New Religious Movements in the Russion North: Competing Uses of Religiosiy After Socialism (NEWREL)

NEWREL is a new initiative under the European Science Foundation’s BOREAS program, a collaborative framework for multidisciplinary and multinational humanities and social science research
projects in the circumpolar North. Within this framework, NEWREL brings together scholars from Estonia, Finland, France, Russia, Switzerland and the United States with expertise ranging from folklore and literature to cultural anthropology and ethnology. Through independent, original research and three collaborative, international workshops, the researchers will investigate the religious landscape of the Russian North in various historical and cultural contexts in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet
Union. The two projects proposed here comprise the U.S. component of this multinational project. Patty Gray (PI and NEWREL Project Leader) will carry out research for the project “Missionaries,
Humanitarian Aid, and Accompanying Ideologies in the Russian Far East,” while David Koester (Co-PI) will carry out research for the project “New Religious Movements, Voluntarism and Social Mechanisms of Durability.” These projects, both based in the Russian Far East (RFE), will contribute cultural anthropological and historical analyses to this overall program of research.

Patty Gray will investigate the embedded economic ideologies in the missionary message of North American Christian evangelicals active in the RFE. Intellectual Merit – By focusing on the nexus of the religious and the economic, this project makes an important contribution to a legacy of social theory that has run through the social sciences since Max Weber. This research will advance knowledge and understanding in the social sciences by analyzing the impact of foreign missionaries in local communities in political economic and cultural terms. Broader Impacts – The PI has long-term experience in the RFE and is part of a network of relationships
that spans the Bering Strait. The PI will draw upon these networks to involve communities in both Magadan Province and Alaska in the research process. Sharing the results of the research with both the
missionary groups and the communities they work with in the Russian Far East will enable them to better understand how their encounter fits into a wider context. David Koester will investigate the motivations, ideas and actions that bring cohesion and durability to religious practices, studied in Kamchatka, in the RFE.
Intellectual Merit - Within the field of social/cultural anthropology, this project contributes not only to the study of religion and religious practices, but to basic theoretical questions of how individuals and social groups experience and manage temporality. This proposal is original in that it applies a variety of approaches to understanding society and culture over time and applies them to religious practices. Broader Impacts - The PI has worked extensively with indigenous groups and individuals in Kamchatka, and will continue to use this work for community research and education. The indigenous community in Kamchatka is interested in better understanding the relationship between religious participation and
abandonment or rejection of indigenous heritage. The three phases of the project connect both the research process and research results to local community projects and schools (including the university) and the research interests of indigenous communities in Kamchatka.


Both of the U.S. PIs contribute to international networking and multidisciplinary collaborative partnerships through the connections that NEWREL will make with other projects by means of the annual joint project workshops and collaborative publications.