Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism

Epilogue. Religion as Portal to the World

Epilogue Religion as Portal to the World In considering the encounter between Western and Soviet believers at the close of the twentieth century, I am reminded of Marshall Sahlins’s critique of the anthropological propensity to see the arrival of Western capitalism with its accompanying moralities and mentalities as the beginning of indigenous history, one that inevitably progresses toward a ruinous end for indigenous cultures. Using the Eskimo as an example, he argues against this inherited tradition by claiming that in spite of the steady arrival of new forms of technology, exchange, and governance over the course of the twentieth century, “the Eskimo are still there—and they are still Eskimo.”1 If indigenous peoples have only been pseudo-beneficiaries of development initiatives, he asserts, they have also only been pseudo-victims. Neither they nor their cultures have been eradicated. Instead, Sahlins suggests, new technologies, knowledges, and capital have been used to enhance, broaden, and finance a “traditional” lifestyle that now includes snowmobiles and hunting and gathering. Rather than thinking of the cultural encounter between the “West and the Rest” as one of homogenization (with “them” becoming like “us”), Sahlins claims that the encounter has led to an indigenization of modernity , meaning that the basic tenets of modernity, such as new ways of producing and classifying knowledge, technological advances, and new modes of transport, have been integrated into an indigenous cosmology. This interaction has, of course, ushered in substantial changes in Eskimo culture, but certainly not ruin and clearly not disappearance. As we have seen, after the Cold War and the arrival of eager American missionaries in Ukraine to save white Europeans from “godless communism,” Ukrainians are still there, and they are still selecting the forms of religion they chose to adopt. On the heels of Sahlins’s Eskimo example, I am reminded of an anecdote that the Chukchi have been telling lately. The Chukchi are a native Siberian people living near the Arctic Circle. More than most, they stubbornly resisted Russian colonization and missionizing by Orthodox clergy. They became the butt of numerous “ethnic” anecdotes about stupidity in the Soviet Union. The experience of Soviet modernity, with its imposition of a vision of “progress” on native peoples, was brutal. The Chukchi now tell the following anecdote to comment on a more recent “civilizing mission” launched by Ukrainian believers: Three men are riding in a train, a Chukotkan, a Ukrainian, and an American. The Ukrainian is drinking vodka and eating salo (smoked pork fat, a Ukrainian specialty). At one point, the Ukrainian stands up and throws everything out the window. “Hey, what did you do that for?” asks the Chukotkan. “That was good food!” “Oh, we have a lot of that in my country,” answers the Ukrainian. After a while the American stands up and throws his Pepsi and hamburger out the window. “Hey, what did you do that for?” asks the Chukotkan. “That was good food!” “Oh, we have a lot of that in my country,” responds the American. After a while, the Chukotkan stands up and throws the Ukrainian out the window. “Hey, what did you do that for?” asks the American. “Oh, we have a lot of them in my country,” responds the Chukotkan.2 When the Chukotkan claims to have a lot of “them” in his country, he is referring to Ukrainian missionaries who now evangelize in significant numbers in Russia. Their efforts have been successful to some degree, and evangelical faiths have made inroads among native peoples. Yet the Chukchi are still there and some have—metaphorically—thrown the Ukrainians out of the window. Christianity is a religion of expansion, and its history has been a long series of encounters with different faith traditions. Prior to the arrival of Western missionaries, there was a developed sense of Soviet evangelicalism as it was practiced in Ukraine, which emerged from interaction with other 250 Communities of the Converted ethnic and faith-based traditions, such as German Mennonite, Russian Molokan, and, of course, Slavic Orthodox believers. A fusion of beliefs, practices, and sensibilities occurred, which resulted neither in an eradication of Ukrainian faith traditions nor a mimetic replication of the Other’s form of religious practice. The Western missionaries who began to arrive in Ukraine to proselytize in the late 1980s neither introduced nor imposed evangelicalism. Rather, they exposed Ukrainians to a global form of evangelical Christianity to which Ukrainians have been receptive because...