Agreement With The Established Church example essay topic

Their chief stronghold is the Rogozhski quarter in Moscow, where they have their great cemetery, monastery, cathedral, church, and chapels. In 1863, at the time of the Polish insurrection, the Raskolniks archbishop and his lay advisors sent out an encyclical letter to the "Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of the Old Believers", supporting the tsar and declaring that on all main points they were in agreement with the Established Church. This again split their church into two factions which last to this day: the Okruzhniki or Encyclical ists, and the Raznordiki or Controversialist's, who denied the points of agreement with the national Church. In addition to this the Established Church has set up a section of these Raskolniks in union with it, but has permitted them to keep all their peculiar practices, and these are called the Yedinovertsi or "Unites".

A great many of the Controversial section of the Raskolniks are coming into the Catholic Church, and already some eight or ten priests have been received. Bezpopovtsi, or the Priestless, seemed to represent the despairing side of the schism. They have their greatest stronghold in the Preobrazhenky quarter in Moscow, and are strong also in the Government of Archangel. They took the view that Satan had so far conquered and throttled the Church that the clergy had gone wrong and had become his servants, that the sacraments, except baptism, were withdrawn from the laity, and that they were left leaderless. They claimed the right of free interpretation of the Scriptures, and modelling their lives accordingly. They recognize no ministers save their "readers" who are elected.

Lest this be said to duplicate Protestantism it must be said that they have kept up all the Orthodox forms of service as far as possible, crossings, bowings icons, candles, fastings, and the like, and have regularly maintained monasteries with their monks and nuns. But they have no element of stability; and their sects have become innumerable, ever shifting and varying, with incessant divisions and subdivisions. The chief of these subdivisions are: (1) Pomortsi; or dwellers near the sea, a rural division which is very devout; (2) Feodocci (Theodosia ns) who founded hospitals and laid emphasis on good works; (3) Bezbrachniki (free lovers) who repudiated marriage, somewhat like the Oneida community in New York; (4) Stranniki (wanderers) a peripatetic sect, who went over the country, declaring their doctrines; (5) Molchalniki (mutes), who seldom spoke, believing evil came through the tongue and idle conversation; and (6) Niemoliaki (non-praying) who taught that, as God knows all things it is useless to pray to him, as He knows what one needs. These various divisions of the priestless are again divided into smaller ones, like many of the strange sects in England and America, so that it is almost impossible to follow them. Often they indulge in the wildest immorality, justifying it under the cover of some distorted text of Scripture or some phrase of the ancient Church service..