Conciliarity in the Borderlands: the Riga Orthodox Council (Sobor) of 1905 and the Church Reform Movement in Imperial Russia

Abstract

The article focuses on a little-known expression of Orthodox conciliar practice in the Russian Empire, the Riga diocesan congress of 1905, and analyses the extent to which commitment to church renewal was spread in regions and provinces of the empire. The article draws attention to the self-presentation of this assembly as a true council, an embodiment of sobornost’. The article interprets the bold reforms proposed by the congress as a product of nineteenth-century ecclesiological ideas, the active participation of the native clergy and laity and the borderland position of Baltic Orthodoxy, a minority faith in a Lutheran region.