Jennifer Hedda analyzes the ideas and activities of the parish clergy serving in St. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia, in order to discover how the Russian Orthodox Church responded theologically and pastorally to the profound social, economic, and cultural changes that transformed Russia during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The challenges of modernity forced the Orthodox clergy, like other members of educated society, to re-examine their interpretation of the Church s earthly mission and their own role in fulfilling it. During the mid-19th century, Orthodox theologians began to argue that the church had a responsibility to society as well as to individuals, and to assert that its mission was to lead believers in building a society that manifested the gospel principles of love, mercy, charity, and justice.
The idea of creating the kingdom of God on earth inspired many clergymen, who dramatically increased their social outreach work in the last two decades of the 19th century: preaching during church services, teaching outside their churches, organizing charities, establishing temperance societies, and engaging in a host of other activities that involved them in the daily lives of their parishioners. The clergy s work culminated in 1905, when a workers organization established by an Orthodox priest became a mass political movement whose activities sparked a revolution.
His Kingdom Come challenges many common assumptions about the Orthodox Church as a weak and passive institution that did not respond to the demands of the modern world demonstrating that it played an active and creative role in late imperial society, albeit on its own terms rather than those of its secular critics. This book will be of particular interest to those who study the politics and society of Russia in the imperial period, the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the modern era, the relationship of religious institutions to society and culture, and the history of religious-social thought in other post-Enlightenment societies.
Long-standing stereotypes depict the late imperial Russian Church as a tool of the autocratic state, its cynical, inebriated clergy out of touch with a struggling flock. In this account of the decades leading up to 1917, Jennifer Hedda lays such simplistic views to rest by examining the actual ideals and activities of parish priests in St. Petersburg, the empire's capital. Late nineteenth-century Russian theologians, paralleling the 'social gospel' movement in Britain and America, declared that the Church had a responsibility to address social as well as religious needs. Parish priests embraced new forms of social outreach by preaching homilies, establishing charities, and promoting temperance societies. As political turmoil worsened, some priests became politicized, arguing that the Church must guide parishioners in troubled times and serve 'the greater good, the higher truth.' In 1905, such convictions impelled Fr. Georgii Gapon to lead a Russian workers' protest that was brutally suppressed. Hedda documents the wrenching dilemmas faced by priests (although her focus leans toward the more liberal minority), clerical groups, and hierarchs, and explains why calls for Church 'reform' never gained traction. Ultimately, we sense not revolutionary defeat, but suffocation. These clergymen never view themselves as victims of modernity: they are still striving to answer the demands of the gospel even as a Gordian knot of government restrictions, institutional dysfunction, and suspicion stifles their every move.
Long-standing stereotypes depict the late imperial Russian Church as a tool of the autocratic state, its cynical, inebriated clergy out of touch with a struggling flock. In this account of the decades leading up to 1917, Jennifer Hedda lays such simplistic views to rest by examining the actual ideals and activities of parish priests in St. Petersburg, the empire's capital. Late nineteenth-century Russian theologians, paralleling the 'social gospel' movement in Britain and America, declared that the Church had a responsibility to address social as well as religious needs. Parish priests embraced new forms of social outreach by preaching homilies, establishing charities, and promoting temperance societies. As political turmoil worsened, some priests became politicized, arguing that the Church must guide parishioners in troubled times and serve 'the greater good, the higher truth.' In 1905, such convictions impelled Fr. Georgii Gapon to lead a Russian workers' protest that was brutally suppressed. Hedda documents the wrenching dilemmas faced by priests (although her focus leans toward the more liberal minority), clerical groups, and hierarchs, and explains why calls for Church 'reform' never gained traction. Ultimately, we sense not revolutionary defeat, but suffocation. These clergymen never view themselves as victims of modernity: they are still striving to answer the demands of the gospel even as a Gordian knot of government restrictions, institutional dysfunction, and suspicion stifles their every move.
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