Regulating Old Believer Marriage: Ritual, Legality, and Conversion in Nicholas Fs Russia

Paert, Irina

doi:10.2307/1520344

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…During the state persecutions of the Old Believers in 1825-1855, marriages performed by their ministers were not recognized, and their children considered illegitimate. 15 Only in 1874, were the Old Believers' marriages legitimized on the condition that they were confirmed and registered by the local police, thus considering the marriage as a civil act rather than a sacrament. Due to the Religious Freedom Manifesto in 1905, the Old Believers achieved inclusion into the multiconfessional establishment of the Empire and were allowed vital events record keeping.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed Marriages in Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century: Comparing Russia and Norway

Glavatskaya

Thorvaldsen

Borovik

et al. 2020

Journal of Family History

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This article compares interethnic and interreligious marriages in Russia and Norway during the decades around 1900. State churches dominated religious life in both countries with over 90 percent of the population but both were losing influence during the period we focus on—rapidly in Russia after the 1917 Revolution. The part on Norway employs nominative and aggregate census material which from 1865 asked questions about religious affiliation, while the Russian case study utilizes the database of church microdata being built for Ekaterinburg—a railway hub and an industrial city in the Middle Urals, in Asia—in addition to census aggregates. Our main conclusion is that religion was a stronger regulator of intermarriage than ethnicity. Religious intermarriage was unusual in Ekaterinburg, even if official regulations were softened by the State over time—the exception is during World War I, when there was a deficit of young, Russian men at home and influx of refugees and Austro-Hungarian Prisoners of War (mostly Catholics and Lutherans). The situation was also affected by the 1917 Revolution creating equal rights for all religious denominations. The relatively few religious intermarriages in Norway were mostly between members of different Protestant congregations—nonmembers being the only group who often outmarried. We conclude that representatives of ethnic minorities and new religions seldom outmarry when religion was important for maintaining their identity.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed Marriages in Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century: Comparing Russia and Norway

Glavatskaya

Thorvaldsen

Borovik

et al. 2020

Journal of Family History

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“…In practice, though, marriage was more or less tolerated and later among the Pomortsy even explicitly accepted. Yet, more radical groups like Filippovtsy, Fedoseevtsy, Beguny, and others continued to practice celibacy and retained their original view of marriage as a vanished sacrament (Paert, 2004). Attempts to liberalize views on marriage or celibacy were usually followed by splintering and the formation of more fundamentalist groups that reasserted the asceticism and social radicalism of the earlier Old Believer movement (Paert, 2003).…”

Section: Dying For or With The Group?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Group Selection and the Russian Old Believers. Adaptive and Maladaptive Outcomes of the Group-Cohesive Effects of Religion

Bahna¹

2022

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Current adaptationist approaches view religion as a system of beliefs, behaviours, social norms, taboos and collective rituals, which enforce social cohesion and intragroup solidarity that lead to group cooperation and coordination. These prosocial effects then translate into success in between-group competition. Cultural group selection is seen as the process that led to the emergence of religion as a cultural adaptation that enables the persistence of cooperative social groups. This article applies this theoretical approach to the so-called Old Believers: a diverse and fractioned branch of Russian Orthodox Christianity, whose history is marked by apocalyptic worldviews and antagonism towards state powers and the Russian Orthodox Church. Since their split with the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17 th century, the Old Believers evolved towards egalitarian communities, asceticism, isolationism and traditionalism. The author argues that Old Believers can be in many respects viewed as prototypic examples of how religious systems promote social cohesion, in-group solidarity, identity and commitment. Yet, contrary to what the theory assumes (or at least emphasizes), the very same collective rituals, social norms, supernatural beliefs and taboos, and their systemic interdependence, can lead to group harmful outcomes (e.g., splintering, excessive celibacy, mass suicide). In other words, high levels of in-group prosociality linked to religion cannot be simply viewed as exclusively mediating group benefits.

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“…Throughout centuries of post-Raskol attempts to convert OBs to official Russian Orthodoxy, OBs were penalized for "civil" (svobodniy) as opposed to "church" (tserkovniy) marriage (Paert, 2004, p. 562). Common law marriages that were outside the auspices of the official Church were deemed illegal and resulted in brides being forced to return to parents and wear maiden attire; in addition, children were prohibited from inheriting parents' property unless the marriage was legalized (Freeze, 1990;Paert, 2004).…”

Section: Peasantrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After this period of learning, married couples were expected to raise a large family, and divorce was considered sacrilegious excepting specific circumstances. Most commonly, separation or divorce was allowed on the grounds of religious difference (Paert, 2004), which the OBs conceived of as the failure of one of the spouses to adhere to OB religious ideals.…”

Section: Peasantrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Russian old believers in Alaska : linguistic and cultural continuity of traditionalist refugees

Bass¹

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For two centuries, Russian Old Believers existed as religious refugees in search of a permanent and tolerant home; one group of Old Believers made their way to the United States. However, while these Old Believers found religious refuge in a nation with vacillating tolerance of religious freedom, they encountered new complications of cultural and linguistic pressures and temptations to assimilate -- particularly for their children. In an attempt to continue passing on the language and culture they had preserved from the 17thcentury, a few families established a geographically isolated, closed community in South Central Alaska (SCAK) that grew into a Village with different ways of adapting to the American culture outside. In evaluating how well SCAK Old Believers have maintained 17th-century traditional (i.e., passed from parent to child) language and culture I found that: 1.) the community has surpassed the third-generation language shift paradigm that most refugees and immigrants to the United States succumb to; 2.) overt expressions of religiosity quantifiably distinguish Old Believers from their non-Old Believer counterparts in the Village, which indicates that high-fidelity transmission still occurs; and 3.) traditional transmission is still positively influencing community retention (i.e., population maintenance). Additionally, I found that significant Village events initiated specific differences in adaptations to the surrounding American culture at the individual level that had interesting effects on strategies and behavior at the group level. Not only is this research a significant contribution to further clarifying human behavior and cultural evolution. This research and these findings are timely and relevant as social justice for refugees and immigrants are at the forefront of many current national and global sociopolitical conversations. The SCAK Old Believers demonstrate that it is possible to maintain linguistic and cultural heritage within a dominant postindustrialized society, and their case reinforces the importance of choice for refugees and the value of life without fear.

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Regulating Old Believer Marriage: Ritual, Legality, and Conversion in Nicholas Fs Russia

Cited by 10 publications

References 2 publications

Mixed Marriages in Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century: Comparing Russia and Norway

Mixed Marriages in Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century: Comparing Russia and Norway

Cultural Group Selection and the Russian Old Believers. Adaptive and Maladaptive Outcomes of the Group-Cohesive Effects of Religion

Russian old believers in Alaska : linguistic and cultural continuity of traditionalist refugees

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