A Revived Identity Across Modern Central Asia

Contemporary Tengrism exists both as a continuing element within syncretic religious practice among some Mongolian, Turkic and Siberian communities, blended in various ways with Buddhism, Islam or Orthodox Christianity depending on region and history, and as a self-consciously revived and sometimes newly systematized identity movement in several post-Soviet Central Asian states, where some intellectuals and cultural organizations have promoted Tengrism as an authentically indigenous spiritual heritage distinct from the Islam or Christianity introduced through later historical conquest and conversion. This modern revival movement, while drawing on genuine historical Tengrist concepts and terminology, in some cases involves considerable reconstruction and reinterpretation, a pattern scholars of new religious movements note it shares with revival movements in other parts of the world seeking to reconnect with pre-conversion indigenous religious heritage after centuries of interruption.

Because contemporary Tengrist revival organizations and communities differ among themselves in how they understand and practice prayer and ritual, and because this entry cannot speak on behalf of any specific such community's current practice, it maintains the same descriptive rather than instructive approach used elsewhere in this atlas for traditions whose living communities maintain their own authority over how their prayer and ritual life is represented and taught.