Lutheranism in Russia

Abstract

"When religious confessions that were suppressed or seriously persecuted in Soviet times are regenerating themselves, the result is sometimes quite novel religious move- ments that have no prerevolutionary precursors. To some extent this applies to all confessions. Even postsoviet Orthodoxy is nothing like the prerevolutionary Russian Orthodox Church. The metamorphosis of Russian Lutheranism, however, goes a good way beyond the norm for novelty in Russian confessions. In Russia today Lutheran- ism is unexpectedly becoming quite different, doctrinally and psychologically, from what it ever has been anywhere before. It could well play its own unique role on the future Russian religious scene. "