gender

Eunuchs of the Kingdom. Interpretation of Matthew 19:12 in the Early Christian Movement

Between Ethics and Physiology: Wet Nurses in the Russian Society of the Late 19th — Early 20th Centuries

The article addresses a number of issues related to the profession of wet nurses in pre-Revolutionary Russia. This topic is particularly relevant in connection with the current discussion of the alienation of women’s reproductive function. According to infant care manuals, while choosing a wet nurse, doctors recommended that mothers consider not only physical aspects, but also ethical issues. However, in practice, the ethics receded into the background. Wet nurses were used in almost all families that had reached a certain financial and social status.

Śabarimala: Ayyappa’s Virginity, Gender Equality and Conflicts of Religious Rights in Today’s India

The article analyzes one of the most controversial clashes over religion in India, namely the conflict around the worship of god Ayyappa in the Śabarimala temple in Kerala. The practice of preventing fertile women from entering the temple has been established and entrenched here, fertility being formally defined as the age between ten and fifty.

Pilgrimage as a Path to Faith: An Essay on a Social Construction of Religiosity

The article is devoted to pilgrimage and represents an anthropological interview with the researcher’s comments. The interview was recorded on April 2019, in Elista, at the religious community of the Temple “Golden Abode of Shakyamuni Buddha”. The narrative shows how a pilgrimage to India is perceived by Kalmykia’s believers as a means of coping with life’s hurdles and of searching for its new meaning.

Peter and Fevronia and the Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity: Pronatalism and Unstable Gender Order in Contemporary Russia

This paper investigates the role of the Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity in the deployment of Russian state family policy since 2006. It argues that the holiday is emblematic of a cooperative, rather than synchronous, relationship between Church and state in the promotion of pronatalism and so-called “traditional family values”, and highlights the ways in which public discourse around the holiday intentionally obscures internal contradictions within the dominant family ideologies of both institutions.

Marriage Ideas and Practices among Evangelical Believers in the Soviet Union in 1940–1980s: The Case of Central Black Earth Region

The scope of the present research is the evolution of marriage and family ideas in the Evangelical Christian Baptist movement after World War II in the Soviet Union. The author analyzed the special views on marriage among the Russian Baptists, found in the Baptist bulletin “Bratsky Vestnik” (Fraternal Bulletin), as well as in the archival documents from the Evangelical Christian Baptist churches of Tambov, Voronezh and Lipetsk regions. The author reconstructs the model of marriage relationships and family practices among the Evangelicals.

“Vocation in the Flesh”: Gender and Embodiment in Religious Anthropology of Contemporary Catholicism

In the early and medieval Christian tradition, the gendered body was understood as both an obstacle to the cultivation of virtues and a potential medium of transgression. The contemporary Catholic anthropology has another view of the subject’s body and its senses and desires. This article is concerned with the pastoral project of encouraging priestly and monastic callings in the Russian Catholic parishes. It also specifically looks at its rhetoric, placing significant emphasis on gendered embodiment.

Gender Strategies and Disciplinary Practices in Religious Communities. Introduction

What is the mechanism of construction and implementation of masculinity and femininity, family and sexuality in various religious communities? Strategies and disciplinary practices, especially related to gender, play a paramount role in all religious cultures. Individual piety and sin are regarded through the prism of proper sexual behavior and precise definition of the role of every gender in a theological discourse.

Communities of Mourning: Mountain Jewish Laments in Azerbaijan and on the Internet

This article explores two sites of Mountain Jewish mourning - Krasnaia Sloboda, the more traditional location of Mountain Jewish customs — and the Mountain Jewish Online Center. Investigating how lamentations expressed in both spaces create Mountain Jewish community, I argue that the development of alternative places of lamentation ultimately challenges gender expectations of emotionality and grief work, as well as the texts of mourning themselves.