Introduction
Religious beliefs and practices are an intrinsic part of peoples’ lives which at most may provide clear understanding of the why and how a certain group may behave. Like culture and tradition, these are passed on from one generation to another, location to another as people move around and migrate, and influence evolution and even modern or contemporary ways of life.
This paper shall try to discern the main argument of David Scheffel’s In the Shadow of the Anti-Christ: The Old Believers of Alberta, describe and evaluate his sources and methodology, its parameters or application, strengths or weaknesses, its comparative view for or against other scholars or movements as well as other readings.
Summary
Scheffel’s premise is that the Old Believers, isolated Russian migrants of late 1970s to earlyn1980s, provide people with issues and themes that are relevant with culture embodied not only historically but also in contemporary life which he found quite unusual. In the book, he provided a detailed description of the culture of contemporary yet old believers of three communities in Alberta, Canada. He also provided their actual actions, their meanings, and showed that attention to details of culture as well as experience in community life provides a deeper appreciation of culture and human experience irregardless of the dominant culture and modern living.
The book included the Muscovite Xenophobia, their quest for authenticity, the Raskol, and then, there’s the Old Believers, Popotsy and Bespovtsy as well as the demise of Murcovy under the chapter “Preclude to Muscovy”. Under the chapter “Berezovka”, are the setting, the people and the historical and geographical origins. For “Community and Family” chapter, there is the detailed community organization, kinship and family, as well as the economy.
Under the chapter “Orthodoxy and its Interpretation,” both the written and oral traditions were included. The Symbols of the Orthodoxy: the Church” followed which described its public devotion, sacramentals and sacraments. The next chapter “Symbols of Orthodoxy: the home” included nature and the Christian home, as well as food and drinks. The concluding chapter “Old Belief in Context” dealt with Puritanism, ritualism and authenticity.
Thesis: While traditional religions continue to be a part of contemporary rituals and exercises of a given group of peoples such as the Old believers of Alberta, some remain symbolical and rarely retain their original implication and meanings.
Discussion
Scheffel noted that the Old Believers have their own set of notions about freedom and liberty apart from what is dominantly believed and practiced so that as they seek a social landscape of a disciplined life, the democratic landscape becomes a threat. For them, freedom is an opportunity to exercise a well-structured life which is an important part of their faithful life: in thoughts, words and deeds.
In fact, for them, the world has fallen and participation to what is dominant and contemporary removes the understanding on the real purpose and reason for living. They are, to Scheffel’s words, “a vivid example of Orthodox Christian culture which calls its faithful, not out of this world to some transcendent paradise or isolated kingdom of nostalgia, but to live in the created order as sacred tradition would have it,” (Foreword by David Goa, pp xii-xiiv).
To fully achieve this, the Old Believers literally and figuratively adhere to “image and likeness of God” which Scheffel found timeless, but definitely not frozen that became a playground for meaning, experience as well as adaptation. He argued that its timelessness is derived from their interpretation of historical events with mythical meaning and character based on sacred tradition. Among their practices include daily prayer, feasting, fasting that mixes teachings of the Scriptures and of the church fathers such as St. Cyril of Jerusalem, archpriest Avvakum, lives patterned after the ancient texts the ustavs, the canon law komchaia kniga and the folk tradition Psalter.
Scheffel noted that the Old believers shun television, radio and newspapers and instead learn from history which he called, “diachronically. They learn about their place in the world predominantly through history, and the past serves as the preferred method for reducing the burden of voluntary isolation […] communicate with saints and ancestors […] they fear the future and glorify the past,” (pp 4-5).
Scheffel provided an insight to the tradition of the Old believers from Muscovy, or Russia, the Greek Orthodoxy influence, its division with the Latin Christianity, and much more about religious differences and history throughout Russia that has retained the Orthodoxy as its dominant religion.
On the latter part of the book, there is the understanding, however, that even the Old believers in isolated western and new location have to address their needs for assimilation, which was a bigger challenge and obstacle to both the host and uprooted societies. In this process, there is also the acknowledgment to what is already amoral or acceptable to the western, contemporary world such as the need for comfortable living such as sufficient food intake and sleep during fasting, and acquiescence to carnal needs.
Methodology
In this process, Scheffel had to un-earth himself the books and many portions of history that include popular and the arts, that the Old Believers open and consult to solve and address their life challenges, or as a way to understand. He was also compromised to become one “Believer” in order to fully integrate and learn in his fieldwork about his people (his subject), but to ethically avoid misleading his subjects, his assimilation with the old believers became limited to a daily commute from the nearest Canadian outpost to the community as a “visitor”.
He never became a “believer” or one of them since it would severe objectivity of his study as well as provide impediments that could alter his findings and objective research. This, nevertheless, served more of a challenge than an obstacle for Scheffel that made him take note of details in order not to miss as well as reflect on his status as a fence-sitter. Further, he has taken a more rigorous effort to include materials from the Old believers’ previous life, traditions and history to bridge the gap between the “then” and “now” of the people of Alberta in the study. The contemporary lifestyle and thoughts of his subjects were also incorporated in the texts that gave a better understanding to the limitations of the Orthodoxy among the Old Believers.
Conclusion
Rituals and mystical exercises both pagan and Christian or another’s opposite view of the other (where one believes otherwise) at most are retained by more fearful and less adventurous individuals and groups of peoples. These are transported where they go, continue being a part of their daily or regular existence, and in fact, passed on to new members of the group. While rituals may evolve into other similar forms or retain their original composition, meanings and appreciation changes over time and space, so that a religiously followed ritual may assimilate into another form, but still identical to its origin and distinct when compared with others.
This is expressed all throughout Scheffel’s book. The only misleading on the book is its title using the more controversial phrase “Shadow of the Anti-Christ” which was also used by Stephen N. Williams’ In the Shadow of the Antichrist: Nietzsche’s Critique of Christianity, a more recent publication. This phrase is most often connected to Friedrich Nietzsche and other more pronouncedly negative and gothic groups. At times, the reader may try to seek connection for the “anti-Christ’ which is at most subliminal and passing, having to do mostly with acceptance of necessary comforts and assimilation to what may be available to the Old Believers of Alberta.
Overall, the book is a study about folk religion, not far from the study of more accepted and popular Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, uprooted from one location that is Moscow, and transplanted to another which is Alberta, with its interesting albeit eccentric rituals and beliefs that may or may no longer be as important to its practitioners as it was to their conveyors.
Reference
Scheffel, David. (1994) In the Shadow of the Anti-Christ: The Old Believers of Alberta.. Peterborough, ON: Broadview.
Williams, Stephen (2006). The Shadow of the Antichrist: Nietzsche’s Critique of Christianity. Baker.