Renovationism
Renovationism —also called the Renovated Church or, by metonymy, the Living Church —officially named Orthodox Russian Church, and later Orthodox Church in the USSR, was the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church, sanctioned by the Soviet authorities, the movement ceased operations in the late 1940s. In 1927, the movement was blessed by the future Patriarch Sergius of Moscow, a political move that enabled the reformation of the modern Russian Orthodox Church in 1943 by Sergius.
This movement originally began as a grassroots movement among the Russian Orthodox clergy for the reformation of the Church, but was quickly influenced by the support of the Soviet secret services, which had hoped to split and weaken the Russian Church by instigating schismatic movements within it. The beginning of actual schism is usually considered to be in May 1922, when a group of Renovationist clergy laid claims to higher ecclesiastical authority in the Russian Church. Three days after the establishment of the new Church, the Soviet authorities arrested Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow on May 19. Both factions were calling each other names "Renovationites" and "Tikhonovites". The movement is considered to have ended with the death of its leader, Alexander Vvedensky, in 1946, although the last unrepentant Renovationist hierarch, Philaret, died in 1951.
While the entire movement is often known as the Living Church, this was specifically the name of just one of the groups that comprised the larger Renovationist movement. By the time of the Moscow Council of 1923, three major groups had formed within the movement, representing different tendencies within Russian Renovationism: The Living Church of Vladimir Krasnitsky lobbied for the interests of married clergy; the Union of the Communities of the Ancient Apostolic Church of Alexander Vvedensky; and the Union for the Renewal of the Church – the group of bishop Antonin Granovsky, whose interest was in liturgical reform; along with several minor groups.
History of the Renovationist Church
Beginnings and first period (1920s–1930s)
In 1919–1920, the Cheka officials began actively seeking contacts with those representatives of the Orthodox clergy who, in their opinion, were suitable for the role of destroyers of the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church. The first attempts to introduce an element of disorganization into the church environment, acting through hierarchs from the patriarch's entourage, were not crowned with success. Therefore, the Cheka decided to act through the young white parish clergy, who are revolutionary in relation to possible intra-church transformations, leading the case to eventually quarrel between "the priests and the episcopate", married and monastic clergy. The special VI branch of the GPU became the coordinating center of all efforts to split the Church through the GPU headed by Yevgeny Tuchkov. The general management of the process of the split of the Church was concentrated in the hands of the Politburo of the Central Committee. By the spring of 1922, the necessary organizational preparations for striking the Church were completed. The right moment to start was needed.Such an opportune moment soon presented itself on the occasion of the launch of a campaign to seize church valuables. As a special representative of the Council of People's Commissars, Leon Trotsky led the work of the Commission on Accounting and Concentration of Values. On January 23, 1922, the members of the Commission agreed that work on the removal of valuables from existing religious institutions should begin in the near future in the two or three most important regions of the country. Among the preparatory activities included work with representatives of the Church: "If necessary, individual representatives of the clergy may be involved, who, contrary to the anti-Soviet clergy, would sharply defend the government's measures, thus introducing a split among the clergy." After the events in Shuya on March 15, 1922, where the commission for the seizure of valuables faced massive and stubborn resistance of believers, Leon Trotsky on March 17, 1922, in a letter to Lev Kamenev, Vyacheslav Molotov and Timofei Sapronov, formulated 17 theses containing detailed instructions to the party-Soviet and Chekist bodies regarding the forms and methods of expropriation of church valuables. Among other things, it was proposed to "decisively split the clergy" by taking under the protection of state power those clergy who openly advocate the transfer of church wealth to the state.
In the same month, the so-called "Petrograd Group of Progressive Clergy" was formed. The first program document of the group was the declaration on famine relief dated March 24, 1922, was signed by 12 clergymen. The participants of the Petrograd group immediately became active: Alexander Vvedensky and Alexander Boyarsky made reports almost daily, urging them to give away church values. Vladimir Krasnitsky did not make reports, but he tied ties with various institutions, in particular with the Cheka, which was then located on Gorokhovaya Street, 2. It was Krasnitsky who became the main organizer among the participants of the Petrograd group. Under his leadership, which, however, was disputed by Vvedensky and Boyarsky, the Petrograd group became the center of the nascent renovationist movement.
This move was quickly denounced by Agathangel as unlawful and uncanonical. However, for a brief time it seemed that the Renovationists had gotten the upper hand. The Renovationists, with full support of Soviet authorities, seized many church buildings and monasteries, including the famous Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. In many dioceses, the married clergy was encouraged to take church government into their own hands, without approval of their diocesan bishops. Simultaneously, these bishops were often threatened and pressed to recognize the authority of the Supreme Church Administration. In effect, this resulted in "parallel" church administrations existing in one diocese and one city, one supporting the SCA and the other supporting the canonical bishop.
This campaign of terror had its effects: by the summer of 1922, more than 20 hierarchs had recognized the canonical authority of SCA, the most notorious of whom was Metropolitan Sergius of Nizhny Novgorod, the future Patriarch. In many large cities, all of Orthodox church properties were in the hands of Renovationists. Before convening any general council to discuss their measures, the Renovationists began to implement radical reforms aimed at what they perceived to be the interests of the married clergy. Among the measures, changing the traditional order of ecclesiastic life were:
The last decision sparked a number of consecrations of "married bishops" throughout the country, especially in Siberia. As a result of its promulgation, of 67 bishops that arrived to the Second Moscow Council in April 1923, only 20 had been ordained before the schism. The consecration of the "married bishops" without waiting for a conciliar decision on changing appropriate Canons met with opposition even among many Renovationist leaders and those "married bishops" later received a second laying on of hands before the Council opened.
The I Renovationist met in Moscow between 29 April and 8 May 1923. Its most controversial and infamous decision was to put Patriarch Tikhon on ecclesiastic trial in absentia for his opposition to Communism, and to strip him of his episcopacy, priesthood and monastic status. The council allowed the marriage for episcopate and second marriage for priests. Monasteries "as having deviated from the pure monastic idea" were ordered to be closed. The Council then resolved to abolish the Patriarchate altogether and to return to the "collegial" form of church government. The Supreme Church Administration was renamed to the Supreme Church Council, still under the chairmanship of Antonin. Patriarch Tikhon, who was visited by delegation from the council, refused to recognize the authority of this council and the validity of the "court" decision, due to many irregularities in canonical procedure: essentially, the decision had no effect on the life of the Patriarchal or "Tikhonite" Church.
On June 24, 1923, a power struggle among the factions resulted in the forced resignation of Metropolitan Antonin. On June 29, 1923, he declared his "Union for Church Renewal" autocephalous and soon reverting to his previous title of "bishop", engaged in a series of radical liturgical experiments: e.g., moving the altar table to the middle of the church, among other changes. He made one of the first translations of the Divine Liturgy into modern Russian. His group disintegrated in 1929.
The telling blow against Renovationism was the return of Patriarch Tikhon to active duty in June 1923 when, under international pressure, he was released from house arrest. Already by that time, large passive resistance to the Renovationists, especially in rural areas, had undermined their efforts to "take over" the Russian Church. On 15 July 1923, the Patriarch declared all Renovationist decrees, as well as all their sacramental actions to be without grace, due to the "trickery" by which they tried to seize power in the Church and to their complete disregard for the canons. In August 1923, the council of Russian Orthodox bishops, returned from exile and imprisonment, confirmed Tikhon's decision, proclaiming the Renovationist hierarchy as "unlawful and without grace". Some of the churches were returned to the "Tikhonites", and many bishops and priests who had been pressed to support the schism, repented and were received back into communion.
In addition to ecclesiological experimentation, the 1920s, the Renovationist Church had some activity in the fields of education and apologetics. Particularly, in 1924 the church was allowed to open two institutions of higher learning: the Moscow Theological Academy and the Theological Institute in Leningrad. Some contacts were made with other portions of the Christian East: thus, the II Renovationist Council, convened in Moscow in 1–9 October 1925, was marked by the presence of the representatives from the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria who concelebrated the eucharist with other members of the Renovationist Synod.
In the second half of the 1920s, the canonical Russian Orthodox Church started making steps toward some form of rapprochement with the Soviet regime. Significantly, in 1927, the Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky issued a "Declaration" proclaiming absolute loyalty of the Church to the Soviet government and its interests. Subsequently, a Synod formed by Sergius, received recognition from the Soviets. This had effectively put the Renovationist Synod out of place as the chief spokesman for the alliance between the Church and the Soviet state, and it was then that the Renovationist movement began its rapid decline.