Protestant women in the late Soviet era: gender, authority, and dissent

At the peak of the anti-religious campaigns under Nikita Khrushchev, communist propaganda depicted women believers as either naïve dupes, tricked by the clergy, or as depraved fanatics; the Protestant “sektantka” (female sectarian) was a particularly prominent folk-devil. In fact, as this article shows, women’s position within Protestant communities was far more complex than either of these mythical figures would have one believe. The authors explore four important, but contested, female roles: women as leaders of worship, particularly in remote congregations where female believers vastly outnumbered their male counterparts; women as unofficial prophetesses, primarily within Pentecostal groups; women as mothers, replenishing congregations through high birth rates and commitment to their children’s religious upbringing; and women as political actors in the defence of religious rights. Using a wide range of sources, which include reports written by state officials, articles in the church journal, letters from church members to their ecclesiastical leaders in Moscow, samizdat texts, and oral history accounts, the authors probe women’s relationship with authority, in terms of both the authority of the (male) ministry within the church, and the authority of the Soviet state

Children and Childhood among Evangelical Christians-Baptists During the Late Soviet Period (1960s-1980s)

This paper explores strategies and practices of the Christian upbringing of children with in the Evangelical Baptist community during the late Soviet period (1960s11980s). The author depicts three aspects of childhood relationships: the church (congregation), the family and Soviet society. The Evangelical Baptist community treated children as valuable «small followers of Christ.» At the same time, efforts were aimed at bringing children to conversion. The main direction of work with children was to accustom them to prayer and reading Holy Scripture. In their families children were brought up with an understanding of their mother's and father's role differences. The Soviet state strove to limit opportunities for believers and congregations to bring up children in an atmosphere of Christian spirituality. The persecution of parents for violating Soviet religious legislation also influenced their children. Generally, the children of believers were raised in conditions of competition between Evangelical and Soviet atheistic values and often became the subject of manipulation and the struggle for authority and domination. All these circumstances created around them an atmosphere of anxiety and distrust toward the «external» or «worldly» society, and also increased their personal sense of significance