Българското евангелско дружество (1875-1958) – едно от най-ранните и дълго съществували български сдружения
The Bulgarian Evangelical Society (1875-1958) – one of the oldest and over a long period of time existing voluntary societies of Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: The Bulgarian Evangelical Society (BES) was one of the few early Bulgari-an voluntary societies, that existed over a long period of time. It was founded in 1875, when Bulgaria was still part of the Ottoman Empire, by a group of men around the teacher Andrej S. Canov (1842-1933). He initiated an indigenous Bulgarian interdenominational association drawing the idea from Christian societies in the United States, where he had been a student, but the organizational structure of the Bulgarian “chitalishta”. The goal of the Society was to spread the Christian faith and good morals among the Bulgarian people. To reach this goal the BES published Christian literature and newspapers, founded a bookstore in Sofia and sent out travelling bookseller (colporteurs) in order to make the literature available to the people. In addition to that the BES provided financial help for evangelical churches and communities to assist them in supporting their preachers and pas-tors. One of its major activities was to work towards unity among evangelical Christians. Founded in a quite insecure for the Bulgarian people time, the BES managed to sur-vive several wars and two internal crises (at the beginning of the 20th century and during the 1930s). The peak of its membership was experienced after WWI, when about one third of the Bulgarian evangelicals were supporting the Society in one or the other way. At the same time the BES took over the responsibility of the famous weekly evangelical newspaper Zornica. After a crisis in leadership during the 1930s the BES once more managed to overcome the problems and after WWII again more than 10% of all the Bulgarian Protestants funded the ministry of the Society. But in 1948 the situation changed: the communist regime arrested the leading protestant pastors and sentenced them to yearlong jail and labor camp. That affected also many leading members of the BES and after that the Society continued to exist only on paper. In 1958 the Bulgarian Evangelical Society was officially dissolved by court decision. Two areas of the significance of the BES are mentioned in this article: its literature work and the innovative view on the role of women. Especially during the first decades of its existence the literary work played the most important role within the BES. At a time when Bulgarian literature market was finally taking up speed, the BES through Christian books and booklets on different topics as well as the monthly magazine “Homefriend” with its wide varie ty of general topics made a significant contribution. Later the literature work of the BES was focused mostly on publishing the weekly newspaper Zornica. In opposite to Bulgarian politics the Bulgarian Evangelical Society from its beginning didn’t make any difference between male and female members: Women who became member of the BES were granted the same right to vote as the male members. This was quite unusual in Bulgaria at that time...

• Details
• Contents