Tuesday, September 23, 2025

It is the 23rd of September 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

It’s good to be back in rhythm (at least for a week) and one of my favorite tasks with this little show- uncovering the lost or forgotten members of the church who, we might not agree with completely, but can learn something from and perhaps appreciate a bit of their tradition.

And so today we head back to the 19th century and the Russian church. With apologies to the 17 Slavophiles who listen regularly, I’m gonna break this down for the Christian interested in church history, but probably doesn’t have that close a connection to the history of the Russian church and its claim to be the true heirs of Rome.

So, first off, in the unofficial rough transcript of the show on 1517.org (not the one your podcast player might make for you) I have placed the link to a Weekend Edition from over 2 years ago that I did on Russian Christianity, Faith and Empire in the “3rd Rome” https://www.1517.org/podcast-overview/2023-06-03.

Secondly, and this might be especially for the demographic around my age and older, this history of Russia is so much greater than the failed Soviet experiment that many of us watched crumble in real time.  

The 15th and 19th centuries saw important developments in the Russian church. It was after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 that the Russian Orthodox Church began to see itself as the heir of Constantinople and it was that church that saw itself as the heirs of Rome (Constantinople was the capitol of the late Roman Empire)- so, by extension, the glories of Ancient Rome were now to be found in the growing Russian tradition gathering around the new center in Moscow and by the late 1400s became its own autocephalous (that is, self ruling church).  

The 19th century, amidst the upheavals in the West, also saw a growth in missionary activities and spiritual renewal as the growing state (after Peter the Great in the 18th century) sought to figure out the place of the church in its expanding empire.

And amidst this, enter one of the great names in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexei Khomiakov, a true Renaissance man of the Russian Renaissance who was born in 1804 in Moscow to a family of minor nobility. Alexei would receive a private education before studying Math and the Natural Sciences at the University of Moscow, before serving in the Cavalry in the Imperial Guard.

He would marry and have a family as he also became entrenched in the growing Slavophile movement that sought to express a distinct worldview from that which had developed in the West through its Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment.

Along with names like Ivan Kireevsky and Konstantin Aksakov, Khomiakov would become a respected member of the intellectual and artistic elite as a playwright, inventor, and pro-Slavic intellectual (and by “Slavic” I mean that Eastern European tradition which would come to be centered in Moscow).

But it was Khomiakov’s work as a self-taught theologian which interests us- primarily the publication of his “The Church is One” in 1844, a work which would criticize the West and become a standard for the Russian Orthodoxy of figures like Dostoyevsky and later Solzhenitsyn.

Khomiakov was critical of the direction the Western church, both Roman and Protestant, had developed in the preceding centuries. His argument in the book was that while the Roman Empire had helped the early church develop its “Romanness,” it eventually perverted the church. An emphasis on unity through law and order became a kind of legalism. And he would partially agree with the Reformation critiques of Rome. But then he turned his sights on the Protestant emphasis on individualism as the next perversion of the faith, with its lack of emphasis on the “oneness” of the church.  

Khomiakov’s concept of “sobornost” or a kind of “church unity” would challenge the authority of both the Catholic and Protestant churches. “Sobornost” sees the authority of the church coming from the whole church, not in a person, like the Pope, or in doctrinal assertions from one particular group's reading of Scripture. It’s an amorphous concept difficult to pin down, but its strength is in its claim that the living Christ rules the church through the Spirit, and this can express itself in laypeople, like himself, and modern expressions of faith. He would help shape Russian Orthodoxy and the Slavic church as distinct from the West into the next century, even amidst the crackdown of the Soviets’ atheistic push.

He would succumb to cholera, reportedly after ministering to the sick amidst the outbreak of the disease in 1860. He would die on this, the 23rd of September of that year. Born in 1804, Alexei Khomiakov, a Russian Renaissance man and Orthodox trailblazer, was 54 years old.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Paul’s discussion of his own freedom in 1 Corinthians 9:

19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 23rd of September 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose Purdue Boilermakers had one job… but couldn’t bring down those Catholic footballers from Notre Dame last weekend… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who has actually stopped watching football after those two blocked kicks on Sunday… I’m out… until next week, at least… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.