Russian Old Believers in Millville NJ

A few weeks ago we were con­tact­ed by some­one from the St Nicholas Cen­ter (http://​www​.stni​cholas​cen​ter​.org) ask­ing if they could use some pho­tos I had tak­en of the church my wife is attend­ing, Mil­lville N.J.‘s St Nicholas Ukrain­ian Catholic. Of course I said yes. But then my cor­re­spon­dent asked if I could take pic­tures of anoth­er church she had heard of: St Nicholas Old Believ­er’s Church. It’s on the oth­er side of Mil­lville from our St Nick­’s, on an ancient road that dead ends in woods. We had to visit.

The Old Believ­ers have a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry. They were Russ­ian Ortho­dox Chris­tians who refused to com­ply with litur­gi­cal changes man­dat­ed by the Patri­arch and Czar in the 1650s. As usu­al, there was a lot of pol­i­tics involved, with the Czar want­i­ng to cozy up with the Greek Ortho­dox to ally Rus­sia against the Mus­lim Ottomans, etc., etc. The the­o­log­i­cal charge was that the Greek tra­di­tions were the stan­dard and Russ­ian dif­fer­ences latter-day inno­va­tions to be stamped out (more mod­ern research has found the Rus­sians actu­al­ly were clos­er to the old­er forms, but no mat­ter: what the Czar and Patri­arch want, the Czar and Patri­arch get). The old prac­tices were banned, begin­ning hun­dreds of years of state-sponsored per­se­cu­tion for the “Old Believ­ers.” The sur­vivors scat­tered to the four cor­ners of the Russ­ian empire and beyond, keep­ing a low pro­file wher­ev­er they went.

The Old Believ­ers have a fas­ci­nat­ing frac­tured his­to­ry. Because their priests were killed off in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, they lost their claims of apos­tolic suc­ces­sion – the idea that there’s an unbro­ken line of ordi­na­tion from Jesus Christ him­self. Some Old Believ­ers found work-arounds or claimed a few priests were spared but the hard­core among them declared suc­ces­sion over, sig­nal­ing the end times and the fall of the Church. They became priest­less Old Believ­ers – so defen­sive of the old litur­gy that they were will­ing to lose most of the litur­gy. They’ve scat­tered around the world, often wear­ing plain dress and liv­ing in iso­lat­ed communities.

The Old Believ­ers church in Mil­lville has no signs, no web­site, no indi­ca­tion of what it is (a life­long mem­ber of “our” St Nick­’s called it mys­te­ri­ous and said he lit­tle about it of it). From a few inter­net ref­er­ences, they appear to be the priest­less kind of Old Believ­ers. But it has its own dis­tinc­tions: appar­ent­ly one of the great­est icono­g­ra­phers of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry lived and wor­shipped there, and when famed Russ­ian polit­i­cal pris­on­er Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn vis­it­ed the U.S. he made a point of speak­ing at this sign­less church on a dead end road.

Links:
* Wikipedia: http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​O​l​d​_​B​e​l​i​e​v​ers
* Account of US Lithuan­ian Bespopovt­sy com­mu­ni­ties: http://​www​.synax​is​.info/​o​l​d​-​r​i​t​e​/​0​_​o​l​d​b​e​l​i​e​f​/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​_​e​n​g​/​n​i​c​o​l​l​.​h​tml
* OSU Library on icono­g­ra­ph­er Sofronv (PDF): http://​cmrs​.osu​.edu/​r​c​m​s​s​/​C​M​H​2​1​c​o​l​o​r​.​pdf
* Solzhen­it­syn’s 1976 vis­it: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f‑news/2057793/posts

In album St Nicholas Old Believ­ers, Mil­lville NJ (9 photos)

 

 

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4 thoughts on “Russian Old Believers in Millville NJ

  1. Fas­ci­nat­ing. I was just read­ing Alek­sndr Men and have become quite inter­est­ed in the Ortho­dox belief and it’s sects. Greet­ings from Venezuela 

  2. Very inter­est­ing!  There are a lot of Old Believ­ers here in Ore­gon, but I’ve nev­er known much about them.

  3. Just found your blog — via a 2004 entry on SPICES tes­ti­monies — and start­ed brows­ing through the S. Jer­sey entries. I grew up in Mil­lville and my par­ents still live there. I had nev­er heard of this church. I’m quite curi­ous where it is.

  4. My moth­er’s fam­i­ly was Old Believ­er and were mem­bers this St. Nicholas church. My great-grandparents (moth­er’s father’s par­ents) are buried there as are my grand­par­ents on my moth­er’s side, my moth­er, and her sis­ter (who died young). Every spring, 6 weeks after East­er, those who are alive gath­er once a year to clean the graves and plant flow­ers. I have only been inside the church for funer­al ser­vices, women on the left, men on the right, every­one stands or sits on a bench along the walls.

    Some num­ber of years ago, a devel­op­ment of new hous­es with white 6‑foot fences sprang up around the cemetary. When there vis­it­ing my moth­er, I looked up and won­dered about the young chil­dren liv­ing behind win­dows that looked down on her grave… what did they think about this qui­et odd spot?

    There was a forest­ed area adja­cent to the cemetary as well (I haven’t vis­it­ed since before COVID) where graves of Pol­ish Catholics who were inte­grat­ed into the Old Believ­er com­mu­ni­ty were light­ly marked with cross­es but no names.

    Glad to offer more — I have pho­tos, and many life­long memories.

    Some last names from my moth­er’s side of the fam­i­ly — Kan­ar­chuk, Kaval­ou, Nachuk, Najorny. They came from Belorus after WWII from a small vil­lage called “Kasye­vichi”.

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