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17centrism in the evaluation of the semantic foundations of modernity, linked with an obvious normative agenda — noticeable, at least, in a number of contributions, and also in the general architecture of the book — lowers the scholarly value of this brave onslaught of the
most fine-grained linguistic analysis. Mastery of the highly complex analytical technique of semantic (de)construction demands strict, ascetic restraint.
Alexander Agadjanian (Translation by Keith Walmsley)
Mikhail Smirnov (Ed.). (2012). Protestantism: Pro et Contra. Russian Authors' Views and Polemics from the Sixteenth through the Early Twenty-First Centuries. (Protestantizm: pro et contra. Vzgliady i polemika otechestvennykh avtorov v XVI-nachale XXI veka). Saint Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Russkoi Xhristianskoi Gumanitarnoi Akademii (in Russian). - 846 pages.
The religious situation in Russia at the start of the twenty-first century is multifaceted, heterogeneous, and in flux. Public opinion surveys point to a lasting urge for confessional identification among Russians; field studies and official statistics attest to swift growth in the number of religious associations; and political leaders on the federal and regional levels take into account religious considerations both in the creation of national ideologies and in the formulation of concrete social programs and methods for their implementation. The attention of the mass media is principally directed toward the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church, yet other religious organizations also significantly contribute to the religious life of the country.
Protestantism exercises an important influence on the religious situation in Russia, although one that is still weakly reflected in public consciousness. The ecclesiastical, social, economic, and political activities of Protestant communities are intensive and expansive, and they attest, to all appearances, to their great cultural potential. Against this backdrop, the publication of an anthology that sheds light on the history of Protestantism and allows one to comprehend the place of Protestant denominations in Russian culture and to assess Protestantism's presumed role in the further development of the country seems timely. Considerations of present relevance aside, the logic of scholarship itself speaks to the benefit of producing an antholo-
gy of this sort. Integrated consideration of Protestantism in general and Protestantism in Russia in particular represents an enduring task for historians and philosophers of religion. A well-ordered collection of texts of varying character and content, from the Medieval to the contemporary era, represents an intermediate stage of reflection within religious studies on the path to building a fresh conception of Protestantism.
For all its breadth of scope — more than 50 texts — the volume under review does not claim to offer a comprehensive overview on the topic of Protestantism in Russia. According to the volume's compiler, a well-known sociologist of religion and the author of numerous publications on the topic of Protestantism, "the purpose of the present anthology also consists in proffering to the reader a treatment of the topic of Protestantism in Russia precisely by non-Protestant authors, presented in the dynamic framework of its variable and permanent characteristics, in the form of pro et contra" (9). Orthodox polemicists, Soviet atheists, and representatives of academic scholarship all number among these non-Protestant authors.
The anthology's texts are divided up into 12 sections, which "encompass the most noteworthy and important," from the compiler's point of view, reactions in polemical and
scholarly thought to Protestantism in Russia in state, social, and religious space" (10). The names of the sections are as follow: I — "The Prerevolutionary Historiography of Protestantism in Russia: The Official View"; II — "The First Century of Protestantism in Russia: Under the Sign of the 'Exposition against the Lutherans'"; III — "The Nineteenth-Century View of Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Russian Anti-Lutheran Polemics"; IV — "From Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great: The Thorny Path of Adaptation for Protestants in Russia"; V — "The Orthodox Theological Assessment of Lutheran Teachings"; VI — "The Protestant Imprint on Russian Sectarianism"; VII — "One Word — Germans... (On Protestant Influence on Russians)"; VIII — "Communist Ideology and Protestantism in the USSR"; IX — "In the Sights of Scientific Atheism"; X — "Protestantism in Post-Soviet Russia"; XI — "The Phenomenon of Russian Protestantism"; XII — appendices (excerpts from the "Law for the Evangelical-Lutheran Church" of 1832, the text of the currently in-effect "Law for the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia," and the text of "The Social Position of Protestant Churches in Russia").
The compiler provides a more or less comprehensive précis of each section and each author in the introductory article "A Non-Protestant
View of Protestantism in Russia." In order to avoid repetition, let us diverge from the logic of the account as presented in the anthology and share observations and reflections that arise upon reading the texts.
The anthology Protestantism: Pro et Contra is a multicolored kaleidoscope of facts, judgments, and appraisals of Protestantism in Russia. It is an easy and appealing read, and one that is valuable for its broadening of one's general knowledge of history and religious studies. But what is more important is that these texts brought together under a single cover, in entering into dialogue with each other, draw the reader by degrees into the conversation as well, astonishing her with varied facts and judgments, and eliciting questions relating to abstract theory and to one's worldview. As the points of view presented in the book multiply, the picture of the ways of life, customs, and beliefs of Protestants in Russia becomes richer and more complex. And the more distinctly and insistently questions on the historical roots and essence of Protestantism, on Protestantism as both a particular ideational system and a peculiar psychological predisposition, stand out, the more powerfully one experiences the human and civic need to discern in it a social and cultural force possessing an internally given vector for action.
The anthology's authors interpret the emergence of Protestantism in Western Europe in various ways. In this case, the judgments and appraisals espoused by representatives of Orthodox or secular tendencies are, on the whole, as could be expected, yet the tone itself of their statements is of interest, as are the individual stylistic features in which the spirit of the conditions and the age that bore them are exhibited all the more colorfully. Thus, for Maximus the Greek, a contemporary of the Reformation who wrote Against the Lutherans — Discourse on the Veneration of Holy Icons, Protestantism, which rejected the veneration of icons, was unquestionably evil, the result of dissoluteness, pride-fulness, and intellectual blindness: "Like the blind asp, when it hears the snake-charmer, places one ear to the ground and plugs the other with its tail lest it hear the voice of him who utters the charm, thus these senseless ones, owing to their rebelliousness and idleness, but mainly owing to their envy, do not listen to correction" (55). This tendency in the appraisal of Protestantism, the tendency to explain its rise through the arbitrary actions of individuals as well as the elemental infectiousness of enthusiasm, is also evident in N. D. Ter-entev's essay, written four centuries later, "The Lutheran Theological System according to the Symbolic Books of Lutheranism." Partially
excusing Luther and Melanchthon, "talented and theologically educated individuals who, further, were seized by sincere religious inspiration" (313), the Orthodox polemicist sees in their writings "something of the light, but much more darkness" (308). Initial attempts to elucidate the Reformation rationally were connected with criticism of Medieval Western Christianity. For instance, in I. I. Sokolov's article "Protestant Propaganda and the Reaction to it in Russia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," the notion that the uprising against the abuses of the Catholic Church was natural was expressed thusly: "Luther merely succeeded in unifying the oppositional movements that arose in the Western church almost immediately following its separation from the Eastern (...) Together with the princes, he was able to impart to all a new form of social and political protest and separatism" (163).
Secular authors' analyses of the causes of the Reformation go further. Through an objective scholarly approach, religion is stripped of its status as a first principle of human existence that takes on differing forms depending on circumstances, and is transformed into one among multiple cultural forms. Catholicism's internal crisis, its inability to satisfy the worldview-relat-ed demands of broad strata of the population, appears as a conse-
quence of general cultural evolution, while religious processes are placed in a dependent relationship with economic, social, and political ones. In particular, such an understanding is expressed in L. N. Mitrokhin's text entitled "Our Interest in Protestantism": "Protestantism's principal positions were determined by lived experience reflecting individuals' particular views on the equality, internal freedom, and independence of the person, the individual's duty and calling, which naturally took shape among persons increasingly implicated in specific bourgeois relations" (452).
The authors in the anthology treat the further history of Protestantism with similarly aggrieved or moderately benign explanations. Some of the authors consider this history to be contingent, others essentially predictable (za-konomernoi). Some see in it the machinations of the enemies of church unity; others an unavoidable stage in the development of religious ideology. The anthology devotes special attention to the spread of Protestantism in Russia. The first Lutherans appeared in Russia when the faith's spiritual leader was still alive. But when exactly did the presence of individual craftsmen, artists, traders, and pharmacists from abroad evolve into a Protestantism firmly rooted in Russian soil? In the middle of the sixteenth
century, when German communities were founded in Moscow, Vladimir, Uglich, Kostroma, Nizh-ny Novgorod, Tver, Kazan, and Arkhangelsk? Or in 1575, when Protestants were granted permission to build a place of worship near Moscow? When the act of interpreting the Bible free of established authority enraptured Russian minds and prompted those who had belonged to the Orthodox Church from birth to leave it? Or when the entire state structure underwent reorganization along the West European model and foreigners wound up at the helm of government? Or, perhaps, Protestantism became a fully Russian phenomenon when, under pressure from unsatisfied spiritual needs, forms of religious life outside of the [Orthodox] Church and independent of foreign influence emerged among the people? The question of the periodi-zation of Protestantism in Russia is important for the anthology's authors, a majority of whom approach it either generally or while treating the history of individual communities, be they Lutheran, Shtundist, Baptist, Mennon-ite, Pentecostal, and so on.
In many texts, the psychology (dushevnaia organizatsiia) of Protestants is discussed directly or obliquely. Various observers note the heightened sense of personal dignity characteristic of Protestants. Even those who can
hardly be suspected of harboring sympathies toward Protestantism acknowledge that, "with their piety and strict lifestyle, Protestants very much facilitated the purification of mores among the Orthodox, especially the elevation of social virtues — kindness, charitableness, honesty, diligence" (N. I. Barsov, "Protestantism in Russia," 37). Such moral independence and uncommon fitness for labor are based upon a fundamentally rational attitude toward religious revelation and toward life. The particular consequences of this rationalization of faith included pronounced asceticism in worship, rejection of the rich ritual traditions and complex hierarchies of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and the dream to "realize the kingdom of God on Earth (...) having established love, general contentment, and equality without vice or crime" (K. P. Pobedonostsev, "New Christianity without Christ," 341).
The direction of Russian Protestants' spiritual life changed depending on historical circumstances. In stricter times, their ministry took on strictly professional forms, satisfying "that ideal the Russian government established for itself regarding foreigners" (D. V. Tsvetaev, "The Struggle over Protestant Influence in the Muscovite State before Peter the Great," 180); but when the opportunity presented
itself, they propagated their views in every way possible, and did so quite successfully. Ten years after the start of equal missionary competition, which was guaranteed by the Decree on Religious Toleration of 1905, the Orthodox commentator A. F. Giliarevsky was obliged to acknowledge the Protestants' superiority: "Their nationwide mission is carried out at an unattainable level" ("German Dominance in Russian National-Religious Life," 365).
During the Soviet era, the social-psychological physiognomy of the Protestant was deprived of its expressiveness. For the religious in a godless state, the opportunity for a full-fledged social-religious life was closed off; in a socialist state, the possibility of religious-economic activity disappeared. The social soil undergirding the self-awareness of the sower of the divine Word and the specialist appointed from on high eroded, the support base for implementation of religious norms and values in everyday life vanished, and as a result, "the image of the busy, active person becomes almost entirely lost" (S. N. Savelev, "Protestant Sectarianism in the Light of Atheistic Propaganda," 444).
A side effect of prerevolution-ary freedoms followed by the strict religious policies of the USSR was a weakening of national consciousness. Champions of Russian Orthodoxy in the nineteenth centu-
ry were still concerned with the question of whether a Russian person's psychological makeup would allow him to be a Protestant, even though Ivan the Terrible, in his response to Ivan Roki-ta's critique of Church tradition, already made note of the universal, supra-national nature of faith ("'our' faith is not given the name Russian, but Christian; 'people' are called Christians, and where they are called by another name, by the name of their land, there is heresy and schism," 80). By the mid-i920s, subsequent to the inroads made by Baptist, Evangelical, Methodist and Pentecostal missionaries among ethnic Russians, the national-religious question lost its urgency. At the start of the twenty-first century, even the ethnic composition of Russian Lu-theranism has changed as it transforms, thanks to the heavy influx of Russian converts, "into a Russian patriotic movement" (R. N. Lunkin, "Protestantism in Russia: A New Force in Civil Society," 496).
Russification and conditions favorable to religious freedom have fostered a curious evolution within contemporary Protestantism. The traditional opposition within Protestant consciousness between the spiritual reading of the Bible and the external ritualism of Orthodoxy is becoming less and less sharp in modern Russian history. A. S. Strukova and S. B. Filatov note "the more or less con-
scious striving toward elements of Orthodox ritual characteristic of nearly all active Protestant churches in contemporary Russia," the construction of churches "with grandeur," the adoption of ceremonial pastoral vestments, and a return to the veneration of icons ("From Protestantism in Russia to Russian Protestantism," 54547). T. K. Nikolskaya additionally points to the increasing adaptation of Protestant language to Orthodox norms and "the spread of an episcopal system of administration in place of a congregational one" ("Russian Protestants in the Twentieth Century," 591).
Educated Russian youth actively participate in the life of Protestant communities, expanding missionary work, religious instruction, and journalism, carrying out social programs, and formulating their political interests more and more clearly. After researching various parameters of the contemporary religious situation in Russia, R. A. Lopatkin arrived at the conclusion that Protestant churches constitute "the most dynamic segment of the country's religious population" ("The Religious Situation in Russia and Protestantism's Place Therein," 462). In this, alongside their practical activities, the Protestant intelligentsia of Russia devotes attention to the formulation of a worldview that might correspond to their current situation. From this springs their interest in
Orthodox theology and the Russian spiritual tradition, in which many find the sources of their religiosity. Thus, O. V. Vasileva (Bok-ova) observes that "contemporary Russian Protestants identify not with the European Reformation and Western Protestantism, but with that tradition of Evangelical Christianity that they discover in the depths of Russian spiritual culture" ("Contemporary Russian Protestantism: In Search of Itself," 563).
Protestantism is a fact of life in Russia today. How is this fact to be elucidated and which attitude should one adopt toward it? Making no claim to an overview of existing conceptions of Protestantism in Russia that is even remotely complete, one can direct readers interested in the subject to the anthology under consideration here. This book, in full accord with the purposes of a scholarly-didactic publication, contains much interesting and useful information, both in its primary texts and its commentaries on them.
Petr Neshitov (Translation by Stephen Scala)
