Orthodox Missionaryism in the Steppe Region as a Regional Practice of Imperial Religious Policy in the late ХIХth – early ХХth centuries
Православное миссионерство в Cтепном крае как региональная практика имперской религиозной политики в конце ХIХ – начале ХХ вв.
Mamraimov S.D. Yelshibayev S.K. Tokmurzayev B.S. Abisheva Z.R.
1 September 2024Cherkas Global University Press
Bylye Gody
2024#19Issue 31425 - 1432 pp.
This article, based on the materials of missionary records, as well as diaries and notes of the staff of the Kirghiz Spiritual Mission, reveals the practices of implementation of imperial religious policy in the Steppe region as a region that was the object of intensive colonial expansion in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the course of the research it was established that the incorporation of new subjects in the peripheral regions was carried out within the algorithm of communication between the imperial authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church, with reliance on the principles of religious tolerance towards the indigenous peoples. However, the movement of imperial structures from the center to the peripheries actualized the issues of cultural equalization of the population, which was a determining condition for the consolidation of remote territories within Russia. In this connection there were certain adjustments in religious policy, which, without changing its content, implied not only active proselytizing actions in the indigeneous environment, but also a number of serious concessions to the pagans, which strengthened the authority of Christian preachers and removed the indigenous inhabitants from the sphere of influence of Muslimism. During the period under study, the staff of the Kirghiz mission, relying on the traditions of spreading Orthodox Christianity that had been established in the European part of Russia, introduced flexible practices in the Steppe region that were oriented towards achieving harmony with the indigenous peoples in the religious sphere. These included the widespread experience of influencing the aesthetic sense of proselytes by demonstrating the external effects of Christian worship, material aid to neophytes and land provision, the performance of church services in local languages and dialects, and the involvement in missionary work of natives of various social strata of the foreign community. In the system of coordinates of the peripheral religious policy, the low efficiency of the actual conversion of local inhabitants to Orthodoxy was to some extent compensated by the efforts of missionaries who were in regular communication with the indigene population. The understanding of the fundamentals of the indigenous peoples way of life and clear ideas about the organization of their economic life, which were characteristic of Orthodox missionaries, provided more comfortable conditions for the spread of Christianity in a foreign ethnic cultural environment. Copyright
colonization , missionaryism , proselytism , religious policy , Russian Empire , Russian Orthodox Church
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