Guidelines to Faith: Instructional Literature for Russian Orthodox Clergy and Laity in the Late Eighteenth Century

In an effort to improve the work of the clergy and the religious understanding of the laity, Orthodox leaders in late eighteenth‐century Russia began to publish practical manuals on the practices of the church and the path to living a Christian life and achieving salvation. Such works formed pathways from higher theological discourse to the practical modes of pastoral work and lay instruction–to promoting “enlightenment” in the day‐to‐day work of the church. Fitting within the new scholarly attention on religious Enlightenment, this article describes the most important of these instructional works, as well as some of the religious works produced by private publishers after 1783, in order to understand the tone, themes, and structure of these “guidelines to faith,” seeing within them the beginning of a more modern, normative foundation for the practices and teachings of the church. The works described are not well‐known among Russian scholars, but they collectively constitute an important stage in the development of Russian Orthodoxy and in the dissemination of clearly stated explanations of its teachings and the role of the church in society as a whole. They represent an increased promotion of religious professionalism for the lower clergy and of religious and moral sensitivity on the part of the laity. They are, essentially, highly representative of the era of Enlightenment, trying to shape and mold the religious community into a more sophisticated, knowledgeable, and reflective entity.