A decent article, but I can think of three types of Old Believers that were not mentioned.
Novozybkov Hierarchy - The "Russian Old Orthodox Church", also known as the Novozybkov Hierarchy, incorporated those Old Believer groups which refused to accept the authority of the Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy, est. 1846. Due to a current lack of leadership, Metropolitan Kornilii of the "Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church" (with its center at Rogozhskoe Kladbishche in Moscow) now concurrently and informally holds the position of Metropolitan of the Novozybkov hierarchy, a most unusual circumstance. (This may no longer be true, so this might need to be fact-checked.)
The Chasovenny (those who worship in chapels) are ideologically tied to the Popovtsy, but in their rural environments they have had to endure being deprived of the Priesthood for so long that they have become used to and comfortable with their situation, and have in reality become a "semi-Bezpopovtsy". In their long isolation (mostly in Siberia, the Russian far east, Oregon, Alaska and Brazil), they have become so distrustful of the concept of where they hope to find a valid hierarchy, that they have essentially stopped looking for an opportunity to restore Priesthood. They have given up hope and they have given up desire and ambition for becoming part of the fullness of the Church. Moreover, their isolated lifestyle reinforces their mindset of keeping to themselves and preserving some elements of pre-Christian Russian pagan culture (the notion of "us" and "not us" / "nashi" i "ne nashi"). It has become so extreme that they refuse to even eat with or maintain friendships anyone outside their community.
The "Netovtsy" (accent on first syllable; Nay-sayers) are sort of an "end-of-the-line" product of very remote rural living (occuring mostly among the Chasovenny, especially those in the Russian far east and Alaska), where the life of extreme seclusion creates a psychological ideology of everything outside their narrow living experience being considered as "that is not allowed" (нельзя...), and everything and everyone "wordly" is considered to be "nechisty, pogony" (unclean, pagan). It's an exaggerated form of cultural xenophobia that sometimes crosses the line of irrationality. Grafted onto the Chasovenny lifestyle, it produces a type of Old Believer community that is greatly hostile to anyone outside their own communities, even including Popovtsy and other Bezpopovtsy. (Technology is likewise targeted as "forbidden".)
The Stranniki (which you have already mentioned) are somewhat tied to the cultural principles of the Chasovenny, but they are not directly associated. (It is more likely that Stranniki will emerge from Netovtsy than from any of the other "tolki" or "interpretations" of Old Belief.)
But your description of the Chasovenny is very accurate. They are significant in the US but I don't know to what extent the people there are aware of what makes them Chasovenny. It seems to be a soglas adrift.
There are literally thousands of Chasovenny in Oregon, Alaska, Canada and Brazil, and they make up the largest majority of Old Believers in North and South America, but since they keep so much to themselves and they avoid technology (and reading), their impact is slight in the worlds that we have normal contact with. Still, they truly are the majority. I can speak from experience that a significant percentage of their communities are a hybrid of Chasovenny, Spasovtsy and Netovsty lifestyles.
And you are absolutely correct... the majority of them know next to nothing about their origins and history, likely because they don't place much value on anything but attending church, survival and maintaining "purity" by isolation. At this point, even the oldest members of their communities have no living memories of being Popovtsy, but about being on the run from the Communists and trying to survive by maintaining a strict isolation. In truth, most of them live like Bezpopovtsy, but they have no collective teachings that connect them with Bezpopovtsy. The majority of them just go to church and pray Reader services without having a strong sense of Orthodox spiritual identity, and with very little awareness of even being without Priesthood. Rather sad.
Oh, I forgot to mention that there are a couple parishes in Oregon that are clearly Pomortsy in most aspects of their culture (based on liturgical evidence, as well as linguistic and musical features), but they adamantly deny being Pomortsy or having any association with them. These parishes also show signs of having Kuban Cossack and Belorussian cultural influences, so we have some incredible puzzles there. Again, I think that they have lived apart from their historical origins for so long that they have forgotten their MIXED origins and morphed into something else that is hard to define, but definitely somewhere on the Bezpopovtsy spectrum.
Thank you for this information. It is very valued. I wonder if the strength of their isolationism is why they have preserved their traditional appearance to a greater degree than almost all other communities I have seen. It is very hard to judge such a community from the outside. Despite their numbers, I know very little about them, and would like to have this deficiency rectified.
I have spoken to people that went to the Belokrinitsa from Priestlessness who could not identify from which soglasie they belonged. I suspect these were Chasovenny. Perhaps as a label it does not have much significance.
Your perspective and additional insight is wonderful. Thank you.
Yeah, it is unfortunate that most Old Believers on the west coast of the US have no accurate understanding of their historical origins, nor their current place within Old Orthodoxy. It comes from prolonged cultural isolation from mainstream teachings and practices of the Orthodox Faith. (Although, most Popovtsy do have some understanding of their history.)
I should mention that I lived in Oregon for 16 years, during which time I was a private tutor for hundreds of teenagers and adults in how to read Church Slavonic. As a private individual who was careful not to talk too freely about my own experience as a member of the Belokrinitsa Church, I had the extremely great privilege and pleasure to become trusted friends with many of the Chasovenny and former-Pomortsy families, and to even discretely join them for a meal from time to time (even if I did have to eat from paper plates, which didn't bother me at all, since I was raised as a Pomorets and expected such practices). I learned who was who, what was what, and many gems of knowledge that have enriched my life greatly. Back on the east coast, that's all behind me now, but I have so many treasured memories.
That's amazing. Thank you. Did you originally come from the Pomortsy community in Pennsylvania? Or were there Pomortsy on the West coast also? If so, I was unaware of them.
It is a genuine puzzle to me to compare the Pomorian experience in the US, which almost completely assimilated, and dispersed, to the experience of the much more guarded Chasovenny.
Especially since the Pomorians have a very strong sense of who they are, what they believe, and why.
There are certainly more than three I did not mention! It was not meant to be exhaustive.
But the Netovtsy are properly tied to the Spasovtsy, which I covered.
And the Stranniki are not related to the Chasovenny but stem from the Filippovtsy.
The Chasovenny are too amorphous to have covered meaningfully. And there is so little in their written legacy that they almost never come up in the literature.
The same goes for the Novozybkov.
Despite their small numbers, the Fedoseevy, Filippovtsy, and Stranniki all left very significant contributions to the Old Believer literature.
I appreciate the summary. It's very well done, in my opinion. One question: is there any way to access some of the published works through a platform other than Amazon? I live in Germany.
A decent article, but I can think of three types of Old Believers that were not mentioned.
Novozybkov Hierarchy - The "Russian Old Orthodox Church", also known as the Novozybkov Hierarchy, incorporated those Old Believer groups which refused to accept the authority of the Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy, est. 1846. Due to a current lack of leadership, Metropolitan Kornilii of the "Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church" (with its center at Rogozhskoe Kladbishche in Moscow) now concurrently and informally holds the position of Metropolitan of the Novozybkov hierarchy, a most unusual circumstance. (This may no longer be true, so this might need to be fact-checked.)
The Chasovenny (those who worship in chapels) are ideologically tied to the Popovtsy, but in their rural environments they have had to endure being deprived of the Priesthood for so long that they have become used to and comfortable with their situation, and have in reality become a "semi-Bezpopovtsy". In their long isolation (mostly in Siberia, the Russian far east, Oregon, Alaska and Brazil), they have become so distrustful of the concept of where they hope to find a valid hierarchy, that they have essentially stopped looking for an opportunity to restore Priesthood. They have given up hope and they have given up desire and ambition for becoming part of the fullness of the Church. Moreover, their isolated lifestyle reinforces their mindset of keeping to themselves and preserving some elements of pre-Christian Russian pagan culture (the notion of "us" and "not us" / "nashi" i "ne nashi"). It has become so extreme that they refuse to even eat with or maintain friendships anyone outside their community.
The "Netovtsy" (accent on first syllable; Nay-sayers) are sort of an "end-of-the-line" product of very remote rural living (occuring mostly among the Chasovenny, especially those in the Russian far east and Alaska), where the life of extreme seclusion creates a psychological ideology of everything outside their narrow living experience being considered as "that is not allowed" (нельзя...), and everything and everyone "wordly" is considered to be "nechisty, pogony" (unclean, pagan). It's an exaggerated form of cultural xenophobia that sometimes crosses the line of irrationality. Grafted onto the Chasovenny lifestyle, it produces a type of Old Believer community that is greatly hostile to anyone outside their own communities, even including Popovtsy and other Bezpopovtsy. (Technology is likewise targeted as "forbidden".)
The Stranniki (which you have already mentioned) are somewhat tied to the cultural principles of the Chasovenny, but they are not directly associated. (It is more likely that Stranniki will emerge from Netovtsy than from any of the other "tolki" or "interpretations" of Old Belief.)
Let’s not forget the interesting case of the Melkizedechians who believed in a quasi-Eucharist performed by the laity.
But your description of the Chasovenny is very accurate. They are significant in the US but I don't know to what extent the people there are aware of what makes them Chasovenny. It seems to be a soglas adrift.
There are literally thousands of Chasovenny in Oregon, Alaska, Canada and Brazil, and they make up the largest majority of Old Believers in North and South America, but since they keep so much to themselves and they avoid technology (and reading), their impact is slight in the worlds that we have normal contact with. Still, they truly are the majority. I can speak from experience that a significant percentage of their communities are a hybrid of Chasovenny, Spasovtsy and Netovsty lifestyles.
And you are absolutely correct... the majority of them know next to nothing about their origins and history, likely because they don't place much value on anything but attending church, survival and maintaining "purity" by isolation. At this point, even the oldest members of their communities have no living memories of being Popovtsy, but about being on the run from the Communists and trying to survive by maintaining a strict isolation. In truth, most of them live like Bezpopovtsy, but they have no collective teachings that connect them with Bezpopovtsy. The majority of them just go to church and pray Reader services without having a strong sense of Orthodox spiritual identity, and with very little awareness of even being without Priesthood. Rather sad.
Oh, I forgot to mention that there are a couple parishes in Oregon that are clearly Pomortsy in most aspects of their culture (based on liturgical evidence, as well as linguistic and musical features), but they adamantly deny being Pomortsy or having any association with them. These parishes also show signs of having Kuban Cossack and Belorussian cultural influences, so we have some incredible puzzles there. Again, I think that they have lived apart from their historical origins for so long that they have forgotten their MIXED origins and morphed into something else that is hard to define, but definitely somewhere on the Bezpopovtsy spectrum.
Thank you for this information. It is very valued. I wonder if the strength of their isolationism is why they have preserved their traditional appearance to a greater degree than almost all other communities I have seen. It is very hard to judge such a community from the outside. Despite their numbers, I know very little about them, and would like to have this deficiency rectified.
I have spoken to people that went to the Belokrinitsa from Priestlessness who could not identify from which soglasie they belonged. I suspect these were Chasovenny. Perhaps as a label it does not have much significance.
Your perspective and additional insight is wonderful. Thank you.
Yeah, it is unfortunate that most Old Believers on the west coast of the US have no accurate understanding of their historical origins, nor their current place within Old Orthodoxy. It comes from prolonged cultural isolation from mainstream teachings and practices of the Orthodox Faith. (Although, most Popovtsy do have some understanding of their history.)
I should mention that I lived in Oregon for 16 years, during which time I was a private tutor for hundreds of teenagers and adults in how to read Church Slavonic. As a private individual who was careful not to talk too freely about my own experience as a member of the Belokrinitsa Church, I had the extremely great privilege and pleasure to become trusted friends with many of the Chasovenny and former-Pomortsy families, and to even discretely join them for a meal from time to time (even if I did have to eat from paper plates, which didn't bother me at all, since I was raised as a Pomorets and expected such practices). I learned who was who, what was what, and many gems of knowledge that have enriched my life greatly. Back on the east coast, that's all behind me now, but I have so many treasured memories.
Do you still teach Old Church Slavonic?
That's amazing. Thank you. Did you originally come from the Pomortsy community in Pennsylvania? Or were there Pomortsy on the West coast also? If so, I was unaware of them.
It is a genuine puzzle to me to compare the Pomorian experience in the US, which almost completely assimilated, and dispersed, to the experience of the much more guarded Chasovenny.
Especially since the Pomorians have a very strong sense of who they are, what they believe, and why.
There are certainly more than three I did not mention! It was not meant to be exhaustive.
But the Netovtsy are properly tied to the Spasovtsy, which I covered.
And the Stranniki are not related to the Chasovenny but stem from the Filippovtsy.
The Chasovenny are too amorphous to have covered meaningfully. And there is so little in their written legacy that they almost never come up in the literature.
The same goes for the Novozybkov.
Despite their small numbers, the Fedoseevy, Filippovtsy, and Stranniki all left very significant contributions to the Old Believer literature.
I appreciate the summary. It's very well done, in my opinion. One question: is there any way to access some of the published works through a platform other than Amazon? I live in Germany.
Just send me a direct message with the books you are interested in….
I did not realize the Constantinople/Moscow split was this old, and not just a recent phenomena. Appreciate the heads up.