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Old Believers

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The Old Believers (Russian: старове́ры or старообря́дцы) are a schismatic group of the Russian Orthodox Church.

A fragment of painting Boyarynya Morozova by Vasily Surikov depicting a defiant Old Believer arrested by Czarist authorities in 1671. She holds two fingers raised: a hint of the old, i.e., "proper", way of cross-signing oneself: with two fingers, rather than with three.

The schism itself is known as staroobryadchestvo (старообрядчество).

History

In 1652, Patriarch Nikon of the Russian Orthodox Church introduced a number of reforms aimed at centralizing his power and bringing Russian Orthodox ritual and doctrine in line with those of the Greek Orthodox Church. Old Believers rejected Nikon's reforms (see Raskol). One of the main figures in the movement was Avvakum Petrovich. Even after the deposition of Nikon (1658), who presented too strong a challenge to the Tsar's authority, a series of church councils officially endorsed Nikon's liturgical reforms. Old Believers rejected these innovations and maintained that the official Church fell into the hands of Antichrist. Followers of the Old Believer movement were anathemized at the synod in 1666–67 and several, including Avvakum, were executed. The Old Believers faced heavy persecution from then until the reign of Peter the Great, when they began to be tolerated as an extra source of tax revenue. An attempt to make the Old Believers obey the Church was the creation in 1801 of the uni-faith (единоверчество) church.

After the 17th century schism, Old Believers were divided into two main groups. The first one known as Popovtsy believed in the necessity of priests performing sacraments according to the old ritual. They sought to attract ordained priests, and in 1847 they convinced a prelate of the Orthodox Church of Bosnia, Metropolitan Ambrose, to consecrate three Russian Old Believers as bishops, who later appointed further bishops. In 1859, the number of Old Believer bishops in Russia reached ten, and they established their own episcopate.

A second group known as Bespopovtsy (the "priestless") was characterized by rejecting "the World" where Antichrist reigned; they preached the imminent end of the world, asceticism, adhering to the old rituals and the old faith. Given a lack of bishops and priests, the laity became predominant. The Bespopovtsy renounced priests and all sacraments, except Baptism.

For some time, Old Belief was associated with a strict asceticism that could sometimes be taken to extremes. In the 17th century, some groups in Karelia that belonged to the sect committed suicide through self-immolation. However, those who survived the 17th century became much more "life-willing", probably because the suicide of the most fanatical members of the movement served as a kind of self-purification and self-elimination of the most marginal views.

The Old Believers had no official toleration until 1905, so they had to hide from police and to pass themselves off as mainstream Orthodox. However, Old Believers became the dominant denomination in many regions; among them were Pomorye (Arkhangelsk region), Guslitsy, Kursk region, Urals, Siberia etc. By the 1910s, about 15% of the population in Russia said that they belonged to one of the Old Believer branches (census data).

In 1971, the official Russian Orthodox Church revoked the anathemas placed on the Old Believers in the 17th century, but most Old Believer communities have not returned to Communion with other Orthodox Christians.

Differences between the Old Believers and the official Russian Orthodoxy

  • Old Believers use 2 fingers while making the sign of the cross (2 fingers straightened, 3 folded) while official Orthodoxy uses 3 fingers for the sign of cross (3 fingers straightened, 2 fingers folded). That is not the major difference between the two branches of Orthodoxy, but one of the most noticeable (see the picture of Boyarynya Morozova above).
  • Old Believers reject all corrections and amendations of liturgical texts and rituals introduced by the reform of Patriarch Nikon. Thus they continue to use the older Church Slavonic translation of the sacred texts, including Psalter, striving to preserve intact the "pre-Nikonian" practices of the Russian Church.
  • Old Believers insist on performing the baptism through three full immersions and reject the validity of any baptismal rite that has been performed otherwise (e.g. through pouring, as it become practiced in the Russian Church since the 18th century).
  • Old Believers are in principle opposed to ecumenism, even though there had been many instances of good relationship and collaboration with other Eastern Orthodox churches.
  • Old Believers and official Orthodoxy have a lot of small, but essential differences in church services. The very style of services is different.
    • Old Believers do not use polyphonic singing, but only monodic, unison singing. They also have their own way of writing down music: not with linear notation, but with special signs Kryuki or Znamena ('hooks' or 'banners' in English translation; see znamennoe singing). There are several types of Old Believers znamennoe singing: znamenny raspev, stolpovoy raspev, pomorsky raspev, demestvenny raspev (or khomovoe singing) etc.
    • Old Believers use only icons of old Russian or Byzantine iconography; they do not believe in venerating realistic images of Christ, Our Lady and the Saints as icons (which is widely accepted in official Orthodoxy).
    • Old Believers do not kneel while making prayers; but, in comparison with official Orthodoxy, they perform more bows and especially low bows (nearly prostrations, see zemnoy poklon. While making low bows, Old Believers use a special little rug called podruchnik placing their hands on it. It is necessary that the fingers that are used for the cross sign remain clean during the prayers.
    • Even though both the official Russian Orthodoxy and the Old Believers use the same rubrics book (so-called Typicon of St. Sabbas) for their church services, on average the Old Believers' services are 2-3 times longer than in official Orthodoxy. In general, the Old Believers insist on following the rubrics to the letter, and refrain from shortening the Psalter readings and hymnography. They also tend to combine several services together, sometimes redundantly.
      • Thus, a typical Old-Rite "vigil service" (vsenoschnoe bdenie) would include none, a shortened ("small") vespers, a solemn ("great") vespers, compline, midnight office, matins and prime.
    • It is advisable to attend Old Believer services in native Russian dress, or at least to try to correspond to the very style of this dress. For men, it means that shirts should be worn outside, but not inside trousers. It is also advised that a belt should be put on, but nowadays this recommendation is rarely followed. For women, a long skirt and a head kerchief are necessary. The kerchief shouldn't be tied (as it is in official Orthodoxy), but rather fastened with a pin under a chin.
    • While making prayers, Old Believers use a very special type of beads called lestovka.
    • The Liturgy is performed with 7 Hosts, but not 5, as in official Orthodoxy. The hallelujah verse after the psalmody is chanted twice, but not three times.
      • i.e., as in Russian Orthodoxy today, the section of the psalmody would end: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, glory to you, O God, the Old Believers retain the earlier version: Alleluia, alleluia, glory to you, O God.
  • Old Believers do not venerate saints that appeared in the Official Orthodoxy after 1666. For example, they do not venerate St. Seraphim of Sarov, one of the most polular Russian saints of the 19th century. On the other hand, many Old Believers' ecclesial bodies have canonized a number of their own saints which are deemed at least controversial by the official Orthodoxy, e.g. Avvakum Petrov and his companions etc.
  • Old Believers use casted (silver, bronze) and carved (wooden) icons as well as painted ones. The veneration of icons in relief was prohibited in Official Orthodoxy, but in Old Believers it wasn't only forgotten, but became very popular, since Old Believers had often to hide their religious implements. Cast icons, that were little and often also folding (see Skladen) were very useful in that purport.
  • Old Believers also have some differences in their ordinary life:
    • Men should wear beards. To shave a beard is considered a sin. Some modern denominations of Old Believers are rather tolerant toward shaved chins, however.
    • Old Believers should not drink coffee. Some denominations also prohibit drinking tea.
    • Smoking or any other use of tobacco is considered a heavy sin.
    • The most strict and eschatological Old Believers have practices of refraining from the outer world. That may include: prohibition of sharing meals with people of other faiths, of using their belongings and ware, etc.

Philosophy

 
Old Believers' church, Rēzekne, Latvia.

Despite the fact that the Old Believers movement was created as an 'answer' to a reform, not as a 'reform' itself, the views and the philosophy of the movement in some aspects strongly resemble Protestant philosophy (mainly Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites and some other 'strict' denominations). This makes some people argue that Old Believers' appearance can be treated as a part of the pan-European Reformation processes. The similarities between Old Believers and Protestants are the following:

  • Both Old Believers and early Protestants positioned themselves as an alternative (right alternative) to the official church.
  • Since Old Believers treated Orthodoxy as a heretical church, they rather quickly developed a feeling of themselves as the only confession that can provide salvation to its members. This feeling later was transformed to a practical philosophy and theology very similar to that of the Calvinist theory of predestination. However, predestination never was proclaimed officially among the Old Believers.
  • About half of the Old Believers currently have no priests; in that sense, every educated person can be chosen by a community to be a religious reader or presider.
  • Those branches of Old Believers movement that rejected priests appeared in the northern parts of Russia (mainly near Novgorod and Pskov) where even pre-reform Orthodoxy developed into a rather 'democratic' form, as opposed to the highly centralized and ceremonial Orthodoxy of the southern regions.

It is important to understand, however, that the very philosophical basis of Old Believers was opposite of that of Protestants. Old Believers were trying to save the old heritage, not to make a reform, or even to return to something 'more old'. They were conservators, not reformers. And only a need for struggle for freedom of faith later make them something similar with Protestants. It is also significant that 'A protestant' is a kind of a theological swear-word for conservative old believers, so a statement of similarity between these religious group philosophies may sound a kind of offensive for some of them.

Centuries of persecution and the nature of their origin have made them very culturally conservative and mistrustful of anything they see as insufficiently Russian. Some Old Believers go so far as to consider any pre-Nikonian Orthodox Russian practice or artifact to be exclusively theirs, denying that the Russian Orthodox Church has any claims upon a history before Patriarch Nikon.

However, late 19th century/early 20th century history shows that the Old Believer merchant families were more flexible and more open to innovations while creating factories and starting the first Russian industry. This observation is an apparent contradiction with the official doctrine of the Old Believers' faith, but centuries of struggle developed in them a habit of working and living without great concern for the state and mainstream cultural influences. Old Believers also lent money to each other with a much lower interest rate than any financial institutions and individuals, which helped them to arrange a cross-financing network and to accumulate capital.

Denominations

Among the main modern denominations and church bodies are:

Break-off sects

The Old Believers movement also gave birth to several marginal break-off groups such as:

and others. However, these break-off groups were always considered heretical by all the 'mainstream' Old Believers.

Modern situation

File:Staroveri.jpg
Traditional Russian Old Believer family in Latin America

Approximately one million Old Believers remain today, some living in extremely isolated communities in places to which they fled centuries ago to avoid persecution. A few Old Believer parishes in the United States have entered into communion with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia [1].

Old Believer churches are currently restored in Russia, although Old Believers (unlike the nearly official mainstream Orthodoxy) have no restitution rights for their churches. In Moscow, there are churches for all the most important Old Believer branches: Rogozhskaya Zastava (Popovtsy of Belokrinitskaya hierarchy official center), a cathedral for Novozybkovskaya hierarchy in Zamoskvorech'ye and Preobrazhenskaya Zastava where Pomory and Fedoseevtsy coexist.

Only Pomory and Fedoseevtsy treat each other relatively well; all the other denominations do not acknowledge each other. Among the ordinary Old Believers, there are some tendencies for intra-branch ecumenism, but these trends find sparse support among the official leaders of the congregations.

Significant Old Believer communities exist in Plamondon, Alberta, Woodburn, Oregon and at various locations in Alaska. A compact 40,000 strong Lipovan community of Old Believers lives in neigboring Kiliia raion (Vilkovo) of Ukraine and the Tulcea County of Romania in the Danube Delta.

Old Believer Churches


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