Good shepherds: The St. Petersburg pastorate and the emergence of social activism in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1855-1917

This dissertation examines in detail the religious-social ideas and activities developed by the parish clergy of the city of St. Petersburg in the late imperial period to learn how this elite group within the Russian Orthodox Church responded to concerns expressed by the government, educated society and some clergymen during the mid-to late nineteenth century about the church's ability to meet the changing religious needs of an increasingly modern and secular society. The larger concern of this study is to understand how the Russian Orthodox Church functioned as a religious-social institution in late imperial Russia by asking how those who served the church understood its mission in the world and their own contribution to its fulfillment, how these ideas affected the clergy's performance of their service and how these ideas and activities evolved, both as a result of developments within the church and of society's response to the church's work, during the half-century before the revolution.The main argument underlying the narrative is that the St. Petersburg clergy responded quickly and creatively to criticisms of the church's estrangement from society by reconceptualizing the church's purpose, developing a new definition of the clergy's role in achieving this purpose and significantly expanding the church's activities with the development of a mission of social outreach addressed to both educated society and the urban masses and carried out through public religious education, charity and temperance advocacy. As a result, by the turn of the century the local church had become a vigorous institution that played a prominent role in the city's public life. However, the nature and extent of its involvment with society led many St. Petersburg clergymen to support the government's opponents during the 1905 revolution. This finally alerted the Synod to the potential danger of the St. Peterburg clergy's work and led to the suppression of the local church's independent tendencies in the inter-revolutionary period. However, the church's repression of its best and brightest servants divided it internally and severely weakened its connections with society, making it unable to resist its opponents after the 1917 revolution.