What is Old Belief #
Viktor Bochenkov
Almost everyone has at least heard something about Old Belief. But what exactly is it? It’s no secret that the old label “schismatics” is still in common use. For a long time, these words were nearly synonymous. Even today, the terms “schism” and “schismatic” appear frequently, including in scholarly articles, despite being ideological (and polemical) designations from the century before last.
In that case, we are in need of different definitions—ones that reflect the true nature of the matter. So then, what is Old Belief?
A concise and accurate definition is given by Doctor of Philosophy Mikhail Olegovich Shakhov. “The conviction that Old Believers did not leave the Orthodox Church, but rather remained within it, constitutes one of the fundamental axioms of the Old Believer worldview,” he emphasizes in his book The Old Believer Worldview. “Old Belief is a general and fairly broad term for Russian Orthodox clergy and laity who refused to accept the reform undertaken in the 17th century by Patriarch Nikon, and who strive to preserve the ecclesiastical regulations and traditions of the ancient Russian Orthodox Church.”
Thus, Old Believers are, first and foremost, not schismatics. They were Orthodox Christians—and they remain so.
The difficulties one faces in trying to define the essence of Old Belief were noted in the early 20th century by publicist Ivan Akimovich Kirillov. In his book The Truth of the Old Faith, he quoted one of his contemporaries, the church publicist Vasily Gavrilovich Senatov. Old Belief (or Old Ritualism), he wrote, “is not merely a matter of ritualism. At its heart lies a far deeper and more human idea. It is a call to return to those… foundations of life on which the Russian Church was built in the distant past.” Kirillov further develops this thought: “Old Belief is a way of life in accordance with the Church’s call to live ‘in a godly manner,’ and as such, it cannot by its very nature be defined by any logical formula—just as the very concept of ‘churchliness’ cannot be precisely defined.”
So then, Old Belief is not a belief in old rituals as a means of salvation. A ritual is a visible expression of a particular divine truth, a revelation, a way of joining man to God. What saves a person are good deeds and faith—“a life lived in a godly manner.”
To understand Old Belief, one must first understand how Orthodox thought and the Orthodox ideal developed and took root in Rus’, what paths it followed, including during and after the tragic reforms of Patriarch Nikon. Unfortunately, we are still forced to use this vague term, Old Belief, which lumps together both a host of misunderstandings and the true Church, in which alone salvation is possible. Precisely so: the question of Old Belief is a question of the Church established by Christ—of whether it exists on earth or not.
The history of Old Belief traces its origins to the earliest centuries of Christianity itself. Therefore, when Old Believer writers defend the antiquity of a particular rite, they often point out that it arose as early as apostolic times, that this was the practice of the apostles themselves. For example, the two-finger sign of the cross—just one example. According to tradition, the image of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God was painted by the Evangelist Luke. On it, the fingers of Christ’s right hand are arranged in the two-fingered sign. Therefore, the apostle himself must have seen it. We ought to cross ourselves in just the same way. Everything else came later. We do not wish to stray from apostolic tradition.
“If Old Belief had departed from the Church, it would have declared some kind of special dogma,” Ivan Kirillov continues in his book, “its own particular new teaching, previously unknown—and that would give grounds to speak of the emergence of Old Belief; and there is no shortage of such examples among the confessions of Western Europe.” But there is nothing of the kind here. “The Nikonian reforms,” wrote publicist Vasily Senatov in his work The Philosophy of the History of Old Belief, “had this effect: that the Russian people were removed from direct participation in Church affairs, and the religious knowledge accumulated over many centuries was pushed aside. Alongside this, the uncontrolled will and authority of the hierarchy came to dominate, and in place of the people’s understanding of the faith, another interpretation was elevated—one brought in from foreign lands. The history of the state church, in essence, is a history of how foreign religious influences were carried into Russian soil and grafted onto it: first Neo-Greek, then Latin Catholic, and finally Protestant. In contrast to this, the history of Old Belief is the history of the development of a distinctly Russian religious thought—born in the depths of the ages, crushed under Nikon, yet never losing its vitality, continuing to grow spontaneously.”
The study of Old Belief is therefore the study of Orthodoxy itself—of Orthodox thought and its path in the post-reform era of the Church, continuing to the present day. But, as already mentioned, the term Old Belief is too broad and generalized. Some Old Believers prefer to identify themselves differently, narrowing the meaning of the term—for example, as Ancient Orthodox Christians (emphasizing, as stated earlier, that Orthodoxy, not ritual, comes first), or as Old Believers (placing faith and the spirit of ancestral faith above all). Moreover, the terms Old Belief and Old Believers only appeared in the 18th century, and not from within the Old Believer community. Nevertheless, since they carry nothing inherently offensive, they have become established.
And even when we use the word Old Belief, what we mean—beyond fidelity to the pre-Nikonian rites and services—is loyalty to Orthodoxy itself: to the Orthodox faith that Rus’ received from Byzantium, to Orthodox values, to the Orthodox way of life, and to a Church structure where the voice of the people is still heard. And above all, we strive to live “in a godly manner.”