“Us Versus Them”: The Politics of Religion in Contemporary Russia

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. Here, we understand the West to include democratic Europe, the United States and Canada.

2. There are many theological and denominational differences within the Christian family. For the purposes of this project we adopt a broad understanding of minority Christians to include all religious communities that self-identify as Christian. This broader classification is important within the Russian context because the discourse surrounding non-Orthodox Christians is often that they are “not Christian” or “unauthentic” Christians. Thus, we include all Christians who embrace this label regardless of how others classify them.

3. Fieldwork for this article was conducted during July–August 2015 and June–July 2012. This includes interviews with religious leaders and adherents from self-identified Christian communities, including Russian Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Jehovah’s Witness, and Pentecostal and charismatic Christians. Interviews were conducted with church members at various levels, including religious leaders, deacons, missionaries, seminarians, and adherents. We also conducted interviews with local government officials and representatives, rights lawyers, faith-based NGOs representatives, and religious studies scholars. To ensure continuity across interviews, a set of standardized, open-ended questions were asked regarding church development and non-Orthodox Christians. Interviews were conducted in Russian by the authors, handwritten notes were taken, and the location chosen by the respondents. On average interviews lasted two hours; however, some exceeded five hours. The authors are not affiliated with any of the Russian churches they studied. Lastly, because Christian minorities are restricted communities in Russia, the identifying information of respondents has been omitted or changed.

4. For instance, Lutherans’ roots go back over 400 years, Baptists, Catholics, and Pentecostals have a pre-revolutionary presence, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were active in the Soviet Union (Baran 2014).

5. Over the course of fieldwork more than one respondent was reluctant to have us visit their substance rehabilitation facilities in fear that we might have hidden cameras. Apparently, investigative reporters had visited several rehabilitation centers run by Protestants and misrepresented their rehabilitation tactics, which increased scrutiny and suspicion from government authorities.

6. Here, it is important to note that we temper the language of religious repression or religious persecution that is used in other articles in this issue to that of challenges, intolerance, and discrimination. This is because the vast majority of respondents openly rejected the words “repression” (repressiya) or “persecution” (presledovaniye) as a characterization of their experiences, and some preferred to describe the current situation as posing “serious barriers” to religious freedoms. The terms repression or persecution tended only to be used when informants were discussing the Soviet period.

7. See, for example, the Vine (Loza), at http://loza-nn.org/o-cerkvi-loza.html.

8. See, for example, Jesus Embassy (Posol’stvo Iisusa), at http://jemc.ru/tserkov/o-tserkvi.

9. See, Jesus Embassy (Posol’stvo Iisusa), at http://jemc.ru/tserkov/o-tserkvi/content/51-tserkvi-i-natsii/.

10. See also, Caldwell (2009) for evidence of Orthodox and non-Orthodox cooperation around social welfare programs.

11. A brief description of Protestants in the Service of Russia (2013) can be found at http://www.protestant.ru/news/culture/creativity/article/145987; also see http://ekklesiast.ru/2012/10/1887/.

12. Not all Christian minorities observed in this study engaged in patriotic activities and some actively refused to engage the political arena in favor of social strategies of response. Among those communities who avoid politics are traditional Pentecostals and unregistered Baptists, who have no relationship with the state, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who avoid politics on theological grounds.

13. Official website of the “Strong Family” (Krepkaya Sem’ya) initiative: http://ks-er.ru/o-proekte/istoriya/.

14. For similar sentiments, also see “Протестантские церкви Воронежской области: запретить на региональном и федеральном уровнях пропоганду гомосексуалисма” [Protestant churches of the Voronezh area: the ban on regional and federal level homosexual propaganda]. June 3, http://www.gazetaprotestant.ru/2012/06/protestantskie-cerkvi-voronezhckoj-oblasti-zapretit-na-regionalnom-i-federalnom-urovnyax-propagandu-gomoseksualizma/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jekatyerina Dunajeva

Jekatyerina Dunajeva, born in Russia and raised in Hungary, defended her PhD in 2014 at the University of Oregon and currently teaches at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary. Her research focuses on education policy, identity formation, minority integration, youth politics, religion, and Roma in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Karrie J. Koesel

Karrie J. Koesel is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame where she specializes in the study of contemporary Chinese and Russian politics. She is the author of Religion and Authoritarianism: Cooperation, Conflict and the Consequences (Cambridge University Press, 2014). She is also an Associate Scholar for the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Georgetown University, and a researcher for the Under Caesar’s Sword Project at the University of Notre Dame.