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Placing Faith in Development: How Moscow's Religious Communities Contribute to a More Civil Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Melissa L. Caldwell
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Abstract

The development-oriented work of Moscow's religious communities is examined in this article, with a focus on how a core group of faith organizations present themselves as offering an alternative vision of intervention and improvement that seeks to protect Russian citizens from what proponents suggest are the shortcomings of previous democratizing and civil society ventures. Staff and supporters within Moscow's faith-based assistance sphere contend that religiously affiliated assistance organizations are successful, not only because they parallel secular development programs in promoting values and practices of capitalism, democracy, and global human rights, but more importantly because they also claim to move beyond these approaches to tend to the well-being and transformation of the entire human being. Consequentiy, proponents argue that faith-based organizations are more attuned to values of humane treatment and civility, thereby making them better positioned to build a new Russian society that brings citizens and the state together in productive and caring relationships. Ultimately, this attention to the perspectives and ideals of religiously oriented development organizations provides a different vantage point for reconsidering the promises and consequences of Russia's neoliberal and democratizing transformations.

Type
Development Landscapes: NGOs, FBOs, and Democratization in Russia and Central Asia
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , Summer 2012 , pp. 261 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2012 

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References

The research discussed in this article was supported by funding from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and a Faculty Research Grant from the Committee on Research at UCSC. I thank Carla Takaki Richardson and Sarah Bakker Kellogg for doing a fantastic job as my research assistants for the larger project of which this is a part. Earlier versions of this analysis were presented at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion meetings, the Workshop on European Ethnography at the University of Chicago, and the Council for European Studies meeting. A more developed version of this article was presented at the Kennan Institute workshop, “International Development Assistance in the Post-Soviet Space,” and I thank my colleagues in that workshop for their thoughtful and generous feedback and assistance. I am especially grateful to Renata Kosc-Harmatiy, Maggie Paxson, and Blair Ruble for their support and for the opportunity to participate in that workshop, and to William Pomeranz for his terrific suggestions for improving this paper. I would also like to thank Noor Borbieva, Don Brenneis, Mike Urban, Jarrett Zigon, and the graduate students in the UCSC anthropology department “faculty salon” for their careful readings of and comments on this manuscript at different stages. A special thanks to Mark D. Steinberg for shepherding this article through the review process, to the anonymous readers for their comments, and to Jane T. Hedges and the Slavic Review editorial assistants for their editing wizardry and assistance. Finally, above all, I owe a special debt of gratitude and my deepest thanks and appreciation to Ruth Mandel, who organized the Kennan workshop and always provided the most generous guidance and critical feedback throughout the many iterations of this piece.

1. For the “democratizing” initiatives, see Urban, Michael E., Cultures of Power in Post-Communist Russia: An Analysis of Elite Political Discourse (Cambridge, Eng., 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wedel, Janine R., Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989-1998 (New York, 1998).Google Scholar For the aid provided by religiously affiliated organizations, see Caldwell, Melissa L., Not by Bread Alone: Social Support in the New Russia (Berkeley, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tocheva, Detelina, “An Ethos of Relatedness: Foreign Aid and Grassroots Charities in Two Orthodox Parishes in North-Western Russia,” in Zigon, Jarrett, ed., Multiple Moralities and Religions in Post-Soviet Russia (New York, 2011)Google Scholar; Wanner, Catherine, Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (Ithaca, 2007)Google Scholar; Zigon, Jarrett, HIV Is God's Blessing: Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia (Berkeley, 2011).Google Scholar

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4. On the “regimes of discourse and representation,” see Escobar, Arturo, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of The Third World (Princeton, 1995)Google Scholar; Ferguson, James, The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,“Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis, 1994)Google Scholar; Fisher, William F., “Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices,” Annual Review of Anthropology 26 (1007): 439-64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. In keeping with standard ethnographic practice, and to ensure the safety of these groups and their members, I have used pseudonyms for all organizations and individuals mentioned in this chapter, except those widi an internationally recognized presence.Google Scholar

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7. It is not my intent to argue issues from theology or theories of religion concerning the nature of “religion,” “spirituality,” or “faith.” Rather, I would suggest that these terms are themselves similarly problematic when applied to qualify particular types of communities. Yet, given that the individuals who participate in these various communities come together at different moments for different types of shared experience—religious tradition, identity, belief, sense of spirituality, or faith—this flexible vocabulary effectively captures the ambiguities that exist on the ground.

8. On the absence of faith communities from accounts of post-Soviet development projects, see Sampson, Steven, “The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania,” in Hann, Chris M. and Dunn, Elizabeth, eds., Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (London, 1996), 121-42Google Scholar; notable exceptions include Wanner, Communities of the Converted, and Noor O'Neill Borbieva's article in this issue. On the growing network of faith communities active within Moscow, see Bernbaum, John A., “NGOs on Russia's Leading Edge,” East-West Church and Ministry Report 14, no. 4 (Fall 2006): 11-13 Google Scholar; Caldwell, Not by Bread Alone; Caldwell, Melissa L., “The Politics of Rightness: Social Justice among Russia's Christian Communities,” Problems of Post-Communism 56, no. 4 (July/August 2009): 29-40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cherenkov, Michael and Johnson, David, “Christian Responses to the AIDS Crisis in Russia,” East-West Church and Ministry Report 14, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 1-2.Google Scholar According to professional development staff in Moscow and scholars studying religious social programs across Russia, such trends are not unique to Moscow but are occurring elsewhere and with increasing visibility and success: Patty Gray, personal communication, Boston, November 2009; Köllner, Tobias, “Built with Gold or Tears? Moral Discourses on Church Construction and the Role of Entrepreneurial Donations,” in Zigon, , ed., Multiple Moralities and Religions, 191-213 Google Scholar; Tocheva, “An Ethos of Relatedness“; Zigon, HIV Is God's Blessing.

9. Colleagues have suggested there must be Muslim communities involved in social services, but I was unable to find direct evidence. Development and assistance providers in Moscow whom I approached for help in making contact with Muslim service providers repeatedly told me that they did not know anyone working in this area. Most intriguing was that several development/assistance programs I approached had significant Muslim communities among their recipients—all of whom received services from Christian communities. The imam of one of Moscow's mosques was in fact a registered aid recipient with St. James Protestant Church's NGO. The arrival of the Aga Khan Foundation (described later in this article) generated considerable excitement precisely because aid providers saw it as the first instance of Muslim assistance in Moscow.

10. Khodarkovsky, Michael, ‘“Not by Word Alone': Missionary Policies and Religious Conversion in Early Modern Russia,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38, no. 2 (April 1996): 267-92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. From materials contained in the Lutheran Church in Russia's Statement of Faith.

12. Coleman, Heather J., Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905-1929 (Bloomington, 2005)Google Scholar; Lindenmeyr, Adele, Poverty Is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton, 1996).Google Scholar

13. Kenworthy, Scott M., “To Save the World or to Renounce It: Modes of Moral Action in Russian Orthodoxy,” in Steinberg, Mark D. and Wanner, Catherine, eds., Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies (Washington, D.C. and Bloomington, 2008), 21-54 Google Scholar; Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice. In an article on unemployment and the emergence of industrial homes in late imperial Russia, Adele Lindenmeyr writes that an Orthodox pastor and a Lutheran layman were instrumental in introducing work relief programs that were more effective responses than alms-giving: Lindenmeyr, “Charity and the Problem of Unemployment: Industrial Homes in Late Imperial Russia,” Russian Review , 45 no. 1 (January 1986): 1-22.

14. Kaiser, Daniel H., “The Poor and Disabled in Early Eighteenth-Century Russian Towns,” Journal of Social History 32, no. 1 (Autumn 1998): 125-55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lindenmeyr, Adele, “Public Life, Private Virtues: Women in Russian Charity, 1762-1914,” Signs 18, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 562-91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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16. Adriana Petryna has used the phrase “biological citizenship” to describe how Soviet authorities reduced civic identities to the essential biological qualities of individuals. Benefits were then distributed according to these biological qualities of citizenship. Petryna, , Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl (Princeton, 2002).Google Scholar

17. The so-called subbotniki (Saturday) workers are perhaps the most familiar of these “voluntary” workers who engaged in construction, maintenance of community buildings, litter collection, public gardening, and other civic initiatives. See also Shlapentokh, Vladimir, Public and Private Life of the Soviet People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia (Oxford, 1989), 100-101.Google Scholar On charity as anti-Soviet, see Bourdeaux, Michael, “The Quality of Mercy: A Once-Only Opportunity,” in Witte, John Jr. and Bourdeaux, Michael, eds., Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls (Maryknoll, 1999), 187 Google Scholar; Lindenmeyr, Adele, “From Repression to Revival: Philanthropy in Twentieth-Century Russia,” in Ilcham, Warren F., Katz, Stanley N., and Queen, Edward L. II, eds., Philanthropy in the World's Traditions (Bloomington, 1998), 319.Google Scholar

18. White, “Charity, Self-Help and Politics in Russia.“

19. White, “Charity, Self-Help and Politics in Russia“; Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity in the late 1980s have been credited with facilitating the emergence of western Christian aid in the USSR, especially from European Catholic and Protestant communities. Bourdeaux, “The Quality of Mercy,” 190. As some observers have noted, the surge in charitable activity by religious groups at this time prompted Soviet citizens to compare the abilities of faith communities and the Communist Party to provide assistance. Ibid., 189.

20. White, “Charity, Self-Help and Politics in Russia.“

21. On the Russian Orthodox Church, see Hann, Chris M. and Goltz, Hermann, eds., Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective (Berkeley, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitrokhin, Nikolai, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov': Sovremennoe sostoianie i aktual'nyeproblemy (Moscow, 2004).Google Scholar On other religious groups, see Caldwell, Not by Bread Alone; Knox, Zoe, “Religious Freedom in Russia: The Putin Years,” in Steinberg, and Wanner, , eds., Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies, 281-314 Google Scholar; Lankauskas, Gediminas, “On ‘Modern’ Christians, Consumption, and the Value of National Identity in Post-Soviet Lithuania,” Ethnos 67, no. 3 (November 2002): 320-44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wanner, Communities of the Converted.

22. Elliott, Mark and Deyneka, Anita, “Protestant Missionaries in the Former Soviet Union,” in Witte, and Bourdeaux, , eds., Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia, 197-223.Google Scholar

23. Caldwell, Melissa L., “Social Welfare and Christian Welfare: Who Gets Saved in Post-Soviet Charity Work?” in Steinberg, and Wanner, , eds., Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies, 179-214.Google Scholar

24. Caldwell, Melissa L., “The Russian Orthodox Church, the Provision of Social Welfare, and Changing Ethics of Benevolence,” in Hann, and Goltz, , eds., Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective, 329-50.Google Scholar

25. See Baggett's discussion about the secular nature of Habitat for Humanity: Jerome P. Baggett, Habitatfor Humanity: Building Private Homes, Building Public Religion (Philadelphia, 2001).

26. Caldwell, “Politics of Rightness.“

27. Bellah, Robert N., “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96, no. 1 (Winter 1967): 1-21.Google Scholar A longer discussion of how personal spiritual beliefs or experiences affect how staff, volunteers, and donors interpret and implement their work is beyond the scope of this article. Readers interested in the ambiguities of “missionary” as an identifying label for individuals engaged in faith-based service work are directed to Caldwell, “Social Welfare and Christian Welfare,” and Hann and Goltz, eds., Eastern Christians in Anthropobgical Perspective; for an account of the ways in which Moscow's faith communities attract a more ecumenical, even secular, community of individuals brought together by shared social justice values, see Caldwell, “Politics of Rightness.“

28. Sampson reports that church-related organizations were deliberately excluded from the “development” category in eastern Europe. Sampson, “Social Life of Projects,” 129.

29. See Phillips's excellent discussion of what she calls “the politics of differentiation,” especially in terms of how issues and participants in Ukraine have been variously denned and redefined through development processes: Sarah D. Phillips, Women's Social Activism in the New Ukraine: Development and the Politics of Differentiation (Bloomington, 2008), 1.

30. E.g., Abramson, David M., “A Critical Look at NGOs and Civil Society as Means to an End in Uzbekistan,” Human Organization 58, no. 3 (1999): 240-50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aksartova, , “Promoting Civil Society“; Julie Hemment, “The Riddle of the Third Sector: Civil Society, International Aid, and NGOs in Russia,” Anthropological Quarterly 77, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 215-41Google Scholar; Phillips, Women's Social Activism; Slocum, John W., “Philanthropic Foundations in Russia: Western Projection and Local Legitimacy,” in Hammack, and Heydemann, , eds., Globalization, Philanthropy, and Civil Society, 137-59.Google Scholar

31. E.g., Hemment, Julie, Empowering Women in Russia: Activism, Aid, and NGOs (Bloomington, 2007)Google Scholar; Phillips, Women's Social Activism; Rivkin-Fish, Michele R., Women's Health in Post-Soviet Russia: The Politics of Intervention (Bloomington, 2005)Google Scholar; Urban, Cultures of Power.

32. Bowker, Geoffrey C. and Star, Susan Leigh, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, Mass., 1999).Google Scholar

33. Church staff never used the word miloserdie, which was instead used by their Orthodox partners. This distinction was evident in a conversation between St. James staff and their partners from the social development office at the patriarchate, as they moved fluidly back and forth between blagotuoritel'nii to describe St. James's projects and miloserdie to describe Orthodox projects.

34. Russian Federation, Federal Law, No. 125-FZ of 26 September 1997, “On the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations [O svobode soveste i o religioznykh ob“edineniiax],” at http://www.legislationline.org/topics/country/7/topic/1 (last accessed 2 March 2012).

35. Aksartova, “Promoting Civil Society“; Coles, Kimberley, Democratic Designs: International Intervention and Electoral Practices in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina (Ann Arbor, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hann, Chris, “Introduction: Political Society and Civil Anthropology,” in Hann, and Dunn, , eds., Civil Society, 1-26 Google Scholar; Sampson, “Social Life of Projects“; Urban, Cultures of Power; Wedel, Collision and Collusion.

36. Hann “Introduction,“11. For an overview of these orientations, see Urban, Cultures of Power. See also Sampson, “Social Life of Projects,” and Wedel, Collision and Collusion.

37. Ferguson, James and Gupta, Akhil, “Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality,” American Ethnologist 29, no. 4 (November 2002): 981-1002 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phillips, , Women's Social Activism, 20 Google Scholar; Wedel, , Collision and Collusion, 83 Google Scholar.

38. Hemment, “Riddle of the Third Sector.” See also Berger, Peter L. and Neuhaus, Richard John, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, D.C., 1977)Google Scholar; Cnaan, Ram A. with Boddie, Stephanie C., Handy, Femida, Yancey, Gaynor, and Schneider, Richard, The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare (New York, 2002), 156-57.Google Scholar

39. Wedel, , Collision and Collusion, 8.Google Scholar

40. Kornai, János, “The Borderline between the Spheres of Authority of the Citizen and the State: Recommendations for the Hungarian Health Reform,” in Kornai, János, Haggard, Stephan, and Kaufman, Robert R., eds., Reforming the State: Fiscal and Welfare Reform in Post-Socialist Countries (Cambridge, Eng., 2001), 181-209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Cnaan, Ram A. with Wineburg, Robert J. and Boddie, Stephanie C., The Newer Deal: Social Work and Religion in Partnership (New York, 1999).Google Scholar

42. From a different perspective drawn from careful analysis of the political philosophies underlying different theories of “civil society,” Urban makes a similar point and persuasively argues that western models of civil society were based on a flawed notion of social capital that is not representative of Russian social life. Urban, Cultures of Power.

43. See also Cnaan, , Invisible Caring Hand, 5 Google Scholar; Elisha, “Moral Ambitions of Grace.“

44. It is worth noting that the woman who created the “meals-on-wheels” program adamantly described herself as nonreligious but approached St. James because she thought (correctly, as it turned out) that the church would be interested in supporting the project.

45. See also Zigon, HIV Is God's Blessing.

46. See also Galina Lindquist, Conjuring Hope: Healing and Magic in Contemporary Russia (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; Wanner, Communities of the Converted; Zigon, HIV Is God's Blessing. Although religious organizations were not the only programs to do this type of outreach, it is notable that they have typically coupled these projects explicidy with commentaries on social decline.

47. See also Caldwell, Not by Bread Alone; Tova Höjdestrand, Needed by Nobody: Homelessness and Humanness in Post-Socialist Russia (Ithaca, 2009); Zigon, HIV Is God's Blessing.

48. Abramson, “A Critical Look at NGOs“; Coles, Democratic Designs; Hemment Empowering Women in Russia; Phillips, Women's Social Activism; Sampson, “Social Life of Projects“; Wedel, Collision and Collusion.

49. The information about AKDN provided at the roundtable was limited. For more detailed information about this organization and its projects, see their Web site at http://www.adkn.org (last accessed 2 March 2012)

50. See Natalya Krainova, “City Starts Razing Cherkizovsky,” Moscow Times, no 4213 (19 August 2009), 3 .

51. I am deliberately vague in identifying these groups. Like other nongovernmental medical services programs in Moscow, particularly those affiliated with religious communities, these three programs attempt to keep their work quiet in order not to come into conflict with local authorities. Only licensed physicians are allowed to provide medical treatment in registered facilities to legal residents. Other activities can entail only “consultation,” and physicians must refer patients to formal medical facilities for treatment. Despite recognition by local welfare officials that unregistered persons (both noncitizens and homeless Russians) desperately require medical services, and despite welfare officials’ informal encouragement of NGOs and private physicians to provide this assistance, law enforcement officials closely monitor these activities. Consequently, physicians who work in these more informal fields tread carefully in the types of services they provide, in how they represent their work, and in the extent of public visibility they are willing to permit.

52. Hann and Goltz, eds., Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective; Mitrokhin Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov'.

53. JComaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John L., “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming,” in Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John L., eds., Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (Durham, 2001), 2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Escobar, , Encountering Development, 25.Google Scholar

54. Bernbaum, “NGOs on Russia's Leading Edge,” 11-13; Livshin, Alexander, “Russian Philanthropy Now Making a Difference,” East-West Church and Ministry Report 14, no. 4 (Fall 2006): 9-11 Google Scholar; Rakhuba, Sergey, “Christian Aid in the Wake of Beslan Terrorism,” East- West Church and Ministry Report 14, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 4-8.Google Scholar