Old Believers are Russian Christians who refused changes to their prayers and rituals in the 1660s and have kept the old ways since.
Patriarch Nikon revised Russian service books and rituals in the 1650s to align them with contemporary Greek practice. Opponents defended the older Russian forms; the council of 1666–67 condemned them, and persecution followed. Avvakum was executed in 1682. Old Believer communities include priested and priestless traditions and survive in Russia and several diaspora communities.
The tree's references for this branch: Britannica: Old Believers · Wikipedia: Old Believers.
Lineage: Israel and Judah: the First Temple›Second Temple Judaism›The early, undivided Church›Eastern Orthodox›Old Believers
The Old Believers are Russian Orthodox Christians who refused a set of changes to their prayers and rituals in the 1650s and 1660s and have kept the older forms ever since 14. The differences look small written down. People died over them for two hundred years.
Patriarch Nikon set out from 1652 to bring Russian practice into line with contemporary Greek usage, revising the service books and the ceremonies. Among the changes: the sign of the cross was to be made with three fingers rather than two, the name of Jesus was respelled, the alleluia was to be sung three times rather than two, and processions were to go the other way round the church 2,6. To those who refused, these were not details. The two fingers confessed the two natures of Christ, and the books had been the books their fathers were saved by; to be told that the way Russia had prayed for centuries had been wrong all along was to be told that their fathers had not been praying at all 2.
The council that met in Moscow in 1666 and 1667 anathematised those who would not accept the new books, and the state enforced it. The archpriest Avvakum, who had written his own life in Russian that ordinary people could read, was burned at Pustozersk in 1682 after fourteen years in a pit 3,2. The noblewoman Feodosia Morozova, who had held up two fingers as she was dragged away on a sledge, was starved to death in an underground cell at Borovsk in 1675 4. The monks of the Solovetsky monastery held their island against a siege from 1668 until it fell in 1676, and the survivors were killed 5. In the decades that followed, groups of Old Believers burned themselves alive rather than be taken, and thousands died that way 2.
Cut off from the bishops, they divided over what to do about it. The priested, or popovtsy, held that a valid priesthood must be found somewhere, and in 1846 the Greek metropolitan Ambrose of Belaya Krinitsa joined them and consecrated bishops, which gave them a hierarchy of their own 7,2. The priestless, or bespopovtsy, concluded that the true priesthood had failed and that laymen must lead, so their services have no eucharist and are led by an elected nastavnik; the great northern community at Vyg, organised by Andrei Denisov, worked out how such a church could live 8,9,2.
See it on the family treeOld Believers hold the Orthodox faith of the seven councils. They are not a separate theology; they are the same faith kept in an older form, and that is the whole of their case.
What they keep is specific and visible. The sign of the cross with two fingers, the thumb and the two smallest joined for the Trinity, the index and middle upright for the divinity and humanity of Christ. The name of Jesus spelled as they had it. Two alleluias. Prostrations counted, and a prayer rope, the lestovka, of a shape the reformed church stopped using. Old icons and old chant, unaccompanied and in unison. Beards uncut, and in many communities a distinctive dress kept for prayer 2,6.
The priested and priestless branches differ on the ministry rather than on the creed. The priested have bishops and the full round of sacraments. The priestless have neither, and have had to decide what a Christian does without a priest: baptism and confession they keep, performed by a lay elder, while marriage has been argued over among them for three centuries, some communities treating it as impossible without a priest and others finding a way 8,2.
Services are long, sung throughout, and closer to what a seventeenth-century Russian would recognise than anything else surviving. Everything is chanted in Church Slavonic in unison, without harmony and without instruments, from the old znamenny notation. There are no pews; worshippers stand for hours and make full prostrations to the floor at the appointed places, counting them on the lestovka.
A priested congregation has an altar, a priest and the liturgy. A priestless one gathers in a prayer house around a nastavnik chosen by the community, who reads and leads but does not consecrate, so there is no communion; the hours and the readings carry the service instead 8,2. In both, icons are the old kind, painted to the old canons, and a household will have its own corner of them. The Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church, the largest priested body, is led by a Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia at the Rogozhskoye cemetery in Moscow, with five bishops and more than 250 parishes 7,1.
Old Believers read the Church Slavonic Bible and the service books in their pre-reform editions, which is the point rather than an incidental detail: the corrected books of the 1650s are precisely what they would not take. Their Old Testament follows the Greek Septuagint through the Slavonic, so the psalms are numbered as the Septuagint numbers them, one behind the Hebrew count for most of the book.
There is no Old Believer English Bible, so the verses below are given in the King James Version with the Apocrypha, which at least carries the fuller canon that Slavonic readers know. The Russian Synodal version is also on this site for anyone who wants the text in Russian, though it is a nineteenth-century translation made by the church the Old Believers left and is not what they use.
Free to read here: Brenton's Septuagint, KJV with the Apocrypha, Синодальный перевод. The full note on which Bible Old Believers use, with sources ›
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the King James Version + Apocrypha and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.
Hold the traditions which ye have been taught. Nineteen words that are the entire Old Believer argument, and they have been quoting them since 1666.
Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.
Remove not the ancient landmark. Ten words about boundary stones that these communities have read as being about service books.
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
The same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. If Christ does not change, they asked, why should the way we pray to him?
And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
He that endureth to the end shall be saved. Read in a pit at Pustozersk and under siege at Solovetsky, and meant literally.
Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.
Be thou faithful unto death. The verse behind the self-immolations, and the hardest thing on this page to read as they read it.
There are perhaps a little over a million Old Believers, chiefly in Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania and the Americas 2. That figure is a fraction of what it was: demographers estimated between ten and twenty million at the start of the twentieth century, before the Soviet years destroyed communities that three centuries of tsarist pressure had not 2. Where they survived best was often furthest away, in Romania among the Lipovans, in Chinese Manchuria until the refugees left it, and in the villages their descendants built in Alaska, Oregon, Brazil and Bolivia 11,2.
The relationship with the church that condemned them has changed. In 1971 the Russian Orthodox Church proclaimed the lifting of the anathemas laid on the old rite in 1667, declaring the old forms as salvific as the new, and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia did the same in 1974 at Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's urging 2. Since 1800 there has also been Edinoverie, parishes that keep the old rite in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, which some Old Believers regard as a bridge and others as the original offer to conform in politer clothes 12,2. Old Believers include several separate bodies, among them the Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church, the Russian Old-Orthodox Church and priestless Pomorian communities 7,8,13. The 2017 restoration of communion concerned the Old-Rite Church and the Old-Orthodox Archdiocese (Drevlepravoslavnaya Arkhiepiskopiya), not the separately named Russian Old-Orthodox Church 15.
The sign of the cross went from two fingers to three; the spelling of the name of Jesus was altered; the alleluia was sung three times instead of two; processions reversed direction; and the service books were corrected against Greek editions 2,6. Old Believers held that the two fingers confessed the two natures of Christ and that the old books were the ones by which Russian saints had been saved, so the changes were not adjustments but a verdict on their fathers.
Whether a valid priesthood still exists. The priested, the popovtsy, held that it must be found, and got bishops of their own when the Greek metropolitan Ambrose joined them in 1846; they have the full sacraments 7. The priestless, the bespopovtsy, concluded that the priesthood had failed and that laymen must lead. Their services have no eucharist, an elected nastavnik reads and leads, and they have argued for three centuries about whether marriage is possible without a priest 8,2.
No, though the position is warmer than it was. The Russian Orthodox Church lifted the 1667 anathemas in 1971 and declared the old rites equally salvific, and relations are civil, but the Old Believer churches remain separate bodies with their own bishops and their own councils 2,7. Edinoverie parishes, which keep the old rite inside the Russian Orthodox Church, exist since 1800 and are viewed differently by different Old Believers 12.
Because they believed the end had come. When the church anathematised them and the state hunted them, some concluded that Antichrist now reigned and that there was no way to remain faithful except to die faithful, and whole communities went into their prayer houses and set them alight rather than be taken. Thousands died this way, mostly in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries 2. Old Believers today do not defend it as a model, and their historians write about it as a wound.
Mostly Russia, with old communities in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania, where the Lipovans have been settled since the eighteenth century 11. There are also villages in Alaska, Oregon, Brazil and Bolivia founded by refugees who left China after the Communist victory, several of which have kept the language, the dress and the chant more completely than communities that stayed 2.
Numbered references link the account above to its sources. These include the tradition's own documents and outside reference works. The review status below distinguishes source checking from completed member and scholarly review.
BibleVerse. “Old Believers: where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-09, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/oldbelievers/
Awaiting review by a member of the tradition. First published 2026-09-08; last changed 2026-09-09. Years before the common era are written BC, and later years plainly, as the site's Christian pages do.
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Hold the traditions which ye have been taught. A whole people staked everything on this sentence, and the ones who are left are still holding.
Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.