Dr. Paul David Steeves, a historian of Russian religion, passed to the life eternal on May 20. A service of commemoration and committal will be held at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, DeLand, at 11am on June 6, with a reception following in the Canterbury House.

Paul was born to Earle Whittier and Virginia Elisabeth Payne Steeves on June 20, 1941, in Attleboro, Massachusetts. He attended his first five grades in a one-room schoolhouse in Foxboro, MA. He graduated from Normandy High School in St. Louis County, MO, in 1958 and from Washington University in St. Louis in 1962. He joined the field staff of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Lawrence, Kansas. He composed three books for campus ministry: Getting to Know Jesus, Getting to Know God, and Getting to Know Your Faith (InterVarsity Press). He earned a PhD in Russian history from the University of Kansas with a dissertation, “Evangelical Awakening in Russia: the Russian Baptist Union, 1917 to 1935,” which received the Oswald P. Backus Award for Excellence in the Field of Russian and East European Studies in 1976. Meanwhile, he married Pauline (Polly) Houston (1962) and they had two daughters, Cathryn Pauline (1964) and Kari Elizabeth (1966).

Paul joined the faculty of Stetson University in 1972 to teach history and Russian Studies. He was an early winner of Stetson’s prestigious William Hugh McInery Award for Excellence in Teaching (1979) and the first recipient of the Homer and Dolly Hand Senior Scholar Award for Excellence in Research (1989). He was appointed to the J. Ollie Edmunds Chair in 1992. He developed Stetson’s Russian Studies Program in the years he served as its director. He also served for several years as a director of the Honors Program and the Edmunds Scholars. He retired in 2013 after teaching for 41 years.

He authored Keeping the Faiths, Religion and Ideology in the Soviet Union (Holmes and Meier, 1989) and dozens of articles about religion in Russia for journals and reference works. He edited seven volumes of the Modern Encyclopedia of Religions in Russian and the Soviet Union (Academic International Press, 1989–1995). He served a term as president of the Southern Conference for Slavic Studies (1995–1996). He translated and posted on his internet webpage, “Russia Religion News,” thousands of articles from Russian news media in the years 1996 to 2022. The website was described by the blog “Orthodoxy in Dialogue” as, “an unadorned, bare bones goldmine of English-language translations of media reports on religious life in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.”

As his chief hobby he sang bass with choral groups, including Bel Canto Singers, Daytona Beach Choral Society, Stetson University Choral Union, and the choirs of the First Presbyterian Church, DeLand, and St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. From 1976–1978, he served as president of the DeLand Miss Softball America League and coached his daughters on league-champion teams. He coached the 1978 DeLand All-Star team in its successful bid for the state championship.

Paul is survived by his wife of 63 years, Pauline Houston Steeves, daughters Cathryn (Steven Perkins) and Kari (David Sklar), and grandchildren Elizabeth Sumner Steeves Perkins, Finlay Benjamin Steeves Sklar, Katherine Bergeron Steeves Perkins, Jonathan Houston Steeves Perkins, and Arden Naomi Steeves Sklar, and by his siblings, Philip Earle Steeves and Ruth Elisabeth deVilliers.

In lieu of flowers, please send a donation in Paul’s memory to St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, The Parkinson’s Foundation, or the West Volusia Neighborhood Center.