Masculinity, Authority, and Piety amongst Russian and Ukrainian Protestants

• In Event: Religious Piety in the U.S.S.R. after World War Two

Abstract

In most Evangelical Christian, Baptist, and Pentecostal congregations in the post-war Soviet Union, women outnumbered men 4 to 1, but as pastors, deacons, and evangelists men occupied almost all positions of authority within the church. When a new revival movement developed in the early 1960s, their samizdat publications often celebrated the piety of male leaders who had endured long prison sentences for their faith. This paper uses oral history interviews to ask how ideals of virtuous masculinity were constructed within the much larger mainstream Protestant tradition in which ideas of martyrdom were far less prevalent.

Author

• Miriam Dobson, U of Sheffield (UK)