Pentecostal Churches in Russia: Changing Self-images and Inculturation in Tyumen'

Abstract

This article deals with the process of inculturation of Pentecostal communities in Russia. From the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of a linguistic market I describe the current negative image of Protestants in Russia, which derives from Orthodox conceptions of ‘canonical territory’ and ‘non-traditional religions’, and I show how Pentecostal churches in Tyumen’ oblast’, in Western Siberia just beyond the Urals, are trying to influence the political and religious discourse through changing this image by words and in practice. I identify three strategies of inculturation by Pentecostals: inrooting, stressing their lack of dependence on foreign missions and reluctance to use denominational labels. I pay special attention to changes in the ways in which Russian Pentecostals do evangelisation and social work. I conclude that it is self-censorship that is helping Pentecostals move to a new language in their dialogue with Russian society and the authorities.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the reviewers of my article, and especially Philip Walters and Alexander Agadjanian, for their solicitous attitude to the text and for their helpful commentaries and questions. I gained great experience in communicating with them and answering their questions, which was no less important for me than the result of the work itself.

Notes

‘Cultural-religious expansion of neighbouring states’ is named as one of the threats to Russian national security in the Russian National Security Concept of 2000 (Kontseptsiya, 2000, part III). We might note, however, that none of the terms ‘canonical territory’, ‘traditional religion’ or ‘non-traditional religion’ are mentioned in any official Russian state document.

In Tobol'sk and Tyumen’ cities there are infrequent cases of communication between Orthodox priests and Protestant pastors. Timofei Oleinik, pastor of the Tobol'sk ‘Word of Life’ (‘Slovo zhizni’) Church of Evangelical Christians, says that some Orthodox seminarians from the Tobol'sk Orthodox Seminary sometimes attend his church's youth meetings, where they sing and pray with Evangelicals (Interview, 2005f). Leonid Brodovsky, pastor of Tyumen’ Christian Church (Tyumenskaya khristianskaya tserkov’) and Yevgeni Shestakov, pastor of a Pentecostal community under the ‘Reconciler’ Mission of Evangelisation and Charity (Missiya yevangelizatsii i blagotvoreniya ‘Primiritel”) and rector of the Tyumen’ Biblical Seminary in Yalutorovsk, says that they maintain contact with two Orthodox priests. In all these cases the pastors did not give any further details as the priests want to remain anonymous.

In 1927–1928 there were two Unitarian communities in the region: in Tyumen’ city (10–11 members) and in Yalutorovsk district (99 members) (GAOPOTO, 3, 1, 817, 3). In 1932 the secret police liquidated ‘a branch of an all-Union counter-revolutionary illegal sectarian organisation of evangelists of a “Pentecostal” apostolic movement’ (‘filial vsesoyuznoi nelegal'noi kontrrevolyutsionnoi sektantskoi organizatsii yevangelistov apostol'skogo napravleniya “pyatidesyatnikov”’) consisting of communities in Yalutorovsk, Yarkovo, Tyumen’ and Ishim districts (Bobrov and Klyueva, 2010, p. 8).

This is the case not only for Pentecostal communities but also for some other churches in the region. For instance, the Siberian ‘Greater Grace’ Church (Sibirskaya tserkov’ ‘Velikaya blagodat'’) was established in Tyumen’ city by a team of missionaries from Hungary, the USA and Russia; the Evangelical Presbyterian ‘Holy Trinity’ Church (Yevangel'skaya presviterianskaya tserkov’ ‘Svyatoi troitsy’) was set up by an American couple who are still living there. (My sources for this information are interviews with local pastors and the local press (Bubnov, 1993; Voinsky, 1992a,b, 1993; Doroshenko, 1992, 1993).)

In 1995 a group of people left the ‘Light to the World’ Church (‘Svet miru’, Tobol'sk, affiliated with and established by the Tyumen’ city community of the same name) and formed a ‘New Generation’ Church (‘Novoye pokoleniye’). There is little literature on the topic of schisms in Russia in the first half of 1990s, though those years of religious renaissance were as much years of religious splits that had an evident influence on interdenominational dialogue and state–church relations in Russia. I develop this issue elsewhere: see Poplavsky (2007, forthcoming).

The current pastor of the ‘Word of Life’ (‘Slovo zhizni’) Church in Nizhevartovsk, Vasili Yaroslavovich Vityuk, who is also the head of the Regional Association of Churches of Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Regional'noye ob”yedineniye tserkvei khristian very yevangel'skoi), attended a community of non-registered Pentecostals in the late 1980s. In 2010 some members moved to Tyumen’ city and established a community there (Interview, 2011b).

Other registered churches in Tyumen’ oblast’ are Adventist (3), Baptist (4), Evangelical Christian (5), Lutheran (1), Methodist (1), New Apostolic (2) and Presbyterian (1).

Other registered churches in Tyumen’ city are Adventist (2), Baptist (1), Evangelical Christian (2), Lutheran (1), Methodist (1), New Apostolic (1) and Presbyterian (1).

In Tyumen’ oblast’ there are six Pentecostal churches which are members of the BCCEF: in Tyumen’ city, Yalutorovsk, Zavodoukovsk, Ishim, and the villages of Il'inka and Aromashevo.

At religious festivals there are up to 2000 Protestant churchgoers. For comparison, around 2500 people attend Sunday morning liturgy in all Russian Orthodox churches in Tyumen’ city (up to 7900 on Palm Sunday and up to 9000 at Easter); around 1200 Muslims attend the mosque on Fridays (up to 4000 at Eid al-Fitr); around 1000 Jehovah's Witnesses attend their services during the week. These data have been gathered since 2004 by researchers attending services on appropriate days for each denomination (festivals and ordinary worship days) in Tyumen’ city and counting in separate categories the numbers of men, women and children attending. I have been responsible for the Christian part of the project and my colleague Maksim Sergeyevich Cherepanov for the Muslim part. The project has been conducted by members of the Independent Centre for the Research of Contemporary Society (Nezavisimy tsentr izucheniya sovremennogo obshchestva), a non-registered association of university faculty members and students in Tyumen’ city founded in 2004 (I was one of the founders). For more detailed information on the number of Orthodox churchgoers, see Poplavsky (2010).

No doubt that was true for the Soviet period. Indeed when he makes this observation Anderson refers to books by Walter Hollenweger and Steve Durasoff published in 1972 (Hollenweger, 1972; Durasoff, 1972).

Some examples of this kind are Dubovskaya (1993), Leonyuk (1994), Tereb (1992), Voinsky (1992a,b) and Borodkina (1994).

Some of these articles were written by the same authors who had earlier praised Protestants on the pages of the same newspaper. Compare, for example, the titles of articles by Yelena Dubovskaya published within nine or ten months: ‘Free bread: spiritual’ (1993), on the one hand, and ‘Territory of spiritual occupation, or a little lie by “brothers in faith”’ (1994a) and ‘The only place you find free cheese is in a mousetrap’ (1994b) on the other.

In March 2006 the former head of the Department of Religions of Tyumen’ Committee on Nationalities defended the concept of ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ religions and fiercely criticised Protestant churches for their international contacts and ‘undermining activities’ (Interview, 2006c). On 8 August 2005 Miroslav Bakulin, the former editor of Sibirskaya pravoslavnaya gazeta, appeared on a local television programme ‘Vesti region-Tyumen'’ about charitable activity by the ‘Light to the World’ (‘Svet miru’) Church (distributing food to homeless people), commenting that he felt sorry for these people as they would pay for the food with their souls. In spring 2008 Svetlana Shestakova, a Tyumen’ Orthodox activist and a former professor of Tyumen’ State Gas and Oil University, delivered a public lecture (though it was specially organised for teachers of ‘Principles of Orthodox Culture’) in which she insulted Krishnaites, Muslims, Catholics and Protestants. She singled out Pentecostals as the most destructive sect, but named all Protestant denominations (including Lutheranism, which is not usually attacked by the Orthodox Church) ‘pseudo-Christian sects’ (Kurs, 2008).

For more on Russian spiritual movements see Luzina (2003), Panchenko (2004), Rybakov (1993) and Mealing (1975).

Pastors and members of this church do not ascribe it to any particular Protestant movement and would rather identify themselves as ‘just Christians’ (‘prosto khristiane’). Nevertheless, dogmatically they are close to Calvinists.

This is an official committee of the government of Tyumen’ oblast’. It is in charge of working with political and social organisations of the region. Until early 2011 there was a Department on Religions (Otdel po delam religii) in this committee, but since its former head Igor’ Bobrov resigned it has not been included in the official structure and his position is still vacant.

The Council of Christian Churches of Tyumen’ City invited the British evangelist David Hathaway to lead the Easter worship. They rented a sports arena and organised a publicity campaign. The event was to take place on 16 April 2004, but a week before that date the director of the arena broke the contract because, he said, there was going to be a terrorist act at the site. Orthodox activists were allowed to conduct a protest action near the arena. The Protestants decided to move the service to the ‘Light to the World’ church and organised bus transfer for those coming to the arena on 16 April. Orthodox activists and Alexander Gradusov, the former head of the Department on Religions, were among those blocking the way to the buses. Then, in the middle of the service, a special police squad entered the ‘Light to the World’ church and ordered people to leave the building because a bomb had been planted. No bomb was found, but the service was aborted. There was great indignation among the Protestant churches which was an impetus for the eventual foundation of the Congress of Religious Associations of Tyumen’ Oblast’.

The term ‘subculture’ in respect of religious movements is used in two books which publish reports on a seminar on ‘youth movements and subcultures’. One has an article on the St Petersburg Church of Christ (Yemel'yanova, 1997) and in the other (Kostyushev, 1999) Slavic Neo-Paganism (Gaidukov, 1999) and Jehovah's Witnesses (Yemel'yanova, 1999) are considered to be subcultures. No methodology towards ‘religious subcultures’ is developed, and there is no explanation as to why the authors fixed upon these religious communities and not others. They are just ‘substantially different youth subcultures’ as the editor puts it (Kostyushev, 1999). The term ‘religious subculture’ appears in a draft Concept of State Religious Policy of the Russian Federation (Kontseptsiya gosudarstvennoi religioznoi politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii) drawn up in 2003 by the Department of Religious Studies of the Russian Academy of Government Service. It is defined as a community ‘whose members are united by ideological standpoints, moral concepts, behavioural guidelines, modes of relationship inside and outside the community, linguistic features that are generated by the determinative influence of religious doctrine and practice’ which distinguish it as a subculture from the ‘dominant cultures’. ‘Religious subcultures’ in this document include new religious movements and neo-Protestant and neo-Orientalist organisations (see Kontseptsiya, 2003). This opposition neo/new versus dominant religious cultures (Orthodox or Catholic) is discussed and widely used in a 2009 book Subcultures and New Religious Movements in Russia and East-Central Europe (see Foxlee and Williams, 2009; Pilkington and Popov, 2009; Deák, 2009; Ališauskienė, 2009). The term ‘religious subculture’ is also used to describe denominational subcultures, that is differences within a certain denomination, in, for example, Gay and Ellison (1993), and including the Russian Orthodox Church in, for example, Levkiyevskaya (2010) and Tarabukina (2000).

Anticultists are mainly Orthodox activists who support the idea of state privileges for the Russian Orthodox Church and limitations on the rights of other religious movements, some of which are considered ‘dangerous’. The most famous anticultist is Aleksander Dvorkin, author of the textbook Sektovedeniye (Sectology), which is popular in some Orthodox circles, and of the term ‘totalitarian sect’. He is chairman of the Expert Council for State Expertise on Religion at the Russian Ministry of Justice (Ekspertny sovet po provedeniyu gosudarstvennoi religiovedcheskoi ekspertizy pri Ministerstve yustitsii Rossiiskoi Federatsii).

Though terms like ‘sect’, ‘totalitarian sect’ or ‘destructive cult’ are not part of any law they are present in many official documents produced by regional authorities (see, for example, a letter from Irina Militskaya, a member of the Public Chamber (Obshchestvennaya palata) in Amur oblast’ (Blagoveshchenskomu, 2011) and letters from the Department of Labour and Social Security (Departament truda i sotsial'noi zashchity) of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Posle, 2010). They also appear in court decisions (see, for example, Resheniye, 1997). The governor of Ul'yanovsk oblast’ has suggested that the terms should be introduced into Russian legislation (Ul'yanovsky, 2010). ‘Sects’ are criticised on television (Na telekanale, 2010) and in newspapers (Buryatskiye, 2011); also by Muslims (Soyuz, 2011). Even some university professors and academics use these terms in an Orthodox sense (Kvashnin, 2011; Astakhova, 2009).

Except for the Lutheran and Anglican churches.

‘The name of a religious organisation must contain information about its denomination’ (Article 8.8).

This is not the only cause of disagreement between most Tyumen’ Protestant leaders and Dubik, a young pastor of a young church (founded in October 2010). During 20 years' coexistence in the region Protestant communities have developed a code of conduct; one of the mutual arrangements says that if a member of one church moves to another the pastor of the new church will notify the pastor of the former. This is one of the conventions ignored by Dubik.

In the 2000s Marches for Jesus were still being held in Moscow and St Petersburg, though not without difficulties (see, for example, V Sankt-Peterburge, 2003).

Statistically we can operate only with the percentage of those declaring themselves ‘Orthodox’, since believers from other confessions or religions are minimally represented in the samples. The percentage of ‘Orthodox’ shown by opinion polls stagnated in the period from 1997 to 2007 (50–57 per cent throughout these years) and increased only in 2010 (70 per cent) (see Religioznaya, 2011; Chesnokova, 2005).

They were the ‘Gospel’ Church, the ‘Light to the World’ Church, the Tyumen’ Christian Church, the Baptist ‘Spiritual Rebirth’ (‘Dukhovnoye vozrozhdeniye’) Church, the ‘Greater Grace’ Church (see note 16), and the Methodist ‘Salvation’ (‘Spaseniye’) Church. Since then the Council has acquired two more Pentecostal members (the ‘Cornerstone’ Church and the ‘Tree of Life’ (‘Derevo zhizni’) Church (founded in 2009)), four other Protestant churches, and a community of Messianic Jews.

This Declaration was composed by the churches in the Council of Christian Churches of Tyumen' City and sent to the governor of Tyumen’ oblast’ as a response to the frustration of the Easter worship in 2004 (see note 18). It called on the authorities to respect human rights and to establish equal relations with all religious organisations in the region as guaranteed by the constitution.

The Russian Orthodox Diocese of Tobol'sk and Tyumen’ was also invited to send representatives to the CRATO, but no answer was received from them. At the first stage of the founding of the CRATO Pentecostal pastors were carrying on a dialogue with the Old Believer community in Tyumen' city, the former Omsk-Tyumen’ diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Preobrazhenskaya Diocese of the Catholic Church in Russia. In the end no representatives of these three organisations took part in CRATO meetings. In early 2011 Tyumen’ Apostolic Orthodox community expressed a wish to enter the CRATO but soon after stopped the dialogue.

In 2006 there was an attempt to exclude CNL–Russia (Christian Network Life) from the list of channels on cable television on the grounds that it propagated non-traditional values. Sergei Lavrenov, pastor of the ‘Light to the World’ Church, took to the CNL office a book on the history of Protestant churches in Tyumen’ oblast’ (Bobrov, 2006), and gave them some relevant information, with the result that the cable television company changed its mind (Interview, 2007c).