Patrick Comerford
I an sorry to miss this evening’s launch of a new book in Cambridge, The People’s Patriarch: Tikhon Bellavin and the Orthodox Church in North America and Revolutionary Russia by Scott M Kenworthy, and published by Oxford University Press.
The book launch in Wesley House, Cambridge, this evening has been organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, where I have been a student on many courses over the years, mainly in Sidney Sussex College.
This is the first scholarly and comprehensive biography of Patriarch Tikhon, and draws on documents from the Soviet leadership and secret police file that were previously inaccessible to researchers. It provides an in-depth account of a crucial period of Orthodox Christianity in North America and of Patriarch Tikhon’s vital contributions to its development. But it is also an important book at this crucial time of dissonate relationship between the Russian Church and the rest of the Orthodox world.
Professor Scott M Kenworthy is Professor of History in the History Department at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he also teaches for the Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and Religious Studies programs, and is also Associate Professor of Comparative Religion.
He is the author of the prize-winning book The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism and Society After 1825 and, with Alexander Agadjanian, Understanding World Christianity: Russia. He is a past president of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity and has held research fellowships in the US, Germany, Hungary and Romania.
On 28 October 1917, just days after the Bolsheviks seized power, the great Council of the Russian Orthodox Church voted to restore the patriarchate, which had been abolished by Tsar Peter the Great almost two centuries earlier in 1721. The council chose as the new patriarch Patriarch Tikhon (1865-1925), born Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin, the son of a humble village parish priest.
As the Orthodox Bishop of North America (1898-1907), Patriarch Tikhon had already started putting into practice his vision of the Church as an organic body that welcomed the participation of all believers. The Bolsheviks, who had other ideas, aimed to create a revolution that would be carried out by the state on behalf of the people. They sought to eradicate religion as superstition, to disestablish the church and to destroy it altogether.
The alternate Russia that Patriarch Tikhon represented was crushed by the superior force of the Bolsheviks. But he helped to navigate the Church through immense challenges and, in the end, the Orthodox Church outlived the Soviet experiment.
In The People’s Patriarch, Scott Kenworthy tells the story of the clash of visions for the new Russia through the lens of the humble man chosen to lead the Church, whose life exemplifies the transformations within the Orthodox Church in late Imperial Russia and its fate during the Revolution. This the first critical biography of one of the most important Orthodox Christian leaders of the 20th century, based on an exhaustive use of previously untapped primary sources, including Patriarch Tikhon’s letters and encyclicals, previously classified documents from the Bolshevik leadership and Soviet secret police, and material from a dozen archives in five countries.
Patriarch Tikhon has been overlooked by most historians of Russia and the former Soviet Union, who have seen the Russian Orthodox Church as irrelevant within an anti-religious Communist polity. This book tells his story from his humble beginnings in the Pskov province in north-west Russia, to his ordination and consecration, and then his ministry as bishop of a diocese in Poland, where he was Bishop of Lublin.
For almost a decade (1898-1907), he was a bishop in the US, where he came to appreciate democracy, the separation of Church and State, and the vital part played by the laity and parish clergy within the Church. When he was appointed Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska in 1898, he went to the US where he eventually became a naturalized American citizen. There he visited emerging Orthodox emigrant communities in cities such as New York and Chicago and in coal-mining and steel-making areas in in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
He reorganised the diocese, changed its name to the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and North America, and he blessed the cornerstone of Saint Nicholas Cathedral, New York, in 1901. He built churches across North America, opened dialogue with Greek Orthodox churches, and took part in the consecration of Reginald Heber Weller as an Anglican bishop in Saint Paul’s Cathedral in the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He returned to Russia in 1907 when he was appointed Bishop of Yaroslavl.
When he was chosen in 1917 as the eleventh Patriarch of Moscow and the first since Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate 200 years earlier, Patriarch Tikhon quoted Ezekiel prophetically: ‘How many tears and groans will I have to swallow.’
After the abdication of the tsar in March 1917, the Russian Church was freed from its subjugation to the State and became once again respected by a large section of the educated population. But the church also faced years of persecution, and lost its legal status and right to own property. Lenin launched a ferocious attack on the church in 1922, and Patriarch Tikhon was imprisoned from May 1922 until June 1923.
Patriarch Tikhon was effectively a prisoner in the Donskoi Monastery and was frequently interrogated in the Lubyanka. But on the occasions when he was allowed to take walks along the monastery walls, crowds would regularly gather below the walls to receive his blessing.
Thanks to changes in the regime and to support from abroad, particularly from Britain, Patriarch Tikhon was not put on trial or executed. On 13 April 1923, the Archbishop Randall Davidson of Canterbury and other British religious leaders, including the Chief Rabbi, issued a statement condemning religious persecution in the Soviet Union.
The British Foreign Secretary issued an ultimatum to the Soviet government on 8 May 1923, condemning ‘the definite object of destroying all religion in Russia’ and threatening to break off relations. The Soviet leadership was desperate to preserve the 1921 Anglo-Soviet Trade Treaty and to maintain good relations with Britain.
When Patriarch Tikhon died on 12 April 1925, between 30,000 and 40,000 attended his funeral in the Donskoi Monastery, many more than attended Lenin’s funeral the previous year.
Patriarch Tikhon defies definition as either a dissident or a collaborator. He endeavoured to preserve the Russian Orthodox Church while he tried to remain apolitical, and he criticised the Communist regime without opposing it.
He is a challenge to the capitulation of many Christian leaders to the Trump regime in the US. During his time as a bishop in the US, he came to appreciate democracy, plurality and diversity, and the separation of Church and State.
He also stands in sharp contrast to the present head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, with his intimate relationship with the Putin regime, his autocratic approach to church leadership, and his persistent attempts to sow divisions within the Orthodox churches.
The Orthodox Public Affairs Committee (OPAC) said earlier this week: ‘Rather than serving as a prophetic voice for peace, reconciliation, and the sanctity of every human life, Patriarch Kirill has repeatedly offered religious justification for Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine. He has portrayed the invasion as a sacred struggle, blessed those waging war, and increasingly intertwined the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church with the geopolitical ambitions of the Kremlin.’
Patriarch Kirill’s recent statements are disturbing and troubling. He has described Russia’s nuclear arsenal as a manifestation of God's ‘grace and mercy’ and he has claimed that the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb came about through divine providence and the prayers of Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833), a Russian saint known for his life of contemplation and kindness.
His invocation of one of Orthodoxy’s most beloved saints in defence of nuclear weapons that are capable of unimaginable destruction is a profound distortion of the Christian faith. The Gospel proclaims peace, reconciliation, and the sacred dignity of every human person and must never be used to sanctify war, imperial conquest, or nuclear intimidation.
For more than four years, the Ukrainian people have endured the horrors of an unprovoked war with extraordinary courage, resilience, and unwavering faith. Families have been torn apart, cities have been reduced to rubble, and countless innocent lives have been changed forever.
In response, the Saint Nicholas National Shrine recently presented its Beacon of Hope Award to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine, recognising their courage, sacrifice, and resilience.
The National Shrine of Saint Nicholas was established to bear witness to the Light of Christ in the midst of darkness. It stands at the World Trade Centre as a place of prayer, remembrance and healing, and a reminder that evil and hatred will never have the final word. The US is about to mark the 25th anniversary of the ‘9/11’ attacks on 11 September 2001, the shrine is a ‘beacon of hope’ to all who suffer from violence, war, terrorism, and despair.
The shrine’s decision to honour President Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine has been criticised by Patriarch Kirill’s apologists, who have claimed that Ukraine is persecuting Christianity and ‘shutting down churches’.
Saint Nicholas National Shrine was consecrated in memory of lives lost to terrorism 25 years ago, and remains a reminder to the world, like Patriarch Tikhon, that the Light of Christ continues to shine in the darkness, and the darkness shall never overcome it.
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