A book about the genesis of the protestant churches of Bessarabia – “History of Evangelical Movements of Tsarist Period (1812-1918)” was launched at the National Library of Moldova. The book was written by Vasile Filat, pastor of the Baptist Church “Annunciation” of Chisinau, who has a doctor’s degree in history from the State University of Moldova, IPN reports.

“As author Vasile Filat writes, the Baptists saw the largest expansion in the region so that when the book was written, the community of Baptists in the Republic of Moldova consisted of 32,700 persons, being the second largest denomination after the Orthodox Christians,” said Anatol Petrencu, doctor habilitate of history, referring to the topicality of the investigated theme.

“In 1991, when I joined the evangelical community, I realized there was no written history of the Baptists. Initially, I wanted to write only about Baptists, but when I started to investigate, I realized that there were many evangelical movements in Bessarabia whose history hasn’t been investigated until now,” related Vasile Filat.

The author of the monograph said the book’s cover presents a number of historical personalities and one of them, Emperor of Russia Alexander I, in concert with Metropolitan Bishop Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni, printed in St. Petersburg the Bible in Romanian and sent 5,000 copies of it to Moldova.

Vasile Filat said the first Baptist church in Bessarabia was founded in 1876-1878, in Cișmele, Ismail region, which is now on the territory of Ukraine. He carried out research at the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova and at archives in Russia’s St. Petersburg, in Denmark and the U.S.

The monograph “History of Evangelical Movements of Tsarist Period (1812-1918)” was issued at a publishing house in Chisinau in a print run of 1,000 copies.