Scott M. Kenworthy, "The People's Patriarch: Tikhon Bellavin and the Orthodox Church in North America and Revolutionary Russia" (Oxford UP, 2026)
About this episode
The episode discusses the life of Tikhon Bellavin and his role in the Orthodox Church during the Bolshevik Revolution.
On October 28, 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 Peter the Great two centuries earlier. The Council chose Tikhon (Bellavin), the son of a humble village parish priest, to be head of Russia's largest religious confession. At the time, the majority of Orthodox Christians were devoutly religious. Tikhon's vision of the Church, which he began putting into practice during his years as the Orthodox bishop of North America (1898-1907), was that of an organic body which welcomed the participation of all believers. The Bolsheviks had other ideas. They aimed to create a revolution that would be carried out by the state on behalf of the people. And they sought to eradicate religion as "superstition" and not only to disestablish the Church, but to destroy it altogether. Although the alternate Russia which Tikhon represented would be crushed by the superior force of the Bolsheviks, he helped navigate the Church through immense challenges so that, in the end, the Orthodox Church outlived the Soviet experiment. The People's Patriarch tells the story of the clash of…
People in this episode
Guest: Scott M. Kenworthy
Topics covered
- Orthodox Church
- Bolshevik Revolution
- Tikhon Bellavin
- religion and state
- Russian history
- 20th century biography
Keywords
- Tikhon Bellavin
- Orthodox Church
- Bolshevik Revolution
- Russian history
- religion
- biography
- 1917
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Russian Orthodox Church, Oxford UP
Places: North America, Russia
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