Russian Clergy in the United States (Late 19th – Early 20th Century): Problems of Recruitment and Motivation

Abstract

The article, on the basis of archival materials, develops the understudied theme of clergy recruitment and motivation for service in the North American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is shown why the recruitment of the clergy for the diocese was a serious problem: the church did not have enough resources to prepare priests in America, while candidates from Russia were deterred by such factors as language barrier, lower social status and income than in Russia, and alien culture. On the other hand, many of the people who expressed the desire to serve in the United States were unsuitable as candidates. Various categories of persons who entered the ministry in the diocese both from Russia and from among local residents were identified. The best clergymen, who made up the glory of the Orthodox clergy in America, turned out to be church people from the Russian Empire, selected by the heads of the North American diocese themselves, especially during their visits to Russia. Motives of the candidates for the remote diocese are analyzed on the basis of their petitions addressed to the head of the diocese, compared with data from other primary sources, such as analytical conclusions of St Tikhon (Bellavin), head of the diocese in 1898–1907; messages from the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod K. P. Pobedonostsev, who collected information about petitioners; and memoirs of Archbishop Plato (Rozhdestvensky), who headed the diocese in 1907– 1914. The study revealed a great variety of motives: from sincere desire to serve the Church and the cause of salvation of people’s souls to aspirations unrelated to church service, such as the desire to see an interesting and rapidly developing country and to supplement one’s education. Moreover, American periods of life of two Russian church servers, reconstructed from archival materials and summarized in the article, shed light on the realities of the lives of talented young Russian people in America at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. Finally, the life path of the best clergymen of the diocese is outlined in the article up to its completion.