Yanis Smits
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Yanis Smits
Yanis Alfred Smits (Janis Alfreds Šmits, August 9, 1941 - April 23, 2020), commonly known as Bishop Smits, was a Latvian people, Latvian theologian and Baptist pastor. He was persecuted for his political and religious activism against the Soviet Union, Soviet rule over Latvia during 1956-1976. His personal story has aroused global interest in the Christian community in his struggle for basic human rights and social justice. He would eventually be elected as Bishop of the Latvian Baptist Union. Biography Ministry Yanis and Ruth Smits were both born in Riga, Latvia. Life for Christians under a communist regime was not easy. Yanis was baptized in a river at night. He was unable to study theology because of government restrictions, so he studied agriculture. Ruth's father was a pastor and she met Yanis when he attended Bible studies in her parents' home. Yanis began preaching in 1961, but in 1974 Soviet authorities revoked his preaching license because of his evangelistic efforts. T ...
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Bishop
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is called episcopacy. Organizationally, several Christian denominations utilize ecclesiastical structures that call for the position of bishops, while other denominations have dispensed with this office, seeing it as a symbol of power. Bishops have also exercised political authority. Traditionally, bishops claim apostolic succession, a direct historical lineage dating back to the original Twelve Apostles or Saint Paul. The bishops are by doctrine understood as those who possess the full priesthood given by Jesus Christ, and therefore may ordain other clergy, including other bishops. A person ordained as a deacon, priest (i.e. presbyter), and then bishop is understood to hold the fullness of the ministerial priesthood, given responsibility b ...
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Latvian People
Latvians ( lv, latvieši) are a Baltic ethnic group and nation native to Latvia and the immediate geographical region, the Baltics. They are occasionally also referred to as Letts, especially in older bibliography. Latvians share a common Latvian language, Latvian culture, culture and History of Latvia, history. History A Balto-Finnic languages, Balto-Finnic-speaking tribe known as the Livonian people, Livs settled among the Latvians and modulated the name to "Latvis", meaning "forest-clearers", which is how medieval Germany, German, Teutons, Teutonic settlers also referred to these peoples. The Germanic peoples, Germanic settlers referred to the natives as "Letts" and the nation to "Lettland", naming their colony Livonia or Livland. The Latin form, ''Livonia'', gradually referred to the whole territory of modern-day Latvia as well as southern Estonia, which had fallen under a minimal Germanic influence. Latvians and Lithuanians are the only surviving members of the Baltic Bal ...
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ...
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Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the Baltic states; and is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia covers an area of , with a population of 1.9 million. The country has a temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Riga. Latvians belong to the ethno-linguistic group of the Balts; and speak Latvian, one of the only two surviving Baltic languages. Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population. After centuries of Teutonic, Swedish, Polish-Lithuanian and Russian rule, which was mainly executed by the local Baltic German aristocracy, the independent R ...
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Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Baltic Sea. Riga's territory covers and lies above sea level, on a flat and sandy plain. Riga was founded in 1201 and is a former Hanseatic League member. Riga's historical centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, noted for its Art Nouveau/Jugendstil architecture and 19th century wooden architecture. Riga was the European Capital of Culture in 2014, along with Umeå in Sweden. Riga hosted the 2006 NATO Summit, the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, the 2006 IIHF Men's World Ice Hockey Championships, 2013 World Women's Curling Championship and the 2021 IIHF World Championship. It is home to the European Union's office of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). In 2017, it was named the European Region of Gastronomy. I ...
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Agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture. The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials (such as rubber). Food classes include cereals (grains), vegetables, fruits, cooking oils, meat, milk, ...
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Smits 2003
Smits is a Dutch surname that is considered a variant of the more common Smit surname.Citation: Meertens Institute: Smit. The name is an old plural of Smid (blacksmith), though the plural in modern Dutch would be Smeden. Frequency of occurrence in general populations Information for surname frequency in the Netherlands is limited by the end of comprehensive census taking in 1971. The most recent readily available information is based on the 1947 census, for which both raw census data and surname frequency data have been made available to the general public. In 1947 there were 15,151 recorded people with the surname Smits, while the general census provides a figure of 9,519,000 as the 1947 population. Working with this data the frequency of the Smits surname in the Netherlands in 1947 can be calculated to be ~0.159% or ~1,590 of every 1,000,000 people, which is ½ the frequency of the surname Smit, of which Smits is a variant. In 2007 there were 23,205 carriers of this surname ...
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Living People
Related categories * :Year of birth missing (living people) / :Year of birth unknown * :Date of birth missing (living people) / :Date of birth unknown * :Place of birth missing (living people) / :Place of birth unknown * :Year of death missing / :Year of death unknown * :Date of death missing / :Date of death unknown * :Place of death missing / :Place of death unknown * :Missing middle or first names See also * :Dead people * :Template:L, which generates this category or death years, and birth year and sort keys. : {{DEFAULTSORT:Living people 21st-century people People by status ...
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Latvian Bishops
Latvian may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Latvia **Latvians, a Baltic ethnic group, native to what is modern-day Latvia and the immediate geographical region **Latvian language, also referred to as Lettish **Latvian cuisine **Latvian culture **Latvian horse *Latvian Gambit, an opening in chess See also *Latvia (other) Latvia is a country in Europe. Latvia can also refer to: *Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (1940–1990) *Latvia (European Parliament constituency) *1284 Latvia - asteroid *Latvia Peak - mountain in Tajikistan Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷ ... * {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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