An open-minded and objective look at the state of the Russian Orthodox Church from Nicholas Myers at First Things.

I'm not sure how "open-minded and objective" it is... Its reading of 19th century Russian social history is shockingly uninformed (as the bibliography provided unintentionally makes clear). Take a look at Scott Kenworthy's comments at the bottom of the page for an expert's take on this history.

Kenworthy himself is guilty of more than a little wishful thinking. Yes, Myers is wrong objectively about the results of the Nikonian Reform, but he is right about the objectives of Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei (see Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual and Reform).

He's technically right that the Tsar was never head of the Russian Church in the sense that Queen Elizabeth is head of the Church of England--but, by making the Church a branch of the Russian civil service, he exercised through his procurator far more direct control than any English monarch had since the Glorious Revolution. Moreover, the independence exercised by the Church of Constantinople under the Byzantine, as well as by the Church of Kiev (later Moscow), vanished under Ivan IV Grozny and his successors. After the murder of Patriarch Filip by Ivan, the ability (or willingness) of Russian prelates to oppose the will of the secular power was practically nil.

Regarding the literacy of the Russian clergy, saying they were among the most literate elements of Russian society is damning with faint praise. Most priests were, in fact, functionally illiterate, navigating their way through the liturgical books by rote (one reason the Nikonian Reforms were so unsettling). Yes, a relative handful of priests advanced to the theological academies (where, by the 19th century, instruction was based on Roman seminaries and conducted in Latin), but most were actually trained at the parish level--as recounted in the 1920s by the Russian musicologist Johan Gardner.

The division between the clerical hierarchy and the spiritual ascetics may not have been as radical as Myers describes (remember, he's writing an essay, not a book), but it was real nonetheless. One example, recently mentioned by forum member Adam DeVille, was the widespread phenomenon of the "holy fool", which took hold of the Russian spiritual imagination as it never did in any other Orthodox society.

The result was, by 1905, an Orthodox Church that, according to its own hierarchs, had become hollowed out and lacking in substance. The tragedy of 1917 is the reestablishment of the Patriarchate and the creation of an independent synod could have resulted in the spiritual renewal of Russia and the Church of Moscow. Instead, the emergence of the Bolsheviks devastated the Church and drove it back into subservience to the state, from which it has yet to emerge. No less a person than Metropolitan Hillarion has written of how, by the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, the faith of most Russians had become superficial at best, for which reason the Bolsheviks succeeded in delegitimizing the Church with surprising ease.

Maybe Dr. DeVille will give his assessment here or on First Things of Myer's scholarship...

And the point of this negative article is exactly what?

(For every negative statement in it, one can find an equally edifying or explanatory counter statement, but I am not going to play into that game--)

Some people practice religion with their minds, and others practice it on a much more profound level which cannot be explained, or argued, or even written about--because it is felt and understood in their souls.

May God bless the Russian Orthodox Church and the land of Russia, where the blood of the most recent and greatest number of martyrs was spilled for Christ and His Church.

Alice

The point is rather clear: the Russian Church's excessive dependence upon the state has led and will continue to lead it into morally compromising positions which will undermine its ability to lead the spiritual and moral regeneration of Russia, and thus the Russian people will look to others to lead them into the sunlight.

"The result was, by 1905, an Orthodox Church that, according to its own hierarchs, had become hollowed out and lacking in substance."

Yes, history tells us that this is true, but we must not ignore the quiet work of the Holy Spirit in Russoan monastic sanctuaries such as Optina and Glinsk. The accounts of some monasteries when their 19th century spiritual restorers arrived is horrendous (read 'One of the Ancients' the life of Elder Gabriel of Kazan). Yet by the early 20th century they had become spiritual beacons, illuminating the Russian Church. Not everywhere was barren and stagnant.

This, of course, makes Myers' point.

... and of course, the Old Belief remained a threat to 'official' religion in offering an ascetical and spiritual alternative Orthodoxy, hence the harshness of the legal code toward the 'raskolniky' and their supporters.