Edinoverie

Edinoverie (Russian: единове́рие, IPA: [jɪdʲɪnɐˈvʲerʲɪjɪ]) is an arrangement between certain Russian Old Believers communities and the official Russian Orthodox Church, whereby such communities are treated as a part of the normative Church system while maintaining their own rites. Thus, they are often designated "Old Ritualists" (Russian: старообря́дцы, staroobryadtsy), as opposed to "Old Believers". The followers of this movement preserve the ancient liturgical rites (like two-finger blessing, services according to pre-reform printed books, etc.) and the old Russian way of life, recognise the hierarchical jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. In the definition of Bishop Simon (Shleev): "Edinoverie is Old Belief reconciled with the Russian and Universal Church".

It emerged in the 18th century and was, on the one hand, an expression of the desire of some adherents of the "old faith" to unite with the Russian Orthodox Church due to the absence of a church hierarchy among the Old Believers and, on the other hand, arose in connection with the government's recognition of the ineffectiveness of forceful methods of "suppressing the schism", which provoked the Old Believers into resistance. It was sanctioned by the highest church authority in the 1780s and regulated in 1800 by Metropolitan Platon (Levshin). At the same time, requests for the appointment of a special bishop for Edinoverie adherents and for the lifting of the "anathemas" of the Councils of 1656 and 1667 against the old rites were not met. Edinoverie was from the outset regarded with suspicion both by the majority of Old Believers, who viewed Edinoverie adherents as traitors and compared Edinoverie to a unia, and by most of the clergy of the state church, who saw them as "half-schismatics" and secret Old Believers. Despite restrictions on their rights, by 1918 approximately 600 Edinoverie parishes and more than ten monasteries were operating on the territory of the Russian Empire. At the All-Russian Local Council of 1917–1918, the question of appointing Edinoverie bishops was resolved affirmatively. The "anathemas" against the old rites were lifted only at the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1971. In the Soviet era, due to the total persecution of the Church and the old way of life in general, Edinoverie virtually disappeared. Since the late 1980s, the old rite within the Russian Orthodox Church has experienced a second birth. At the same time, "among the main features of the contemporary situation of the Old Rite parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church one may note the absence of an official ecclesiastical-canonical status that would define the structure of their liturgical and communal life" Only on 24 March 2022 did the Synod approve the "Statute on the Old Rite Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church".