Sectarianism

The quality or character of a sectarian; devotion to the interests of a party; excess of partisan or denominational zeal; adherence to a separate church organization.

Religious dissent from the Russian Orthodox Church.

The word sect entered the Russian language in the eighteenth century from the Latin word secta. Long used in the Catholic Church to indicate groups or parties that had separated themselves from orthodox teaching, the word was adopted by the Russian Orthodox Church during the reign of Peter the Great (r. 1682 - 1725) to label the increasing numbers of religious dissenters.

The first substantial movement of Christian dissent occurred only in the seventeenth century in response to the liturgical and bureaucratic innovations of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow (r. 1652 - 1658). By the 1680s, those who opposed these new reforms called themselves "Old Believers"; many of them withdrew from the Church and society to create their own purified communities on the outskirts of the Muscovite state. Although Old Believers were sometimes tarred with the label "sect," by the late nineteenth century Russian Orthodox here-siology began to reserve the word sectarian for the growing numbers of religious dissenters who had separated themselves from the state church for reasons other than Nikon's reforms. In accordance with this usage, this article deals only with those sectarians who were not Old Believers. It also does not deal with the fourteenth-century Judaizers and its predecessors.

The Faith of Christ (Flagellants) and the Castrates

The Faith of Christ (khristovshchina) arose in the seventeenth century. Its members continued to visit the Orthodox state church, but also met in secret assemblies where they repeated the Jesus prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) until the Holy Spirit descended upon them and they danced, prophesied, and spoke in tongues. In their secret assemblies, they believed that they had recovered the original faith and practice of Christ. Following a realized eschatology, they also believed that Christ had returned spiritually to dwell in their leaders whom they called Christs and Mothers of God. They composed a rich repertoire of spiritual songs celebrating these leaders and their faith. The adherents of the Faith of Christ practiced an intense asceticism that included celibacy, restricted diet, long periods of prayer, and fasting. Over time, some of them flagellated themselves, and so they became known as flagellants. This label was applied indiscriminately to many different sectarians, most of whom did not practice flagellation.

The Faith of Christ established broad religious, social, and economic networks across the Russian Empire. The grave of the monastery peasant Danilo Filippov (d. c. 1700), one of the early leaders of the sect, was located in a small village near Kostroma; it attracted pilgrims from cities and towns all over central Russia for at least two centuries. The members of the Faith of Christ used money earned in the textile trade to support their co-religionists who entered Orthodox monasteries.

In 1733 and again in 1745, extensive state investigations sought to eliminate the movement by arresting and sentencing hundreds of suspects. By forcing the defendants to confess falsely to horrible crimes of secret mass orgies, infanticide, and cannibalism, the inquisitors of the second commission helped to create a powerful myth that envisioned the flagellants as a dangerous, homicidal, sexually perverted fifth column within Russian society.

By the 1760s, some members of the Faith of Christ, not satisfied with vows of celibacy, began castrating themselves. Under the leadership of the fugitive peasant Kondraty Selivanov (d. 1832), these castrates broke away from the Faith of Christ and created their own peculiar rituals and eschatology. In its rich tradition of spiritual songs, the Castrates claimed that their leader Selivanov was actually Emperor Peter III (r. 1762) - the unfortunate husband of Catherine the Great (r. 1762 - 1796). Though the real Peter III was killed in Catherine's 1762 coup, the Castrates held that he actually escaped to Orel province where, as the peasant Kondratii Selivanov, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia. After Catherine's death, the legend claims that Emperor Paul (r. 1796 - 1801) recalled Selivanov to St. Petersburg, where he recognized him as his father.

Although Selivanov lived and taught freely in St. Petersburg from 1802 to 1820, he spent the last twelve years of his life in a monastery prison in Suzdal. Thanks in part to their severe asceticism, many of the Castrates became wealthy merchants. Because they were severely persecuted, the Castrates outwardly adhered to the Orthodox Church and often proved to be generous patrons.

Spiritual Christianity: Dukhobors and Molokans

Spiritual Christianity, another powerful strain of sectarianism, arose as an apocalyptic movement in the 1760s in the black-earth region of Tambov province. Preaching that the day of the Lord was imminent, Ilarion Pobirokhin (fl. 1762 - 1785) called on true Christians to stop venerating icons and to reject the Orthodox sacraments and priest-hood. Instead of kissing icons, they kissed one another, and especially their leader, as the image of God. They met together regularly to read the Bible, sing spiritual psalms of their own composition, and listen to their teachers' sermons.

Despite state efforts to repress them, the Spiritual Christians, who were also called the Dukhobors (Spirit-Wrestlers), survived. In an effort to isolate them from their Orthodox neighbors, the Russian state in 1802 first resettled them in Melitopol in Crimea, and then in 1841 - 1845 forcibly moved them to the Caucasus. In these isolated colonies, the Dukhobors largely governed themselves and followed their own folkways. Led by charismatic descendants of Pobirokhin and a Council of Elders, the Dukhobors preached that God's Spirit lived in all people, both men and women. Although they used the Bible, they emphasized their own oral tradition of spiritual psalms, which they called the Living Book.

By the 1880s, the Dukhobors numbered about twenty thousand. A radical group of Dukhobors led by Petr Verigin (d. 1935) preached pacificism, rejected military service, and struggled to take over the community in 1886 - 1898. In 1898, Verigin led his followers to immigrate to Canada.

A second group of Spiritual Christians, known as the Molokans (milk-drinkers, because they did not observe the Orthodox fasting periods in which milk was forbidden), broke away from the Dukhobors. Semen Uklein (d. 1809), an erstwhile follower of Ilarion Pobirokhin, insisted on the authority of the Bible, and went on to preach his own version of Spiritual Christianity throughout the provinces of the lower Volga in 1790s. Like the Dukhobors, the Molokans rejected icons, sacraments, and priest-hood. But as serious students of the Bible, Uklein's followers also observed Old Testament holidays and dietary restrictions.

In the 1830s, a group of inspired apocalyptic Molokan prophets predicted that the world would end in 1836 and introduced ecstatic dancing and singing into the Molokan meetings. Lukian Petrov Sokolov (d. 1858) led his followers to Mount Ararat to await the return of Christ. Despite the failure of this prophecy, these Molokan "Jumpers" retained their ecstatic practices and regrouped under a new charismatic leader, Maksim Rudometikin (d. 1877). From the late nineteenth century, new prophets taught pacifism and their new apocalyptic visions encouraged the Jumpers to emigrate and establish colonies in California, South America, Mexico, and Arizona.

Western Religious Movements

In the 1830s, German pietists introduced a revival in the German colonies of the Ukraine. By the 1860s, this revival, which emphasized personal prayer and a Bible study hour [Stunde in German], had been adopted by Ukrainian and Russian peasants who lived near the German colonists. Although initially these Shtundists, as they came to be called, wanted to remain in the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox hierarchy rejected their independent Bible studies and the Protestant doctrine of salvation through faith alone. Ultimately, many of these Ukrainian and Russian peasants turned away from Orthodoxy to embrace Baptism. In 1867, Nikita Voronin, a convert from Molokanism, was the first Russian to receive baptism. A Russian Baptist Union was created in 1884.

Other Protestant movements also gained Russian adherents. German and American preachers brought Seventh-Day Adventism into Russia in the 1880s. In the 1870s in the northern capital of St. Petersburg, the pietistic preaching of the English Lord Radstock established a pietistic following that later helped to support the formation of a Union of Evangelical Christians in 1909.

Overwhelmed by the 1905 revolution, the tsarist government issued an edict of religious toleration that allowed much greater freedom of worship - though not of proselytizing - to most sectarians. Baptists, Molokans, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Evangelical Christians created their own legal organizations, published newspapers, books, and journals. A 1912 census counted 393,565 sectarians (not including the Old Believers). Taken together, Baptists and Evangelical Christians were the largest group, with more than 143,000 adherents; Molokans represented the next largest group with 133,935.

The Soviet Period

After the 1917 revolution, the Bolshevik government initially courted sectarians, but this policy came to an end in 1929 with the First Five Year Plan. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union attempted to eliminate religion altogether by closing and destroying churches and arresting religious leaders. This policy failed, and resistance to the forced collectivization of agriculture actually provoked new apocalyptic sectarian movements which attacked the Soviet state as the "red dragon" of the Apocalypse. Persecution of the Orthodox Church forced some of its members underground to form the True Orthodox Church. Rejecting the Moscow Patriarchate as hopelessly compromised, the members of the True Orthodox Church claimed that they alone maintained the true faith.

The German invasion of the USSR in 1941 forced Josef Stalin to moderate his antireligious policies and to allow limited legal existence of sectarian groups. In 1944, Baptists and Evangelical Christians formed the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists, and soon Adventists also were granted a national organization. Dissatisfaction with the limits on religious freedom and a renewed antireligious campaign under Nikita Khrushchev led some Baptists and Adventists to form independent, underground organizations in the 1960s: the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists and the True and Free Seventh-Day Adventists. The Soviet period also witnessed the vigorous growth of Pentecostals, who had first appeared in Russia in 1913. In the 1970s and 1980s, circles of educated urban intellectuals sometimes faced persecution for their interest and participation in Eastern religions, including Tibetan Buddhism and the Hare Krishna movement.

The Post-Soviet Period

In 1990 the Soviet parliament passed a law allowing complete religious freedom and ushered in a new, open spiritual marketplace. Missionaries from the United States and Western Europe helped to establish and finance Mormon ward, Jehovah's Witnesses kingdom halls, and charismatic and evangelical churches. Underground movements, such as the True Orthodox Christians, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, and the Baptist Council of Churches, emerged to compete in the new atmosphere.

The new freedom, and the collapse of the Soviet economic and political systems, also encouraged the formation of new sectarian movements. Distressed by the moral degeneration of Russian society, prophets from the Church of the Transfiguring Theotokos claimed that the Mother of God had appeared to warn Russia and the world of an impending judgment. The White Brotherhood, a syncretic movement, combining elements of Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity, gathered to witness the end of the world in Kiev in 1993.

Alarmed by these apocalyptic movements and by the influx of foreign missionaries, the Russian parliament in 1997 passed a new law that favored the traditional religions of Russia. Local administrations have interpreted the law quite differently, so that the Jehovah's Witnesses, who have peacefully established their headquarters in St. Petersburg, have also had to defend themselves in Moscow courts.

Sectarianism first became significant in Russia in the seventeenth century. On the one hand, sectarianism represented the growth of individual initiative and freedom, as religious virtuosi took upon themselves the responsibility of constructing and living out new religious visions. But on the other hand, the classification and enumeration of sects reflect the growth of bureaucratic systems of social control in both state and church. The continued vitality of sectarianism in the twenty-first century is a product of the dialectic between these two opposite trends.

Bibliography

Anderson, John. (1994). Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bolshakoff, Serge. (1950). Russian Nonconformity: The Story of "Unofficial" Religion in Russia. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

Conybeare, Frederick C. (1962). Russian Dissenters. New York: Russell and Russell.

Engelstein, Laura. (1999). Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Sawatsky, Walter. (1981). Soviet Evangelicals since World War II. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press.

Witte, John, and Bourdeaux, Michael, eds. (1999). Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press.

—J. EUGENE CLAY

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a narrow-minded adherence to a particular sect or party or denomination
  Synonym: denominationalism

Sectarianism is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion or the factions of a political movement.

The ideological underpinnings of attitudes and behaviors labeled as sectarian are extraordinarily varied. Members of a religious or political group may feel that their own salvation, or success of their particular objectives, requires aggressively seeking converts from other groups; adherents of a given faction may believe that for the achievement of their own political or religious project their internal opponents must be purged.

Sometimes a group feeling itself to be under economic or political pressure will attack members of another group thought to be responsible for its own decline. It may also more rigidly define the definition of "orthodox" belief within its particular group or organisation, and expel or excommunicate those who do not agree with this newfound clarified definition of political or religious 'orthodoxy.' In other cases, dissenters from this orthodoxy will secede from the orthodox organisation and proclaim themselves as practitioners of a reformed belief system, or holders of a perceived former orthodoxy. At other times, sectarianism may be the expression of a group's nationalistic or cultural ambitions, or exploited by demagogues.

A sectarian conflict usually refers to violent conflict along religious and political lines such as the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (although political beliefs and class-divisions played major roles as well). It may also refer to general philosophical, political or armed conflict between different schools of thought such as that between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Non-sectarians espouse that free association and tolerance of different beliefs are the cornerstone to successful peaceful human interaction. They espouse political and religious pluralism.

Contents 1 Religious sectarianism 2 Europe 3 Australia 4 Pakistan 5 Middle East and Asia 5.1 Iraq 5.2 Lebanon 6 Sectarianism within Judaism 7 Political sectarianism 8 See also 9 References 10 Memorials fostering a fragile parity-of-esteem-for-difference

Religious sectarianism

Sectarianism is present in all parts of the world. Wherever religious sectarians compete, religious sectarianism is found in varying forms and degrees. In some areas, religious sectarians (for example Protestant and Catholic Christians in the United States) now exist peacefully side-by-side for the most part. In others, some nominal Catholics and Protestants have been in fierce conflict – one recent example of this was in Northern Ireland, although the conflict was condemned by some Catholic and Protestant leaders. Within Islam, there has been conflict at various periods between Sunnis and Shias; Shi'ites consider Sunnis to be Muslim but "non-Believers". Many Sunni religious leaders, including those inspired by Wahhabism and other ideologies have declared Shias (and sometimes mainstream Sunnis) to be heretics and/or apostates.^[1] Iraq and Pakistan are two notable contemporary examples.

Europe

See also: the Troubles, Demographics and politics of Northern Ireland

Since the 17th century, there has been sectarian conflict of varying intensity in Ireland. This religious sectarianism is bound up with nationalism. This has been particularly intense in Northern Ireland since the 17th century. Due to Irish emigration these tensions can be found in other regions of the world, including Scotland (with some fans of football clubs such as Rangers and Celtic and Hearts F.C. and Hibernian F.C. indulging in sectarian chants) (see: Sectarianism in Glasgow), Newfoundland, Canada's Maritime provinces, New York State, Ontario, Liverpool, Birmingham and elsewhere. See also Know-Nothings for anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States.

In Catholic countries, Protestants have historically been persecuted as heretics. For example, the substantial Protestant population of France (the Huguenots) was expelled from the kingdom in the 1680s following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In Spain, the Inquisition sought to root out not only Protestantism but also crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims (moriscos); elsewhere the Papal Inquisition held similar goals.

In most places where Protestantism is the majority or 'official' religion, there have been examples of Catholics being persecuted. In countries where the Reformation was successful, this often lay in the perception that Catholics retained allegiance to a 'foreign' power (the Papacy), causing them to be regarded with suspicion. Sometimes this mistrust manifested itself in Catholics being subjected to restrictions and discrimination, which itself led to further conflict. For example, before Catholic Emancipation in 1829, Catholics were forbidden from voting, becoming MP's or buying land in Ireland.

Today, bigotry and discrimination in employment are usually relegated a few places where extreme forms of religion are the norm, or in areas with a long history of sectarian violence and tension, such as Northern Ireland (especially in terms of employment; however, this is dying out in this jurisdiction, thanks to strictly-enforced legislation. Reverse discrimination now takes place in terms of employment quotas which are now applied). In places where more 'moderate' forms of Protestantism (such as Anglicanism / Episcopalianism) prevail, the two traditions do not become polarized against each other, and usually co-exist peacefully. Especially in England, sectarianism is nowadays almost unheard of. However in Western Scotland (where Calvinism and Presbyterianism are the norm) sectarian divisions can still sometimes arise between Catholics and Protestants. Indeed, in the early years following the Scottish Reformation there was actually internal sectarian tension between Church of Scotland Presbyterians and 'High Church' Anglicans, whom they regarded as having retained too many attitudes and practices from the Catholic era. Northern Ireland has introduced a Private Day of Reflection^[2], since 2007, to mark the transition to a post-[sectarian] conflict society, an initiative of the cross-community Healing through Remembering^[3] organisation and research project.

The civil wars in the Balkans which followed the breakup of Yugoslavia have been heavily tinged with sectarianism. Croats and Slovenes have traditionally been Catholic, Serbs and Macedonians Eastern Orthodox, and Bosniaks and most Albanians Muslim. Religious affiliation served as a marker of group identity in this conflict, despite relatively low rates of religious practice and belief among these various groups after decades of communism.

Australia

Main article: Sectarianism in Australia

Sectarianism in Australia is a historical legacy from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Pakistan

Main article: sectarian violence in Pakistan

In Pakistan, there has been a history of sectarian violence and unrest since the 1970s, although much of the violence may be attributed to non-theological clashes over tribal lands, rivalries, and class-disputes. Almost all relations between Shias and Sunnis are peaceful, and there exists a large degree of intermarriage between the two communities. Further, many prominent Shias play an important political role in the country - the late Benazir Bhutto is believed to have been Shia, for example. However, sporadic violence between the two communities is often initiated by extremists on both sides, particularly in South Punjab.

Middle East and Asia

Iraq

Main article: Sectarian violence in Iraq

Iraq's Shia population was persecuted during the presidency of Saddam Hussein, and certain elements of the Iraqi insurgency have made a point of targeting Shias in sectarian attacks. In turn, the Sunnis have complained of discrimination and human rights abuses by Iraq's Shia majority government, which is bolstered by the fact that Sunni detainees were allegedly discovered to have been tortured in a compound used by government forces on November 15, 2005. ^[4] This sectarianism has fueled a giant level of emigration and internal displacement.

Some people advocate an independent nation for the Shias of Iraq. The idea that Iraq could be split into Kurdistan in the north, Iraq in the center and Basra in the south. The thinking is that if each community is busy nation-building, they would not be attacking each other as they would be within a single country where the communities may be striving for political dominance at expense of other communities instead of working together. British India was split into Hindu-dominant India and Muslim-dominant Pakistan. After a two year trial, Malaysia was split into Malay-dominant Malaysia and Chinese-dominant Singapore.

Lebanon

See also: Lebanese civil war

Lebanon's religious divisions are extremely complicated, and the country is made up by a multitude of religious groupings. Sectarianism in Lebanon was caused because of the political sharing of power. The 1943 National Pact gave the Maronite Christians, the then majority, more power than the other groups. Although the Taif agreement ended the civil war, power is still divided along sects.

Sectarianism within Judaism

Sectarianism also exists between Orthodox and Reform Jews, with orthodox Jews often characterizing reform Jews as being non-religious, disobeying the Torah, rarely attending shul and adopting semi-Christian styles of worship.^{[citation needed]} Reform Jews, on the other hand, often view the orthodox as being intolerant of them and of other religions, placing legalistic rules such as the observance of the Sabbath above ethical obligations, being cult-like and hostile to change.^{[citation needed]}

Political sectarianism

In the political realm, to describe a group as 'sectarian' (or as practicising 'sectarianism'), is to accuse them of prioritizing differences and rivalries with politically close groups. An example might be a communist group who are accused of devoting an excessive amount of time and energy to denouncing other communist groups rather than their common foes. However, separatist fundamentalist Protestant political parties have proliferated, and regularly denounce one another, in New Zealand, as can be seen from the entries on United Future New Zealand and Future New Zealand. Libertarianism seems to be similarly susceptible to fissiparous tendencies of its own.

The Monty Python film The Life of Brian has a well-known joke in which various Judean groups, who to an outsider are indistinguishable, are more concerned with in-fighting than with their nominal aim of opposing Roman rule. This is taken to be a parody of modern political groups.

See also

Look up sectarian in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Authoritarianism
• Communalism (South Asia)
• Ethnic cleansing
• Feud
• Fundamentalism
• Religious segregation
• Sports rivalry
• Sectarian violence
• Sect
• Cybersectarianism

References

1. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7181042.stm
2. ^ Private Day of Reflection : Ireland
3. ^ Healing through Remembering : Ireland
4. ^ "Iraqi Sunnis demand abuse inquiry". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4441568.stm. Retrieved 2007-05-12. 

Memorials fostering a fragile parity-of-esteem-for-difference

• The Linen Memorial : Northern Ireland

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