To Russia With Fear: American Evangelicals and the Russian Orthodox Church

Abstract

This dissertation argues that ambitious American Evangelical leaders built a comprehensive political and religious global vision in the early 1980s that would ultimately lead them to forge strategic transnational connections with their Russian Orthodox counterparts. The secular Soviet Union had been feared as a mortal enemy by American Evangelical leaders; their response to the religious openness that followed its 1991 dissolution was to mobilize millions of dollars and thousands of American missionaries to save the souls of Russians. Initially, this missionizing incurred significant opposition from the Russian Orthodox Church which was seeking to reestablish itself as a cultural force in society. However, key American Evangelical and Russian Orthodox leaders have now set aside theological and cultural differences to work together in response to a new shared fear: saving their respective countries and the world from secularism by defeating the progressive human rights system which underpins liberal democracy.