scholarly journals Optina Pustyn' as a Model for Monastic Reform at the Beginning of the 20th Century

Author(s):  
Gleb Zapalskii

The article's research subject is the sources from corporate meetings of the clergy in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century: conventions of monks, clergy and laity, as well as the Local Council of 1917–1918. The author considers how the monastic reform was planned and what role Optina Pustyn' played in this process. The author analyses the participation of this monastery's monks in corporate meetings, identifies in what context Optina Pustyn' was mentioned at these meetings, and clarifies how the monastery's traditions and experience were used in the church's monastic reform. Optina Pustyn' is considered as one of the main spiritual centers of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. In accordance with the “center-periphery” model, Optina and its traditions influenced the development of the Church at the regional and then at the central level. Based on the article's material, the author demonstrates that at the beginning of the 20th century, Optina Pustyn', administratively remaining in deep province, in the spiritual sense had reached the national level. This was manifested not only in mass pilgrimages, but also in the fact that Optina was openly recognized by the Holy Synod and the monastic community as an exemplary, well-maintained monastery. Optina monks were invited to various corporate meetings of the clergy - up to the Local Council of 1917-1918, and Optina traditions were sought in chartering the monastic reform. Thus, the author argues that when reforming monasteries, the church administration tried to rely on the informal category of spiritual experience.

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-168
Author(s):  
Alexander S. Palkin ◽  

The paper analyzes experience of Edinoverie political thought in the era of the First Russian Revolution. Analysis is conducted in the context of development of Edinoverie thought and formation of confessional identity of Edinovertsy in the second half of the 19th century — early 20th century. Three specific directions of Edinoverie formed during this period were identified: conservative, radical and reformist. The focus of the article is on the latter, headed by St. Petersburg priest Simeon Shleev. Its representatives advocated reforming the synodal structure of the church, convening a Local Council, strengthening the autonomy of Edinovertsy and uniting them under the auspices of the St. Petersburg center of Edinoverie. Their organ was the “Pravda Pravoslaviya” (Truth of Orthodoxy) newspaper (published for some time under the title “Glagol Vremen” (The Word of Times)). The publication of the first issues of the newspaper fell on the era of the First Russian Revolution. That is why the St. Petersburg co-religionists, claiming leadership among their fellow believers throughout the country, began to write on political topics and publicly critically interpret the surrounding political reality. The paper determines thematic field and authors, who touched political matters in 1906–1907 in “Pravda Pravoslaviya” and “Glagol Vremen”, analyzes dynamics of such publications. Conclusions are drawn about the correlation between the general political agenda and specific issues that worried Edinovertsy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 144-155
Author(s):  
Владислав Иванович Пшибышевский

Целью исследования является анализ дискуссий первого предсоборного органа - Предсоборного Присутствия 1906 г. по вопросу о составе Поместного Собора, состоявшегося в 1917/18 гг. Этот вопрос был одним из главных в ходе дискуссий о желательных преобразованиях в жизни Церкви. Естественно, что участниками Всероссийского Священного Собора должны были стать лучшие представители всех уровней. Решения по столь неоднозначному вопросу были приняты не вдруг. Данное исследование привело к выводу, что участники Присутствия разошлись между собой при обсуждении состава Собора: одним он представлялся чисто епископским, а решения его следовало просто сообщить всей Церкви; другие же, которых в исследуемое время было большинство, писали о том, что такое величественное событие, как Поместный Собор Российской Православной Церкви, должно представлять все уровни общества, дабы принятые на нём решения не были односторонними и затрагивали все проблемные стороны жизни Церкви. Итоги работы Присутствия подвигли Святейший Синод официально, за подписью императора опубликовать расширенное и дополненное Положение о составе Собора. Оно было отредактировано Предсоборным Советом в 1917 г. но в своей основе явилось основополагающим для формулировок Положения 1917 г., регламентирующего созыв и деятельность Поместного Собора 1917/18 гг. The article is devoted to a subject that is still full of secrets and unexpected facts. The problem of the composition of the expected Local Council was one of the main ones at the beginning of the 20th century in discussions about desirable reform in the life of the Church, the apogee of which was to be the All-Russian Holy Council. Naturally, the participants of the proposed Council were to be the best representatives of all levels. The decision on such a controversial issue was not taken suddenly. The purpose of the study is to analyze the discussions of the first pre-conciliar - Predsobornoe Prisutstvie of 1906 on the composition of the long-awaited Local Council. This study led to the conclusion that the participants of the Prisutstviya differed during the discussion of the composition of the Cathedral, for some it was presented as purely episcopal, the decisions of such a Council should only be communicated to the entire Church. Others, who were in the majority at the time under study, wrote about what a majestic event like the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church must represent all levels of society, so that the decisions taken there, are not one-sided and would address all the troubled aspects of the Church’s life. The results of the Prisutstviya work inspired the Holy Synod, with the Emperor’s signature, to publish an expanded and amended Statute on the composition of the Council, which will be edited by the Pre-Conciliar Council in 1917, but in its basis will be fundamental for the wording of the Regulation of 1917, regulating the convening and activity of the Local Council hundred years ago.


Author(s):  
Stephen Orchard

Like Presbyterians, Congregationalists drew on a broadly Calvinist heritage, which found expression in both the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration. While Presbyterians emphasized the importance of the Presbytery for governing the church, Congregationalists were independently minded and tended to privilege the community of gathered believers itself. However, in practice Congregationalism was more of an ethos and philosophy than a reflection of how all local congregations operated and the boundaries between different strands of dissent could be porous. Disputes and divisions between Dissenters at a local and national level gradually led to the need for increased denominational infrastructure and organization, although the Congregational Union of England and Wales was not founded until 1831. Associations of local ministers became, following the growth of revivalism, springboards for mission at home and abroad.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Krisztina Frauhammer

This article presents the Hungarian manifestations of a written devotional practice that emerged in the second half of the 20th century worldwide: the rite of writing prayers in guestbooks or visitors’ books and spontaneously leaving prayer slips in shrines. Guestbooks or visitors’ books, a practice well known in museums and exhibitions, have appeared in Hungarian shrines for pilgrims to record requests, prayers, and declarations of gratitude. This is an unusual use of guestbooks, as, unlike regular guestbook entries, they contain personal prayers, which are surprisingly honest and self-reflective. Another curiosity of the books and slips is that anybody can see and read them, because they are on display in the shrines, mostly close to the statue of Virgin Mary. They allow the researcher to observe a special communication situation, the written representation of an informal, non-formalised, personal prayer. Of course, this is not unknown in the practice of prayer; what is new here is that it takes place in the public realm of a shrine, in written form. This paper seeks answers to the question of what genre antecedents, what patterns of behaviour, and which religious practices have led to the development of this recent practice of devotion in the examined period in Hungarian Catholic shrines. In connection with this issue, this paper would like to draw attention to the combined effect of the following three factors: the continuity of traditions, the emergence of innovative elements and the role of the church as an institution. Their parallel interactions help us to understand the guestbooks of the shrines.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Retief Müller

During the first few decades of the 20th century, the Nkhoma mission of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa became involved in an ecumenical venture that was initiated by the Church of Scotland’s Blantyre mission, and the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia mission in central Africa. Geographically sandwiched between these two Scots missions in Nyasaland (presently Malawi) was Nkhoma in the central region of the country. During a period of history when the DRC in South Africa had begun to regressively disengage from ecumenical entanglements in order to focus on its developing discourse of Afrikaner Christian nationalism, this venture in ecumenism by one of its foreign missions was a remarkable anomaly. Yet, as this article illustrates, the ecumenical project as finalized at a conference in 1924 was characterized by controversy and nearly became derailed as a result of the intransigence of white DRC missionaries on the subject of eating together with black colleagues at a communal table. Negotiations proceeded and somehow ended in church unity despite the DRC’s missionaries’ objection to communal eating. After the merger of the synods of Blantyre, Nkhoma and Livingstonia into the unified CCAP, distinct regional differences remained, long after the colonial missionaries departed. In terms of its theological predisposition, especially on the hierarchy of social relations, the Nkhoma synod remains much more conservative than both of its neighboring synods in the CCAP to the south and north. Race is no longer a matter of division. More recently, it has been gender, and especially the issue of women’s ordination to ministry, which has been affirmed by both Blantyre and Livingstonia, but resisted by the Nkhoma synod. Back in South Africa, these events similarly had an impact on church history and theological debate, but in a completely different direction. As the theology of Afrikaner Christian nationalism and eventually apartheid came into positions of power in the 1940s, the DRC’s Nkhoma mission in Malawi found itself in a position of vulnerability and suspicion. The very fact of its participation in an ecumenical project involving ‘liberal’ Scots in the formation of an indigenous black church was an intolerable digression from the normative separatism that was the hallmark of the DRC under apartheid. Hence, this article focuses on the variegated entanglements of Reformed Church history, mission history, theology and politics in two different 20th-century African contexts, Malawi and South Africa.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-106
Author(s):  
Alberto Nicòtina

The aim of this paper is to analyse the 'débat public' procedure, which finds its roots in the Canadian legal system and its most defined formulation in France, and which more recently has been circulating to Italy – first at the regional level and, since 2016, at the national level. The first part of the paper will thus be devoted to a historical overview of the débat public and to how it is implemented in each of the two legal systems. The second part will subsequently distil the 'paradigm', i. e. those distinctive traits that make the débat public an autonomous research subject, within the multi-layered legislative framework of environmental governance in Europe. Three main features of the paradigm will be pointed out (Participation, Effectiveness, Authority), thus highlighting how it can respond to the needs in light of which it has been designed, namely dealing with proximity conflicts and providing a forum for the construction of shared rational decisions in environmental decision-making. The paper eventually leads to the conclusion that the débat public, with its codified rules and procedures, represents the first and probably the most noticeable attempt towards the institutionalisation and generalisation of deliberative practices in environmental decision-making, thus towards developing a procedural stance in environmental democracy.


Muzikologija ◽  
2004 ◽  
pp. 121-152
Author(s):  
Vesna Peno

In notated collections of Serbian church hymns from the 19th and 20th century there are, among others, communion songs with texts that were not regulated by the Typicon. These so-called "arbitrary communion songs" have been very popular in the recent tradition of Serbian church chanting. They have been gradually pushing out the hymns that are regulated for singing on concrete days and feasts during the church year. Analysis of possible influences that determined the way texts and the melodies delved into the recent Serbian church chanting follows two possible directions. The first commenced from late-Byzantine singing tradition; more specifically, from a group of songs that although based on liturgical texts, were performed in extra-liturgical occasions. These are calophonic irmoi which were composed by a great number of known late-Byzantine masters of singing. The second direction had its beginning in Russian spiritual music that generated a new melodic genre kant, based on western models. The majority of those compositions have freely written spiritual texts, too, and not part of the liturgy. Kanti were, namely, singing numbers in liturgical dramas - theatrical pieces with Christian historical themes. The majority of arbitrary communion hymns from Serbian collections have texts from the psalms or use texts for irmoi of specific canons. There is only one text that does not belong to the output of church hymnography. In spite of that, the melodies of the analyzed hymns reflect the presence of traditional compositional procedures characteristic of late-Byzantine and Serbian traditions. On either side, they possess atypical musical phrases that relate them to the the kanti. The usage of paraliturgical songs instead of communion hymns is commentated upon from the liturgic aspect also. That song belongs to the central part of the Liturgy and most fundamental during the service of the Orthodox church. Therefore the deviation in Serbian practice from the rules that define its place and role demonstrate the distancing from the tradition, raises a fundamental question: is liturgical meaning being compromised.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rannu Sanderan

All the differences among the church, the religious differences and those that were largely cultural or political, came together to cause the schism. It evoke when people or things are separate or become separate from other people or other thing. Opinions concerning the nature and consequences of schism vary with the different conceptions of the nature of the church. In the 20th century the ecumenical movement tried to worked for reunion among churches. The big result of the cooperation between Roman Catholics and Protestants after the second Vatican Council (1962–1965) has resulted in more flexible attitudes within the churches concerning the problems of schism. Then, in the Protestant church, schism is a rejectable legacy.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Jacqueline H. Rider

Organized in 1887 by religious, financial, and social leaders in Manhattan, the Church Club of New York holds a library of some 1,500 volumes. It documents the religious roots and theological framework of New York’s financial elite, the birth of the Episcopal Church, and mainline American Protestantism’s reaction to the Social Gospel movement in the early 20th century. This essay discusses how titles illustrate the challenges these gentlemen confronted to their roles and their church’s identity in a rapidly changing society. Industrialization, modernization, immigration were all affecting their personal, professional, and spiritual lives.  It also reflects on how the collection as a whole mirrors the evolution of one sector of 20th century American culture.


Author(s):  
Delyash N. Muzraevа ◽  

Introduction. The written heritage of Kalmyk Buddhist priests, their daily practices, liturgical repertoire still remain a poorly studied page in the history of Buddhism among Mongolic peoples in the 20th century. The survived collections, clusters of religious texts prove instrumental in revealing most interesting aspects of their activities, efforts aimed at preservation of Buddhist teachings, their popularization and dissemination among believers. Goals. The paper examines two Oirat copies of the Precepts of the Omniscient [Manjushri] from N. D. Kichikov’s collection, transliterates and translates the original texts, provides a comparative analysis, and notes differences therein that had resulted from the scribe’s work, thereby introducing the narratives into scientific circulation. Materials. The article describes two Oirat manuscripts bound in the form of a notebook and contained in different bundles/collections of Buddhist religious texts stored at Ketchenery Museum of Local History and Lore. As is known, the collection is largely compiled from texts that belonged to the famous Kalmyk Buddhist monk Namka (N. D. Kichikov). Results. The analysis of the two Oirat texts with identical titles — Precepts of the Omniscient [Manjushri] — shows that their contents coincide generally but both the texts contain fragmented omissions (separate words, one or several sentences) that are present in the other. At the same time, when omitting fragments of the text addressed to the monastic community, the scribe was obviously guided by that those would be superfluous for the laity. Thus, our comparative analysis of the two manuscript copies demonstrates the sometimes dramatic role of the scribe in transmitting Buddhist teachings.


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