Becoming a Russian Baptist: Conversion narratives and social experience

Russian Review

Volumn 61, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 94-112

  Coleman, Heather J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247448515     PISSN: 00360341     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9434.00207     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. Sara Maza, "Stories in History: Cultural Narratives in Recent Works in European History," American Historical Review 101 (December 1996): 1500
2. On identity see, for example, Stephen P Frank and Mark D. Steinberg, eds., Cultures in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia (Princeton, 1994)
3. See, for example, Reginald E. Zelnik, "Russian Bebels: An Introduction to the Memoirs of the Russian Workers Semen Kanatchikov and Matvei Fisher," Russian Review 35 (July 1976): 249-89
4. Peter Waldron, "Religious Reform After 1905: Old Believers and the Orthodox Church," Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series 20 (1987): 110-39
5. Paul D. Steeves, "The Russian Baptist Union, 1917-1935: Evangelical Awakening in Russia" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1976)
6. and Andrew Blane, "Protestant Sects in Late Imperial Russia," in The Religious World of Russian Culture, vol. 2 (The Hague, 1975), 267-86
7. On the rapid expansion of the movement see Vsepoddannieishii Otchet Ober-Prokurora Sviatieishago Sinoda po viedomstvu Pravoslavnago ispoveiedaniia za 1910 god (St. Petersburg, 1913), tables, 52
8. See, for example, Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park, PA, 2000)
9. Vera Shevzov, "Popular Orthodoxy in Late Imperial Rural Russia" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1994)
10. Mark Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross: Religious Imagination in the Writings of Russian Workers, 1910-1924," Russian Review 53 (April 1994): 213-39
11. and Reginald E. Zelnik, "'To the Unaccustomed Eye': Religion and Irreligion in the Experience of St. Petersburg Workers in the 1870s," in California Slavic Studies, 17, Christianity and the Eastern Slavs, vol. 2, Russian Culture in Modern Times, ed. Robert P. Hughes and Irina Paperno (Berkeley, 1994), 49-73
12. Hugh McLeod, "Introduction," in European Religion in the Age of Great Cities 1830-1930, ed. Hugh McLeod (London, 1995), 23-24
13. and V. Sh., "Na 'Favore' (Svidetel'stva ob obrashchenii)," Khristianin, 1927, no. 11:54
14. "Kak Vy uverovali vo Khrista?" Baptist Ukrainy, 1928, no. 2:55
15. William Henry Brackney, The Baptists (New York, 1988), xvii, 71
16. Susan F. Harding, "Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion," American Ethnologist 4 (February 1987): 167
17. Peter A. Dorsey, Sacred Estrangement: The Rhetoric of Conversion in Modern American Autobiography (University Park, PA, 1993), 8
18. See also Mary Jo Maynes, Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Workers' Autobiographies in the Era of Industrialization (Chapel Hill, 1995), 4-5, 190
19. and Lewis R. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven, 1993), 7, 137-38, 158
20. Vasilii Skaldin, "Ot neviezhestva k istinie," Slovo istiny, no. 31 (March 1914): 365-66
21. Skaldin, "Ot neviezhestva," 365-66, 381-83
22. S. P. Fadiukhin, Vospominaniia o perezhitom (St. Petersburg, 1993), 64
23. On the vulnerability of migrant peasants' beliefs see Zelnik, "'To the Unaccustomed Eye,'" 54
24. See, for example, G. Burunov, "Svidetel'stvo ob obrashchenii," Khristianin, 1925, no. 5:55
25. GMIR Koll. 1, op. 8, d. 311, l. 76
26. Skaldin, "Ot neviezhestva," 366
27. O. P. K-v, "Moe obrashchenie ko Khristu, Khristianin, no. 8 (1906): 40
28. N. Kupriianov, "Uspokoennyi gospodom posle mytarstv i skitanii," Baptist, 1927, no. 7:41
29. and E. O. Kulish, "Na puti istiny," Baptist Ukrainy (November 1928): 24
30. Makarevskii, Sbornik obrashchenii, 4-6, 27-28
31. GMIR, Koll. 1, op. 8, d. 311, ll. 31ob., 35, 43, 105
32. Savl, "Za Khristom," Baptist Ukrainy, 1927, no. 6:30-31. In the Acts of the Apostles, Saul, the persecutor of the Christians, underwent a conversion experience on the road to Damascus and became Paul, the great apostle of the early church
33. This portrayal of past religious life as insignificant was not limited to converts from Orthodoxy; see the former Molokan who reported that he was "like a pagan" (Stepan Efimov Suriapin, "Moe obrashchenie," Baptist, 1908, no. 10:18)
34. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, 137-38
35. O. P. K-v, "Moe obrashchenie," 40
36. GMIR, Koll. 1, op. 8, d. 311, ll. 16, 43
37. I. P. K-v, "Zhizn' i obrashchenie k Gospodu Savvy Lishchishma," Baptist, no. 16 (14 April 1910): 124
38. On Ioann of Kronshtadt see Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint
39. Brenda Meehan, "Popular Piety, Local Initiative, and the Founding of Women's Religious Communities in Russia, 1764-1907," in Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia, ed. Stephen K. Batalden (DeKalb, IL, 1993), 85, 88
40. Shevzov, "Popular Orthodoxy," 692
41. Georgii Chaikin, "Sovremennyia iskaniia v russkom sektantstvie (Opyt sektantskoi ideologii)," Missionerskoe obozrienie 18 (May 1913): 35, 38
42. and (November 1913): 395-96. Note that virtually every example of "sectarianism" in this five-part article involved Baptists and Evangelical Christians
43. Cases of former revolutionary activity include "Pis'mo br. A. S. Makarenko iz g. Odessy," Bratskii listok, 1920, no. 6:3
44. Skaldin, "Ot neviezhestva," 361-62
45. Savl, "Za Khristom," 31-32
46. Skaldin, "Ot neviezhestva," 397
47. V. I. Sinitsin, "Moe obrashchenie," Baptist, no. 2 (February 1925): 22
48. I. Iaitskikh, "Moe obrashchenie ko Khristu," Khristianin, 1906, no. 3:64-65
49. Examples include Mariia Kurilenok, "Kak ia prishla k soznatel'noi vere v Boga," Khristianin, 1924, no. 3:22-24
50. I. O. E., "U odra umiraiushchago," Baptist, no. 2 (1908): 25-27
51. and A. M. V. and A. S. A., Obrashchenie na istinnyi put' i vospominaniia baptista G. I. M. (Omsk, 1919), 6-34
52. Krest'ianin S. Ia. O., "Kak ia byl spasen Khristom," Khristianin, 1906, no. 2:49-50
53. Skaldin, "Ot neviezhestva," 408-9, 420-21
54. On temporary release from culture see Harding, "Convicted By the Holy Spirit," 167
55. See, for example, I. Semenov, "S rodnykh polei (Iz pis'ma)," Khristianin, 1924, no. 4:54
56. Skaldin, "Ot neviezhestva," 421
57. and Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, Presliedovanie baptistov evangelicheskoi sekty: Materialy k istorii i izucheniiu russkago sektantstva, vyp. 6 (Christchurch, 1902), 65
58. and Baptist Ukrainy, 1928, no. 9:44-45
59. See also Fadiukhin, Vospominaniia o perezhitom, 78-85
60. GMIR, Koll. 1, op. 8, d. 311, ll. 128-128ob
61. "Obrashchenie Vsevoloda Iv. Petrova, opisannoe im samim,"Drug molodezhi, 1914, no. 6:66
62. See, for example, Baptist, no. 11 (November 1908): 23
63. and Timo, "Znamenie vremeni," Slovo istiny, no. 38 (May 1914): 438
64. On history-writing see Baptist Ukrainy, 1928, no. 6:44
65. and Khristianin, 1927, no. 3:64
66. Steinberg, "Worker-Authors," 179
67. Mark Steinberg, Moral Communities: The Culture of Class Relations in the Russian Printing Industry, 1867-1907 (Berkeley, 1992), 243-44
68. On growth see footnote 5 and Slovo istiny, 1921, no. 5-6:29, 42
69. On population movements see Bratskii soiuz, 1920, no. 1:10
70. and "Iz zhizni Doma Evangeliia," Istochnik iz kamnia, 1920, no. 3-4:3
71. On soldiers see A. Sh. "Iz zhizni Novo-Pavlovskoi obshchiny," Baptist Ukrainy, 1928, no. 6:50
72. Ralph Gibson makes this point in his study of the life paths of French nuns. See his "Female Religious Orders in Nineteenth-Century France," in Catholicism in Britain and France Since 1789, ed. Frank Tallett and Nicholas Atkin (London, 1996), 106
73. The classic characterization of the "church" and "sect" types of religious organizations is found in Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vol. 1, trans. Olive Wyon (Chicago, 1981), 331-41
74. On reading trends see Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (Princeton, 1985), 22-27
75. David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford, 1990), 186
76. See also Judith Pellmann, "A Different Road to God: The Protestant Experience of Conversion in the Sixteenth Century," in Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, ed. Peter Van der Veer (New York, 1996), 52-57
77. See "Chudesa"; and Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People (University Park, PA, 2000)
78. On changing notions of the individual and the rise of spiritual narrative see David Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London, 1981), 16
79. Susan Juster, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca, 1994), 4-5, 47-49
80. Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (Cambridge, England, 1991), 65, 120
81. and Nicholas B. Breyfogle, "Heretics and Colonizers: Religious Dissent and Russian Colonization of Transcaucasia, 1830-1890" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1998), 298-301
82. Toby W. Clyman and Judith Vowles, Russia Through Women's Eyes: Autobiographies from Tsarist Russia (New Haven, 1996), 14, 25
83. Igal Halfin, "From Darkness to Light: Student Communist Autobiography During NEP," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 45, no. 2 (1997): 210-36
84. Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Lives Under Fire: Autobiographical Narratives and their Challenges in Stalin's Russia," in De Russie et d'ailleurs: Feux croisés sur l'histoire, ed. Martine Godet (Paris, 1995), 225-26