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Introduction Spiritual Revolutions and Soul Wars In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a religious revival accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the old socialist ideals lost their luster, Soviet citizens, young and old, flocked to churches, synagogues, and mosques in search of new ways to understand their individual journeys on this earth, but also looking for alternative models of community and identity to replace Soviet ones. Meanwhile, foreign missionaries of every stripe flooded into the country, some seeking to assist coreligionists, others to launch their particular teaching on the newly open and spiritually hungry Russian religious market . Millions of people lined up to be baptized into the traditional church of the Russian people, the Orthodox Church, but an important minority found their place in evangelical Protestant denominations, among the Roman Catholics or within the myriad small groups that popped up in these years. For some members of the public, the variety of public religious activity reflected a beneficial new freedom. Others felt uncomfortable with religious competition and, often, with intense proselytization that seemed brash and disrespectful toward Russian national traditions. Newspapers reported huge numbers of adherents to various new religious movements or, as they were often termed, “totalitarian sects.” Street kiosks flogged brochures such as “The Baptists as the Most Harmful Sect.” And Orthodox leaders sought government protection against Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries who 1 Coleman, Russian Baptists 2/7/05 12:03 PM Page 1 were allegedly wrongfully invading the “canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church.”1 Very quickly, then, this sudden religious pluralism, and especially the fact of numerous conversions to what were perceived as Western faiths, became a matter of public debate. What was the relationship between Orthodoxy and Russianness? Should the religious marketplace be wide open or did Orthodoxy constitute the only legitimate spiritual choice for citizens living in this traditionally Orthodox region? Were foreign religious teachings bringing with them values inimical to Russian society? What role, if any, should the state play in religious life? And, more generally, to what extent should the state regulate the public sphere? Russians have asked these very questions before. Just as they did in the 1990s, Russians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lived in a time of wrenching change, when the meaning of Russianness, the correct relationship between the Russian state and its society, and the suitability of Western models of development for their country all came up for debate. Religious life felt the influence of the social, political, and intellectual turmoil unleashed by the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. In the sixty years thereafter the experiences of rapid industrialization, social change, and political revolution raised questions about religion and its place in private lives, public discourses, and state structures. This period saw the relationship between priest and parishioner shaken up by social change and by the publication and wide distribution of the Bible in Russian, the rise of popular dissident religious movements, and a growing fascination among intellectuals with the nature of the “peasant soul.” For some, this investigation was driven by the conviction that only a spiritual revolution could resolve the political and cultural crises of their time and bring about a liberated Russia. Others advocated a return to the church as the protector of traditional moral ideals. This religious ferment sparked lively discussion about freedom of conscience , about the relationship between Orthodoxy and Russianness, and about the political implications of individuals’ religious choices.2 These debates only intensified after 1905, when Emperor Nicholas II signed an edict on religious toleration, which ended the earlier prohibition on Orthodox converting to other Christian faiths and permitted formerly persecuted groups to hold prayer meetings legally. From that year until 1929, when the Soviet government abolished the right to preach religious ideas and, for all intents and purposes, prohibited religious associational life, dissident religious groups emerged as highly visible and controversial players on the national cultural and political scene. This study explores this time of profound religious searching, possibility, and change through the prism of the Baptists, the fastest growing of these non-Orthodox Christian movements among Russians. The Baptists appeared in the Russian Empire in the late 1850s, first within the German-speaking communities scattered across the western and southern peripheries of the empire. By the late 1860s some of their Russian and Ukrainian neighbors introduction 2 Coleman, Russian Baptists 2/7/05 12:03 PM Page 2 [3.17.150.89] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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