Russian Orthodox Church

“ Their religion appears to be a Protestantism of a very decided type, and in the few church ceremonies which they retain, such as a second baptism for adults, they resemble the Anabaptists and Mennonites of Germany. They reject external observances, fasts, images, the invocation of the saints, and all the rites of Orthodox worship as simply useless and unnecessary; they seem to be animated more by a spirit of calculation and of economy, of indifference to outward form, rather than by religious scruples or any deep-seated repugnance to church ceremonies ”

“ Although the Orthodox Church is magnificent in its equipment, and its priests most richly caparisoned, yet it offers a marked contrast to the aristocratic system of the Roman Catholic Church. The Russian most devoutly takes off his hat in passing a church or holy image, but he keeps it on when passing the priest, and he kisses the priest on the cheek rather than the hand. ”

“ Russian peasants are very devout, especially those who belong to the dissenting sects; among others, of the Orthodox creed, religion is rather a mechanical ritualism, but it holds them under bonds as severe as those of the most intense fanaticism. Evidence of the wonderful vitality of the religious principle among them is seen in its fecundity; it has given rise to innumerable sects, and others are constantly appearing; but this principle, so deeply rooted in the heart of the Russian peasant, is not entirely, and necessarily, always Christian in its nature. ”

“ None of these elements exist to support the validity of the New York statute putting the Russian Orthodox churches of New York under the administration of the Russian Church in America. See notes 2 and 3, supra.
The record before us shows no schism over faith or doctrine between the Russian Church in America and the Russian Orthodox Church. It shows administrative control of the North American Diocese by the Supreme Church Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the appointment of the ruling hierarch in North America from the foundation of the diocese until the Russian Revolution. ”

“ No clergy of our Church have ever gone to Russia to learn what they could for themselves, or give lectures, or act as members of deputations, and come into touch with the Orthodox clergy and been disappointed with their reception ”

“ The synodical, or federative form, of government is the natural and logical one for churches of the Orthodox communion, as it adapts itself equally well to all political constitutions. In democratic Greece the Church has followed the example given by the Church of autocratic Russia, and its organization there, while differing in detail, is similar in principle. Whatever form among Orthodox Churches the higher, or governing power may have assumed, it has never made any pretence to be of divine origin, but, whether patriarchate or synod, has always been, and been held to be, of human institution ”

“ The church members already here, immigrants and nativeborn, while habituated to look to Moscow for religious direction, were accustomed to our theory of separation between church and state. The Russian turmoil, the restraints on religious activites and the evolution of a new ecclesiastical hierarchy in the form of the 'Living Church,' deemed noncanonical or schismatic by most churchmen, made very difficult Russian administration of the American diocese. ”

“ The Orthodox Church of Russia seems to have been and to be as remote from the life of the people as the political bureaucracy. The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed. The Christian religion is the dominating force in the works of Gogol, Tolstoi, and Dostoevski. How eager the Russian people are for the simple Gospel, and with what amazing joy they now receive it, remind one of the Apostolic age. ”

“ The Russian government since the time of Alexander I. has sought amid many difficulties to advance the education and enlightenment of the people, and to elevate the orthodox church by securing a more highly cultured clergy, and to increase its influence upon the life of the people ”

“ To the Church, dominated by a religio-national point of view, they were the very opposite of her ideal type of Russian orthodox, their very existence in Russia being regarded as an anomaly and as an actual and possible influence in disintegrating the religious faith of the orthodox peasants. To the nationalists they were an alien people racially and religiously, whose assimilation with the Russian people was neither possible nor desirable. ”

“ What is their influence upon men? What is done by the churches among us, among the Catholics and the Protestants of all denominations—what is their practical work? and what are the results of their practical work?
The practice of our Russian so-called Orthodox Church is plain to all. It is an enormous fact which there is no possibility of hiding and about which there can be no disputing.
What constitutes the practical work of this Russian Church, this immense, intensely active institution, which consists of a regiment of half a million men and costs the people tens of millions of rubles? ”

“ Orthodox believers were deprived of all civil rights; freedom of worship and liberty of conscience, so often promised, had become words without meaning.
The patience of Russia was exhausted, and when the Orthodox Poles appealed to Catherine II., as head or defender of their Church, their demands for religious toleration, and for the restoration of their political rights were supported by Russian armies assembled on the frontier. ”

“ How much the church continues to influence nations once within her communion, but now severed from it, nobody is competent to determine, nor can any one but God himself say how many, in all these nations, though not formally united to the body of the church, are yet not wholly severed from her soul. The Russian Church retains the Orthodox faith and the sacraments, and is officially under no sentence of excommunication from the body of Christ, and only those who are individually and voluntarily schismatic, are guilty of the sin of schism ”

“ On the other hand the growth of Russian power throughout the nineteenth century, combined with the immense influx of Russian pilgrims to the Holy Places, gave the Orthodox Church a prestige that it had never before possessed. The interest of Protestant nations has also steadily increased. ”

“ They did not originate in any rupture between ancient tradition and modern innovation, but in rejection of all Orthodox, in many instances of all Christian, doctrine or tradition.
Viewed as a whole, Russian sects exhibit singular contrasts: those which pertain to the Raskol are distinguished for scrupulous adherence to form and ceremonial, and are imbued with a rigidly conservative, reactionary spirit; while the others, making clean sweep of dogma and ritual, rush to the contrary extreme, and espouse the most advanced, novel, and revolutionary ideas. ”

“ The radical distinction between the two is marriage; the monks take vows of celibacy, but the popes must marry before they can have charge of a parish. In the Russian, as generally in Orthodox Churches, the episcopate and all offices of authority are reserved for the unmarried clergy, who are comparatively few in number, while the subordinate and more laborious positions only fall to the lot of the married clergy. ”

“ Church and State are so closely connected in Russia that the primary education includes the form of prayer; it is a part of the daily exercise of the schools, except for those who profess other than the orthodox faith, and in former times children of dissenters were not allowed to attend the schools. ”

“ In this, as in other departments of national activity, the spring of action has lain not in the people, but in the Government.
It is only fair to the monks to state that in their dislike to progress and change of every kind they merely reflect the traditional spirit of the Church to which they belong. The Russian Church, like the Eastern Orthodox Church generally, is essentially conservative. Anything in the nature of a religious revival is foreign to her traditions and character. ”

“ With such dim fears the Old Believer opposed to the orthodox hierarchy a blind fidelity to orthodoxy. Their dread of seeing the Church corrupted inspired people and clergy with suspicion of all foreigners, even of their brethren in the faith whom the czars or the patriarchs had invited from Byzantium and from Kief. The Russian alone, of all the orthodox nations, had maintained his independence against infidel and pope, and he held himself the people of God, chosen to preserve the true faith. ”

“ The Greek Church is the State religion. If one of the parents is Orthodox, all the children born of that union must belong to that religion, which renders a marriage between an Orthodox and a Catholic practically impossible, since this latter religion also now exacts Catholicism for all the children if one of the parents is Catholic.
It was not so at the time when my grandmother was born, she and her sisters were Catholics like their mother, the brothers Protestant like their father.
In Russia, there is no middle-class as in the West. Society is, in other words, the nobility ”

“ People who understand Russia know that there is a patriotic Russian party (or, rather, tendency) in the heart of the country, in Moscow, and among the most educated people, that hopes for an awakening of their Church in the direction of the Western Church—that is, of the Roman, not the Evangelical Communion—who work for this, and who see in it the only hope for Russia. ”

“ From this comparison it is evident that, contrary to what is generally supposed, the differences between the Russian and other Churches, not of the Orthodox creed, are in reality fundamental, and not merely superficial; they do not consist simply in slight variations and divergences in the performance of similar rites and ceremonies, while the creed and the traditions, the hierarchy and the sacraments, remain the same; they go deeper ”

“ No thoughtful person who has marked the trend of events since 1908 could doubt the direction in which higher and responsible Russian thought was moving. But who can possibly foresee the far-reaching effect of raising up a great Polish nation once more and recognizing the Roman Catholic Church as the Church of that part of the empire, with Russians and Poles, Orthodox and Roman Catholic living together in amity and international unity? ”

“ One of them even founded a monastery, and became a saint of the Russian Church! The Orthodox clergy were exempted from the poll-tax, and in the charters granted to them it was expressly declared that if any one committed blasphemy against the faith of the Russians he should be put to death. Some time afterwards the Golden Horde was converted to Islam, but the Khans did not on that account change their policy. They continued to favour the clergy, and their protection was long remembered. ”

“ During this period of consolidation in Russia the Church in Lithuania and Poland was exposed to trial and suffering. After the death of the Uniate metropolitan Gregory, its bishops repudiated the decrees of the Council of Florence, refused to acknowledge their dependence on the pope, and insisted upon the consecration of their metropolitans by the patriarch of Constantinople. The rulers of the country, on the contrary, professed the Roman creed, and subjected their Orthodox population to annoyance and persecution. ”

“ The Catholics and Uniates, strong in the support of royal authority, pursued the Orthodox with all the rancor and ferocity of clerical fanaticism. Their schools were suppressed; their churches closed or turned into inns, barracks, and mosques; their clergy were deprived of protection from the mob, and prevented from officiating; congregations were dispersed by force; the dead were left without burial rites ”

“ The teaching of every Church, with its redemption and sacraments, excludes the teaching of Christ; most of all the teaching of the Orthodox Church with its idolatrous observances.
"But the people have always believed of their own accord as they believe now," will be said in answer to this. "The whole history of the Russian people proves it. One cannot deprive the people of their traditions." ”

“ Having had to defend the Greek orthodox religion against these two nations, they strictly adhere now to the Russian Church, and one does not find in their villages the same passion for scholastic discussions about the letter of the Holy Books which is often met with in Great Russia among the Non-conformists. Their religion has altogether a more poetical aspect. ”

“ In the seventeenth century, when the Uniat Church was established, the majority of the White and Little Russians went over to the Roman Church, but in the nineteenth century the Uniats were incorporated into the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Russian Empire. ”

“ Throughout that enormous Empire there must be thousands of village priests who stand for the cause of Christ among their people, who baptize the children, celebrate the holy liturgy, and bring the last comfort to the dying; who (when they can resist its temptations themselves) do at any rate something towards putting down the drunkenness that is the curse of the Russian peasant; and who, since they are married and so can never hope to become bishops, know nothing of higher Church politics, but lead simple godly lives in the care of souls. ”