Renovated Church

▪ Russian Orthodoxy

Russian  Obnovlencheskaya Tserkov,  

      federation of several reformist church groups that took over the central administration of the Russian Orthodox church in 1922 and for over two decades controlled many religious institutions in the Soviet Union. The term Renovated Church is used most frequently to designate the movement, though it is sometimes called the Living Church movement (Zhivaya Tserkov), the name of one of the member groups.

      The Revolution of February 1917 gave the Orthodox Church of Russia an opportunity for the reform long hoped for by many churchmen but delayed by the tsarist regime. In a church council convened in Moscow on Aug. 15, 1917, the patriarchate, abolished by Peter the Great, was restored. The newly elected patriarch, Tikhon (Tikhon, Saint), adopted an attitude of total independence, if not hostility, toward the communist regime that had overthrown the provisional government. In 1922, however, the government unilaterally decided to confiscate all church valuables, under the official pretext that there was general starvation in large sections of the country. When the patriarch insisted on some church control over the confiscated property, he was placed under house arrest and the offices of the patriarchate were closed.

      Seizing the opportunity for a revolution in the church, a group of priests, notably Aleksandr Vvedensky and Vladimir Krasnitsky, organized a Temporary Higher Church Administration, which rapidly evolved into a general movement aimed at deposing the patriarch and introducing radical church reforms. The Temporary Administration found support among some bishops, but it was particularly popular with the “white,” or married, clergy, who were excluded from promotion into the episcopacy by canon law and who resented the supremacy of unmarried monastics. The movement was also supported by progressive intellectuals and enjoyed the sympathy of the government. In a series of councils, the Renovated Church, after deposing Tikhon, reestablished a Holy Synod of bishops, priests, and laymen, originally proclaimed by Peter the Great in 1721 to replace the patriarchate, to rule the church. It introduced controversial reforms in the episcopate and in the liturgy, but the movement was compromised by the clearly fraudulent character of the takeover: in their struggle against the patriarch and his followers, its leaders cooperated with the secret police, and hundreds of Tikhonite clergy were executed as counterrevolutionaries.

      The patriarch himself, after publicly “repenting” his anti-Soviet actions, was set free on June 25, 1923. Worshipers flocked to the churches that had remained faithful to him, and the Renovated schism lost much ground. It survived in the following years mainly through government support. At the beginning of 1925, it claimed to have 17,650 priests and 13,650 churches, but the vast majority of Russian faithful remained loyal to the patriarchal church. The schism collapsed completely during World War II, when Joseph Stalin changed his religious policies and allowed the election of a successor to Tikhon. Except for Vvedensky, the leaders of the Renovated Church repented, and its churches returned to the patriarchal fold.

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