ABCs of Sergianism
By Peter Budzilovich
On July 29, 1927 metropolitan of Nizhegorod Sergius (Stragorodsky), who at the time served as the deputy of the acting Patriarch, published a “Declaration,” that pledged loyalty and devotion of the Russian Orthodox Church (“ROC”) to the Soviet government. Among other things, it contained these words: “We want to be Orthodox [Christians] and, at the same time, to perceive the Soviet Union as our civic Fatherland, whose joys and successes will be our joys and successes, and whose setbacks will be our setbacks.” We might recall that at the time these words were written, mass murders and jailing of Russian Orthodox priests were among the most popular “joys” of the Soviet regime.
This immediately split the ROC into m. Sergius followers, who became known as “sergianists,” and his opponents, the catacomb (underground) Church. From the beginning, m. Sergius and his supporters justified their act of submission to the Soviet regime by arguing that they did so to “save the Church.” They conveniently “forgot” that the Church, as the Divine-human organism established by God Himself, is the Body of Christ and it is impossible and unnecessary for human beings to “save” Her. On the contrary, the Church is called upon to save humans. Once this church subordinated itself to the Soviet government, it lost its apostolic succession: the canons forbid the church to obey a secular authority.
This was the beginning of sergianism – a conviction that the prime concern for a church is its outward appearance, rather than its spiritual essence and that subordination of a church to a godless authority is acceptable. Even when such authority is antichristian and militantly atheistic, as was the Soviet government. Here m. Sergius’ supporters deceptively used words from the Scripture that “all authority is derived from God.”
This perversion of church ecclesiology immediately brought worldly results. By 1943, during WW II, when Stalin decided to utilize the authority of the Russian church in his war effort, no one objected when m. Sergius was effectively appointed by Stalin to the position of Patriarch and a secret service agent G. Karpov was placed to supervise the ROC affairs (before this he had been in charge of murdering clergy). Since that time the ROC has acquired the name “Moscow Patriarchy,” the “MP.” The next two patriarchs – Aleksi and Pimen – were also appointed by the Politburo of the CPSU, as well as other clergy, specifically the bishops.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has changed nothing. Communists who held leadership positions in the Soviet Union, retained their posts in the new “democratic” government. Today’s president V. Putin – is a former KGB colonel. MP “bishops” (all KGB appointees) stayed put. Today’s patriarch Aleksi 2nd – has been a KGB major, and a KGB secret agent since 1959.
This is how sergianism produced the result that in our time (2006), the ROC had ceased to be a Church, the Body of Christ, transforming itself into one of the numerous Soviet government agencies. Those who become MP priests do so just like the members of any other profession. Thus, some people become engineers, others – become teachers, others – medical doctors and so on. But just as none of these professionals have anything to do with the Church, by the same token neither do the MP priests.
In other words, sergianism, launched by m. Sergius in 1927, effectively transformed the ROC into a huge government structure for providing the appearance of church services to the population. In fact, this is how religious services of all kinds are being termed in today’s Russian Federation – cultic services. Priests are being called “cultic servants,” while churches are called “cultic houses.” To put it yet another way, the Marxist-Leninist doctrine that “religion is the opiate of the masses” is being intentionally carried out by the MP clergy-operatives.