Interaction between Pentecostals and local authorities in Russia: challenging secularity from below

Certain researchers have maintained that the resurgence of religion in the Russian Federation is part of a process of desecularisation ‘from above', following years of forced secularisation. This article postulates that, despite their status as members of what is considered a nontraditional rel...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:  
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Giudice, Barbara (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
En cours de chargement...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Publié: Routledge [2016]
Dans: Religion, state & society
Année: 2016, Volume: 44, Numéro: 3, Pages: 219-237
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Russie / Régions administratives / Laïcité / Pentecôtisme
Sujets non-standardisés:B Pentecostal religion
B Russian Pentecostal churches
B Pentecostal Church
B Secularity
B Pentecostals in Russia
B Secularisation
B Pentecostal
B desecularisation
B challenging secularity
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Résumé:Certain researchers have maintained that the resurgence of religion in the Russian Federation is part of a process of desecularisation ‘from above', following years of forced secularisation. This article postulates that, despite their status as members of what is considered a nontraditional religion, foreign to the Russian soil, Russian Pentecostal churches are actively engaged in a challenge to secularity but ‘from below'. I explore this hypothesis through the examination of three Pentecostal modes of action: social partnership, political partnership and global networking. Based on a qualitative, empirical study, this paper finds that the Pentecostal movement has forged close ties on a local and regional level with public authorities and that, through necessity and mutually overlapping interests, a certain cooperation and even complicity has developed between these local authorities and the organisations linked to the churches, thus facilitating the integration of specifically Pentecostal discourse into certain public structures. The study further shows that local and regional authorities have adopted globalised social work praxes territorialised by Pentecostals in an attempt to associate the current authoritarian regime with perceived forms of global modernity. At the same time I argue that the participation of the Pentecostal movement in a process of desecularisation is not an intentional outcome projected by the Russian regime but rather the consequence of economic and social urgency against a backdrop of a policy of New Public Management. I conclude that, due to the constantly shifting and often-arbitrary legal framework in which Pentecostals must operate in Russia today, the partnerships cultivated by the Pentecostal movement may prove to be unsustainable in the long term.
ISSN:1465-3974
Contient:Enthalten in: Religion, state & society
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2016.1217675