The Old Believers (Russian: старове́ры or старообря́дцы) broke loose after 1666-67 from the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against the reforms introduced by patriarch Nikon.

The schism itself is known as raskol (раскол).

History

In 1652, Patriarch Nikon (1605–1681) of the Russian Orthodox Church introduced a number of

According to the traditional explanation, the Russian Orthodox Church had over the centuries, as a result of errors of incompetent copyists, developed several rites and missal texts of its own, which deviated from the Greek ones. Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church had become different from other Orthodox churches. Patriarch Nikon, after having compared contemporary Greek texts with Russian texts, established that the latter did differ from the practices of the Greek Orthodox Church and ordered the execution of ecclesial reforms. The people didn’t understand these reforms and revolted. Eventually, these innovations were carried

In the middle of the 17th century, there indeed existed discrepancies between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Greek Church, but in the 19th century it was scientifically established that these textual and ritual deviations had been caused by other circumstances, which overthrew the theory of ignorant Russian copyists. the old Studite typicon, and Nikon and his assistants, not having any thorough knowlegde of ecclesiastical paleography, mistakenly interpreted these discrepancies as Russian innovations, errors, or arbitrary translations. Ironically, it was the Studite typicon which had preserved many early Christian and early Byzantine elements, and thus was actually closer to the old Byzantine texts than the contemporary Greek rubrics.itle="Pomortsy">Pomortsy and Fedoseevtsy coexist.

Only Pomortsy and Fedoseevtsy treat each other relatively well; all the other denominations do not acknowledge each other. Among the ordinary Old Believers, there are some tendencies for intra-branch ecumenism, but these trends find sparse support among the official leaders of the congregations.

Significant Old Believer communities exist in Plamondon, Alberta; Woodburn, Oregon; Erie, Pennsylvania; and various parts of Alaska. A compact 40,000 strong Lipovan community of Old Believers lives in neighboring Kiliia raion (Vilkovo) of Ukraine and the Tulcea County of Romania in the Danube Delta.

Old Believer Churches

• Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church (Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy)
• Lipovan Orthodox Old-Rite Church (Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy)
• Russian Old-Orthodox Church (Novozybkovskaya Hierarchy)
• Pomorian Old-Orthodox Church (Pomortsy)

Altorthodoxe Vanausulised Orthodoxes vieux-croyants Oudgelovigen De gammeltroende staroobrzędowcy Старообрядчество