Vagramenko T.A. Forthcoming (2018). Chronotopes of Conversion and the Production of Christian Fundamentalism in the Post-Soviet Arctic. Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies, Vol. 17(1), pp. 63-91.

Abstract

This article discusses the potential contribution of the chronotope as an analytic category in studies of Christian conversion, applying it to postsocialist religious changes in the Russian Arctic. Looking through basic categories of human experience – space and time – the article focuses on the comparative analysis of the two missionary movements working in the Nenets tundra – neo-Pentecostalism and fundamentalist Baptism. Siberia and the Arctic became one of the most striking spots of postsocialist rearrangements on the Russian religious map, and were associated with an increasing presence of various Protestant movements. The article examines Evangelical missionary movement amongst the Nenets indigenous people who live in the Polar Ural tundra, North-Western Siberia. On the emerging religious spectrum, the Nenets tried out multiple faiths, choosing in the end the fundamentalist Baptism. The article elaborates on possible conditions that made Christian fundamentalism appealing in this part of the Arctic. I suggest that Nenets historical experience as a colonized periphery of the Russian state, particularly the Soviet experiments with space and time, have bridged Nenets social expectations and a radical form of Evangelical Christianity

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