among the Gypsies in the Blagoevgrad region, southwestern Bulgaria (
The story of my informant Sulyo Metkov from the capital city Sofia, a famous Romani intellectual and activist, who served as editor of the first Romani newspaper in Bulgaria, Neve Roma (New Roma) and an employee in the editorial office of the newspaper Kooperativno delo (Cooperative work), is also connected to Seventh-day Adventism. Despite the disapproval of the Communist Party, who wanted to discontinue publication of the Romani newspaper, he could keep it going for a while at his own expense. In the 1940s, he married a Gypsy woman, who, while still living in her native town Lom, had visited the First Romani Baptist Church there. After their marriage, the couple moved to Sofia, where she began to visit an Adventist home church, keeping this a secret from her husband, who at that time was a supporter of communist ideology. After a few years, he changed his views radically, becoming a believer in God, and joined his wife in worship. He converted in the early 1960s. Sulyo Metkov became a significant figure in the development of the Adventist movement in Bulgaria; he translated the New Testament and the Book of Daniel into the Erli Romani dialect (
Under the Bulgarian communist regime, the freedom of religious confession and ritual practice was systematically restricted; nevertheless, a large share of the Gypsy churches continued to exist; some of them even functioned as ethnically mixed societies of Bulgarians and Gypsies. Worshippers gathered for religious services in homes, and domestic services became an important form of religious practice during the time of persecution of evangelists. Women created a special atmosphere in these illegal churches through their diligence in prayer and hymn singing. During this period, the Pentecostal movement became widespread among the Gypsies, and Adventism took its first steps among them.
1.8 Revival of the Romani Evangelical Movement in the Post-Communist Period
In the context of political changes taking place in the Soviet Union and other communist countries in Eastern Europe, dramatic changes began in Bulgaria in November 1989 with the resignation Todor Zhivkov, the country’s president and First Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The rights of the hitherto prohibited Protestant societies and churches were restored. While some evangelists, such as the Pentecostals, had managed to maintain a decent number of adherents – approximately 13,500, others, for instance, the Methodists, were much weakened and were hard put to expand their activity (Wardin, 1991, p. 156). After a long period of prohibition to practice their religion and of persecution of preachers, the Methodists had only three remaining church buildings – in Shumen, in Ruse, and in the village of Hotantsa near Ruse.
In the meantime, the Pentecostals had broken down into different religious bodies and formed separate unions – the Evangelical Pentecostal Church, the Bulgarian Church of God, and the United Church of God (which later became the National Alliance of United Churches of God). Their fragmentation into separate confessions, denominations and churches has continued dynamically during the whole post-communist period. Thus, several churches were founded: the Sion Christian Church, the Shalom Evangelical Church of Christ, the Messiah Christian Church, and many others. The separate churches became members of world Protestant organizations and international evangelical movements with headquarters in Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere, under the influence of which they changed their religious outlook and way of worship.
Although less numerous than the Pentecostals, the Adventists and Baptists found it comparatively easy to restore themselves after state pressure on them ended (Wardin, 1991, p. 156). The Adventists have broken up and exist under various associations, such as the Union of Churches of the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Church of Seventh-Day Adventist Reform Movement, the Church of Seventh-Day Adventist Reform Movement at the General Conference of the International Missionary Society, etc. The Congregationalists, for their part, managed to restore their churches and bring back some of their adherents, expanding their influence among the minorities.
The Protestant denominations were officially confirmed during the 1990s by the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Bulgaria in accordance with the Religious Confessions Act. Old church buildings were restored, property was returned to them by the state, and new religious buildings were erected. The publication of evangelical periodicals began again and connections with similar organizations abroad were restored; for instance, the American Baptists were interested in reviving their activity in the Danubian mission field (Wardin, 1991, p. 156). According to the 2001 Census, the Protestants officially numbered 42,308 people, and their number reached 64,476 by 2011 (
The largest supra-denominational evangelical organization is the Protestant Alliance (successor to the Union of United Evangelical Churches), which is a member of the World Evangelical Alliance. It renewed its activity after 1993 and its traditional members were joined by newly created churches. Its current members are the following denominations:
Union of Evangelical Congregational Churches (known as Congregational or, shortly, Evangelical Churches);
Evangelical Methodist Episcopal Church;
Union of Evangelical Baptist Churches;
Union of Evangelical Pentecostal Churches;
Bulgarian Church of God;
Blaga Vest (Good Tidings) Bulgarian Evangelical Church;
Shalom Evangelical Church of Christ;
Sion Christian Church;
Bulgarian Church of the Nazarene;
Bulgarian Free Church;
Church of God;
Messiah Christian Church;
Community of Evangelical Churches of the Faith.
Some of the Protestant congregations and association in Bulgaria that are officially registered in accordance with the law are not members of the Alliance and have their own organizations. Such, for instance, are the Bulgarian Lutheran Church, the Union of Churches of Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Apostolic Reformed Church, the Free Evangelical Baptist Church, the Balkan Evangelical Church, Christian Alliance “Rekata” (River), etc.
In the early 1990s, through the Bulgarian Bible Society, a member of the world organization of United Bible Societies, new translations were undertaken of the New Testament and the whole Bible into modern Bulgarian. The Bible was published in 2013; a little later, its text became accessible on the Internet and in a version for mobile devices. Some minority churches actively use these modern formats for reading the Holy Writ.
In Bulgaria, the door became wide opened to new spiritual movements, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (better known as Mormons), the Unification Church (the Moonies), Word of Life, Krishna Consciousness Society, Transcendental Meditation, Scientology, the Baha’i Community, etc. Their beliefs are far from the Bulgarian Protestant tradition and are perceived by the evangelicals as pseudo-cults; nor are they popular among the Roma. It became clear that democracy has its inherent difficulties and that religious freedom is not so easy to implement. The majority of Bulgarian citizens treated the new religious movements and cults as “sects”, as they had previously treated evangelicals, and this attitude towards them has not completely disappeared to this day (
Among the Gypsies, the post-communist period has been characterized by several religious processes that differ in intensity and dynamism. This ethnic group has been designated as “Roma” during this period, a name that is considered politically correct.
The evangelical religion went through a true upsurge after 1989, for many people in the transition period needed faith, of intense social communication and support; the evangelical churches gave them just that. The large presence of old and new movements in Bulgaria provoked a counter reaction. Negative attitudes towards them as “sect members” arose with new force and there was an extreme polarization of opinion and strong mistrust toward the members of evangelical churches. Usually, no distinction is made between the long-popular churches of the Congregationalists, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Adventists, and the Pentecostals on the one hand and, on the other, the non-traditional cults that penetrated from outside after 1989.
In the early 1990s, Bulgaria and its Roma population became a wide-open harvest field for evangelism. The attitude towards the Romani evangelicals, however, is also negative, and they are often accused of attracting members by providing material benefits. The fresh flow brought different missionary groups from Bulgaria and abroad to the Roma. On the one hand, Bulgarian pastors who had previously worked outside the law intensified their activity and organized evangelization in the streets in central parts of the Romani neighborhoods. Giving musical concerts was another missionary method for attracting new members. The film Jesus was screened, and Christian television and radio programs were broadcast. Evangelicals also hold services among underprivileged people in hospitals, prisons, and refugee camps.
Both the earlier Pentecostal congregations and the newer Charismatic movements penetrating into Bulgaria are influential among the Roma, and are widespread across the whole country. In Sofia alone, there are Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in nearly every neighborhood where there are Roma: Fakulteta, Filipovsti, Hristo Botev, Obelya, Lyulin, Zaharna Fabrika, Svoboda, Botunets, etc.
Apart from the Pentecostal churches, old and new Romani Methodist, Congregational, Adventist and Baptist churches were restored or established during this period. The largest concentration of Methodist houses of prayer is found in northeastern Bulgaria (Elliot, 1991,
Congregational churches exist in the region of Sofia and in southern Bulgaria. The most influential Adventist churches are in Kyustendil and the region of Pleven. Smaller religious societies have been established in the regions of Vidin, Lom, Ruse, Pazardzhik, and Sliven. Jehovah’s Witnesses are influential among the Roma in Kyustendil. The greatest concentration of Baptist churches is in northwestern Bulgaria; in the neighborhood Mladenovo alone (the former village of Golintsi), there are two. We also find Baptist churches in settlements in southern and northeastern Bulgaria (Dawson, 2002,
The Lutheran community in Bulgaria, which has also become divided during this period (several Lutheran churches have been registered), is not very influential among the Roma; still, a Lutheran house of prayer in the village of Dunavtsi (near Vidin) is attended by people from this ethnic group. Interestingly, in neighboring Romania, in the village of Uila, the Roma were those who revived the old Lutheran church (Marushiakova & Popov, 2017, pp. 109–123; Besoiu & Radu, 2023, pp. 124–153).
With not enough trained leaders and churches to contain the harvest at first, decades of intensive missionary work, of large and growing church networks, followed. The growth of evangelicalism among the Bulgarian Roma is not unique; it is typical both for the neighboring countries in southeastern Europe and as a world trend of Roma being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (Gay y Blasco, 1999; Ries, 2007; Fosztó, 2009; Podolinská & Hrustič, 2010; Thurfjell & Marsh, 2014; Cantón Delgado & al., 2020). According to Milena Benovska-Sabkova and Velislav Altanov, under the influence of local and global factors, we may simultaneously observe in the Romani evangelical churches the engagement of their pastors in international missionary networks and ethnic homogenization of these religious communities at the local level (2009,
In addition to the Romani network of churches, which exists across the whole country, such networks are present among the other ethnic communities as well. For example, an important figure in the Pentecostal movement in Sliven was the Armenian Agop Kuryan, who founded a church in the 1920s. Today, there is a Union of Armenian Evangelical churches in Bulgaria, which is an informal organization comprising various denominations (Methodists, Congregationalists, etc.). Such Armenian religious communities in the large cities of Sofia, Ruse, Varna, and Plovdiv, are members of the Federation of European Armenian Evangelical Churches, whose vice-president is currently Bedros Altunian from Bulgaria, and are in contact with the Armenian Missionary Association of America.
On the other hand, as freedom of religious confession has been established in Bulgaria, many new associations have set a priority, during certain periods of their activity, on work among the Romani minority. Such, among many others, are the “Rekata” (the River) Christian ministry, established by Mitko and Albena Dimitrov. It is also related to other evangelists such as the well-known Bulgarian musician Georgian Banov. He was a member of Srebarnite Grivni (Silver Bracelets), one of the first Bulgarian rock bands (which was eventually banned) and escaped to the US in the 1970s. There he met Winnie, the woman who was to become his wife and became an evangelical under her influence. They are involved in the Global Celebration ministry, which works with poor Roma in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe. The couple collaborate with Mitko and Albena Dimitrov, united with them by their common goal of working among the poor. The president of the Christian Alliance “Rekata”, registered in Bulgaria, is Georgian Banov.
1.9 Conclusion
Romani evangelicalism is a phenomenon that appeared in the beginning of the 20th century in Bulgaria, considerably earlier than in other countries. It acquired a cultural specificity in developing on Bulgarian soil. Contrary to trends in other European countries, where it first began with Pentecostalism, in Bulgaria the traditional evangelists, such as the Methodists and Baptists, were those who first worked among Gypsies; later, however, Pentecostal preachers attracted a considerably larger number of adherents than preachers from other denominations, because they provided the possibility to believe in miracles. If we are to describe the history of evangelicalism as a multi-denominational movement across its various periods discussed in this chapter, it would be thus: awakening (the early 20th century); emancipation (the interwar period); a time of trial (the communist period), and revival (the post-communist period).
In the Bulgarian state newly liberated from Ottoman domination, the Gypsies were not an organized community, but evangelicalism gave them a possibility to develop as individuals and as a group. The spread of Protestantism was twofold: it was linked to religious change in Gypsy communities, resulting from cultural mediation between Gypsies and the missionaries, including the appearance of new everyday or festive rituals, and it also enlarged the minority’s relationships with the majority culture and the formation of Gypsy social life in new frameworks.
Though the Gypsies were generally illiterate, there were men with some degree of literacy among them, and these were, in fact, the first to be recruited in the evangelical societies; they were, moreover, curious enough about new things to embrace the ideas of evangelism. Attempts were made to attract men and women, old and young, to unknown to them (and at times contrary to theirs) religious doctrines, morality, and ethics of life in society. The greatest advantage was that the Bible was presented to them in a readable language; it was a true window to the world for them in the first years of the dissemination of Protestantism.
The formation of the Romani Church as a specific ethnic and religious association took place in the interwar years. The Gypsies became one of the priority groups for evangelical missionizing; the aim was to change them as a community and to support certain individuals in achieving a higher level of education. It was assumed that anyone accepting the new faith must acquire a certain amount of knowledge to be able to understand the themes of Protestantism. The men were guided towards specialized schools and courses in Bulgaria and abroad where they could acquire the necessary knowledge. They were expected to become preachers, but also to emancipate both themselves and their own people.
Women also received attention. It was assumed that purposeful work should target the mothers and girls, who should be made literate to read the Bible; the more ambitious among these women were supported to become Bible workers entrusted with the special mission of spreading the Word of God among other women of their community.
In some cases, the women were the first to express a desire to convert. The fact that they were willing to oppose their husbands in the name of religion, be baptized and follow God, meant much more at that time than it would today. The fear of rejection, poverty and isolation did not make them swerve from the road they had chosen. The main reason for this was that evangelicalism offered a possibility for salvation not only for the individual but also for the whole community, it was precisely then that this religion took root in the culture of the Roma. Without making a special effort, women became regular attendants in the churches and in some places represented a large share of the membership.
The other idea that was specifically implemented in the Bulgarian setting (and not very typical for neighboring Romania, a country with which Bulgaria is often compared about religious policies towards the Roma) is that it is well to have not only independent Romani churches but an alternative form as well. It is well to also integrate the Roma in ethnically mixed denominations, congregations and small church communities. Thus, they would be members of their own Romani religious communities and members of Bulgarian Protestant organizations.
Despite its active development, evangelicalism had a limited influence among the Roma until 1989. There were some appointed spiritual leaders and traveling missionaries of Romani origin, but these were individual cases. The religion spread in this community with varying intensity during the different periods and the problems it experienced during the time of the communist regime restricted its scale but also helped inspire unity and solidarity among the Romani evangelicals. Due to the restrictions imposed on the practice of religion, the Romani spiritual leaders had limited resources to influence the development of their own communities. As for the women, they remained loyal adherents of this religion by their devotion to the faith and diligence in attending illegal religious services held in the homes of pastors. The domestic churches were in fact the stable form in which the evangelical movement managed to survive during the time of communism.
After the end of the communist regime, evangelicalism began to spread on a mass scale. Evangelism attracted individuals and groups in need of hope they could change themselves or the direction of their lives and thus contribute to the progress of their societies. Such were not only the poor and marginalized, although it is true that poor and socially isolated individuals were the most susceptible target of missionary work, due to the generous charitable activities such churches carried out. But a total change would be hardest to achieve among this vulnerable category, for accepting Jesus Christ as one’s personal Savior requires a different way of thought and conduct.
Research on evangelism must inevitably apply the optic of its local specificities and global dimensions. It began at the local level and on a very restricted scale. As a result of the efforts of Protestant congregations and their missionaries to spread the Word of God among the Bulgarian Roma, a network of religious societies and churches was created at the local level in the country. On the other hand, Romani evangelicalism has popularized its ideas not only through preaching in local churches, through street evangelizing, through publication of literature and songbooks in the Romani language but also through the media, the Internet and growing international relations between Romani preachers. I will discuss this in detail in the next chapter.