Feeding activism in Russia: the transgressive politics of the church potluck

ABSTRACT

Themes of fellowship are prominent in the words and actions of participants in Moscow’s Christian communities, especially as congregations promote social events as fundamental modes of religious expression and experience. Food sharing activities are noteworthy among these events, as they fit within theological traditions that celebrate how food mediates the many different communities and experiences that constitute religious life in Moscow. Food’s mediating capacity does not obviate difference, however, but rather illuminates conflict and compels communities to grapple with this conflict. Faith communities mobilize this disruptive, transgressive capacity of food to engage in social action. Drawing on fieldwork among Moscow-based Christian communities, this paper examines how the forms of community and commensality that are produced through food-sharing activities become meaningful opportunities for addressing critical issues such as poverty, racism, and xenophobia.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• religion
• food aid
• food sharing
• sociable meals

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Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this article were presented in the “Feasting and Fasting” symposium hosted by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture in 2017 and at the “Eating Religiously: Food and Faith in the 21^st Century” conference at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2018. I thank my fellow participants in those events for their thoughtful feedback and critical suggestions. I am especially grateful to Fran Markowitz and Nir Avieli for their support and advice, and to the two anonymous reviewers for Food, Culture & Society for their comments. The research on which this article is based was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2006.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Although the CCM follows progressive Protestant theology, it is not unique in Moscow in terms of how it mobilizes food for social action. More importantly, the CCM collaborates with many other faith-based communities (including Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim). What is unique about Moscow’s faith-based communities is that members of individual congregations represent tremendous religious, national, and ethnic diversity, but they come together around shared social justice ideals (see Caldwell 2017).

2. Certainly for Russia, as in other Soviet and post-Soviet countries, food has always been inseparable from politics (Caldwell 2014).

3. The interplay of ethnicity and religious identity within Russian identity politics is complicated (Agadjanian 2001) and not necessarily harmonious, as ethnic tensions can manifest within otherwise singular religious communities (see Goluboff 2002).

4. Russia’s Korean community is one of the largest and most assimilated ethnic minorities. Although members of this community may still have relatives in Korea, including elderly relatives who have “reverse emigrated” in order to retire in Korea, most are at least third-generation native-born Russian citizens.

5. One elderly, ethnically Russian Muscovite I knew attended services at several religious communities, which she seemed to treat as her personal “ethnic grocery stores.”

6. In Russian identity politics, “blackness” is a complicated and contradictory category that can at different moments include or exclude race, ethnicity, religious identity, class, geographic origin, and citizenship status. Most commonly, “blackness” is used to designate “outsiders,” even if they are fully Russian (see also Fikes and Lemon 2002).

7. Moscow soup kitchens operate either by renting space from commercial restaurants, so that paying customers are also using the space (although eating different food), or by setting up tables on the sidewalk in public parks or near public transit stations. As a result, the publicness of food aid distribution adds further degrees of risk and vulnerability for recipients and volunteers alike.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Notes on contributors

Melissa L. Caldwell

Melissa L. Caldwell is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A fieldworking ethnographer, her research examines the religious and political dimensions of care, compassion, charity, and social justice movements. She has been conducting ethnographic research in Russia and postsocialist Europe since the early 1990s.