Russian Baptists and spiritual revolution, 1905-1929

"... a fascinating read for everyone interested in Russia, religion,
and modernity." -- Nadieszda Kizenko

In the early 20th
century, Baptists were the fastest-growing non-Orthodox religious group among
Russians and Ukrainians. Heather J. Coleman traces the development of Baptist
evangelical communities through a period of rapid industrialization, war, and
revolution, when Russians found themselves asking new questions about religion and
its place in modern life. Baptists' faith helped them navigate the problems of
dissent, of order and disorder, of modernization and westernization, and of national
and social identity in their changing society. Making use of newly available
archival material, this important book reveals the ways in which the Baptists' own
experiences, and the widespread discussions that they generated, illuminate the
emergence of new social and personal identities in late Imperial and early Soviet
Russia, the creation of a public sphere and a civic culture, and the role of
religious ideas in the modernization process.

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