Sects, churches and economic transformations in Russia and Western Europe

Abstract

Ernst Troeltsch once remarked, in a footnote to his monumental study of Christian churches, sects and social teachings in Western Europe, that "the whole of this inquiry would have gained greatly if it had been possible to make some comparisons with the history of the Russian church, and the Russian civilization and culture, if these matters were better known than they are" (Troeltsch, 1960, 1:434; see also the parallel comments in Weber, 1973:144-145). The theoretical problem of church, sect and society does appear dif? ferently in the light of the history of Russian Orthodoxy, the 17th century schism of Old Believers, and the proliferation of Russian sects from the early eighteenth century forward. In Russia, familiar sociological concepts take on new historical dimensions.1 While the Protestant sects had a decisive impact on the social, economic and political rationalization and "modernization" of Western Europe and the United States, the historical development of sectarianism in the setting of Russian civilization resulted in a very different set of outcomes. In the West, as Weber argued, the sects influenced the following phenomena: the ethic of innerworldly asceticism suited to modern "professional" and capitalist civiliza? tion; the freedom of religious conscience and the inalienable right of the governed against the state, which became the foundation of the rights of man and citizen and of all subsequent rights regarding the pursuit of economic interests, property ownership, vocational choice, contract, and voluntary association; the idea of juridical equality; and the notion of Divinely ordained individual "reason" as the final basis for human judgment in all matters (Weber, 1968, III: esp. 1209-1210; 1976; 1946:302-322; see also Troeltsch, 1958; 1960). Other transformations were also associated, if not with the sects in particular, then with the Protestant Reformation in general, includ