Conciliarity in the Borderlands: the Riga Orthodox Council (Sobor) of 1905 and the Church Reform Movement in Imperial Russia

The article focuses on a little-known expression of Orthodox conciliar practice in the Russian Empire, the Riga diocesan congress of 1905, and analyses the extent to which commitment to church renewal was spread in regions and provinces of the empire. The article draws attention to the self-presentation of this assembly as a true council, an embodiment of sobornost’. The article interprets the bold reforms proposed by the congress as a product of nineteenth-century ecclesiological ideas, the active participation of the native clergy and laity and the borderland position of Baltic Orthodoxy, a minority faith in a Lutheran region.

correspond to the reality of the Synodal Church.  The currents within the conciliar movement in the Russian Church varied from minimalist to maximalist, from conservatives to populists, but most parties agreed on the need for a local council and ecclesiastical reforms.  The inclusion of all groups into the decision-making process was believed to be the way to achieve true sobornost'. It is possible that the adoption of the title sobor for the Riga council in  was influenced by the dominant discussions on sobornost' and the preparations for the All-Russia Council which were under way.
Scholars have approached congresses as a Synodal institution that outgrew their original corporate clerical character and became a 'crucial arena for the expression of religious and also political ideas at the grassroot level'.  Gregory Freeze, for example, writes that the Holy Synod in  gave a green light to extraordinary congresses and the involvement of the laity, noting the role of bishops and drawing attention to the cautious post- attitude of the clergy to the 'laicisation' of a formerly clerical institution of self-government.  While Freeze emphasises the narrow corporate interests of clerical congresses, Daniel Scarborough believes that congresses were institutions for coordinating pastoral work beyond the boundaries of the clerical soslovie. These congresses became an integral part of clerical associations between the late s and  that advanced a culture of accountability and consciousness of social ministry while also facilitating mutual aid networks that helped not only the clergy but also their parishioners.  The representation and inclusion of various groups in collegial forms of ecclesiastical life were key themes in the so-called 'conciliar movement' between  and August , when the All-Russia Church Council took place.  During the revolutionary year of , when the grassroots  activities of the laity and clergy led to a number of extraordinary congresses that elected bishops, the question of church reform and the role of diocesan congresses were linked.  The remarkable activisation of the laity and the parish clergy in  has been interpreted by scholars as a 'church revolution': one of its expressions was a clash between the bishops and the parish clergy. The spontaneous episcopal elections that took place at diocesan congresses in  demonstrated the clergy's incredible ability for self-organisation and paved the way for the activisation of various church groups and communities, including women.  The issues discussed at the council were connected with the larger issues convulsing the Russian Orthodox Church during the last decades of the old regime. These challenges, which had their origin in the period of the Great Reforms (s-s), were rooted in the Church's institutional structure and deeply linked to the rapid modernisation of society and the economy. The first group of challenges concerned vociferous criticism of the Church from within and proposals for church reforms. Starting from publications in journals such as the Orthodox Review, the development of the debate led to the convocation of several commissions and consultations by the Synod with the support of the state, including a survey of bishops () and the Pre-Conciliar Commission (-) that aimed to prepare for the Local Church Council.  The central issues of the proposed reforms were the broadening of self-government in the Church, which would include parish reform and the reform of the higher church administration.  Secondly, problems concerning the corporate identity of the clergy continued to be discussed, despite the new legislation which made the boundaries of the clerical сословие (caste) more permeable. The material, educational and social characteristics of the clergy continued to define its status and image in society, while the impact of the clergy on other social groups remained limited.  Thirdly, difficulties in the parish school system loomed large in the late imperial period. While parish schools constituted a parallel to the local government (zemstvo) schools, in many ways they represented a complementary system of popular education. Since these schools received modest funding from the Synod and relied on the poorly paid labour of the clergy, including sacristans, this led to the haemorrhaging of qualified teachers from church schools, making them ineligible for grants from the Ministry of Education and less competitive. As such, they began to decline after .  While the Synod wanted the church schools to counteract the influence of sectarians and non-Orthodox religions (including Roman Catholics and Lutherans) on peasants, the lack of qualified staff made this aim unachievable.  Fourthly, there was the Church's complex position in the imperial borderlands. The late imperial period was characterised by tension between the Orthodox Church's universalist orientation, which tended to override concerns about ethnic difference, and the state's policy of integrating the empire through language, education and the disempowering of local elites. The russification of schools and administration in the Baltic borderlands not only stirred protest on the part of the Baltic German elites, but also stimulated the rise of subaltern nationalist movements. Autonomist claims among the Orthodox in borderlands like Georgia were a response to rural unrest and the movement for reform in the Church.  The Baltic Orthodox dioceses, of course, differed from Georgian Orthodoxy in that they lacked any historical precedent for ecclesiastical autonomy, had a weaker connection to nationality and represented a minority rather than a majority. However, unlike the Finnish Orthodox, the Estonian and Latvian Orthodox had a broader social base among the local population, which also provided a significant proportion of candidates for the clergy and parish schoolteachers. The significance of the Riga council in  is that all the issues sending waves of turbulence across the Russian Church were openly and constructively discussed in an ecclesiastical event that took place on the Russian Orthodox Church's geographical periphery, thus making this event a precursor of future gatherings that took place only when the old regime had already been toppled. Paul Valliere perceives the ascent of conciliar ecclesiology as a frontier phenomenon: the creative ecclesiology of the Romanian metropolia of Transylvania and the Serbian metropolia of Karlowitz 'existed on a frontier' where Orthodox communities lived in a non-Orthodox state side-by-side with non-Orthodox neighbours.  The Russian Church faced a new frontier in the form of secularising forces and the end of its religious monopoly in the wake of officially granted toleration in , similar, in Valliere's view, to the situation in which the Anglican Church found itself in the nineteenth century after Roman Catholic emancipation.  The religiously diverse regions of the Russian Empire, some of which had only recently been colonised, presented a challenge for the Orthodox Church in the late imperial era. On the one hand, church leaders responded by focusing on 'positive knowledge' and emphasising the pre-existing historical connections of the non-Orthodox regions to Orthodoxy, making these connections visible by building new churches and expanding diocesan infrastructure.  On the other, calling diocesan councils and accepting bold proposals, the Russian Orthodox leaders demonstrated a flexible and tolerant approach to the aspirations of the borderland Orthodox minority.
There is a connection between Orthodoxy's response to the religious toleration declared by Nicholas II in  and the activisation of collective forms of representation, including congresses.  Paradoxically, while the Orthodox Church mobilised various forms of conciliarism in response to religious toleration, it unwittingly imitated the practices of conciliarity already very much in use by the Old Believers.
Most studies that have discussed the Orthodox Church's march towards the Council of  have focused on its top echelons, while regional and borderland case studies have only been used as illustrations. This article will focus on a borderland diocese where the Orthodox lived side by side with non-Orthodox neighbours and, despite Orthodoxy's status as the empire's established Church, lacked the de facto privileges associated with the state's predominant and pre-eminent confession.
Focusing on the role of the Orthodox council in Riga in , it is argued that the church authorities were receptive to and encouraging of grassroots conciliarity even when it went beyond the norms deemed acceptable in other parts of the empire. The different outlook and background of the clergy in Riga diocese derived from the presence of men of Estonian and Latvian origin, who had been trained in Russian-speaking ecclesiastical seminaries and teachers' colleges but served and preached in the local languages. These native representatives of the Orthodox Church to a large extent shaped the reform agenda, which was based on a vernacular understanding of conciliarity partly influenced by secular forms of mutual aid. In the imperial context, the role and influence of concepts and practices exported from the metropolitan Orthodox Church should not be discounted. While some of these concepts could be interpreted in different ways locally, this exchange was no doubt significant.
This article uses previously untapped sources: only two copies of the protocols of the Riga council have been preserved in Estonia. While the council ruled that  lithographical copies of the handwritten protocols should be made and sent to the parishes, it can be assumed that the actual number was lower.  While some rulings of the council were reported in the ecclesiastical press, historians thus far have had no access to the full proceedings of the event. In addition, this article relies on published documents to reconstruct borderland conciliarity in the diocese of Riga.

Background: Riga diocese and clerical congresses
While Riga diocese was established to counteract Old Belief, by the s it had to cater for about , indigenous converts to Orthodoxy from the Estonian and Latvian peasantry. By , the diocese had , parishioners organised into  parishes,  chapels and prayer houses, a seminary in Riga and  Orthodox schools with , students. Originating in the era of the Great Reforms, Orthodox congresses assumed several functions, some of which were unintentional. Firstly, they became a legal outlet for a limited exercise in collegial administration in the dioceses, in addition to the consistory. In particular, they were responsible for the provision of diocesan educational institutions. In principle, the congresses could become organs for church reform, as the Riga council of  clearly demonstrates. Secondly, the congresses performed some of the functions of an ecclesiastical court of law, dealing with violations of discipline and canon law by priests (for example, cases of extramarital relations). Thirdly, the congresses can be seen as institutions that manifested the corporate identity of the parish clergy and acted, in  and after , as representative institutions for all groups of the Church, including the laity.
While in the late s priests in the Riga diocese regarded congresses as a waste of time and resources, especially in terms of travel expenses, eventually they found them to be important occasions for developing a common policy and a collective identity. During the s, conciliar principles at regular congresses in Riga were developed according to the 'majoritarian' principle: the clergy received the agenda before the next congress so that all the clergy of the deanery could discuss the questions to be raised and authorise an elected delegate to represent them. If there was a majority vote for a policy which did not agree with the position taken by the deanery in question, the delegate had to join the majority, thus giving the congress's resolution a mandatory character.  Between  and , clerical congresses gathered annually in Riga diocese. After , they began to be called semi-annually: between  and  there were thirteen congresses, while between  and  there were only five. An extraordinary congress was called in ; in  a congress of all the parishes of the Estonian republic declared the formation of the new Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church. Prior to , according to the statutes of All-Russia Local Church Council, diocesan congresses, to which representatives of each parish were called, were theoretically supposed to be held annually and functioned as the highest body of church administration. The statute of the Estonian Church of  confirmed this rule, but, following a new statute in , power shifted to the bishop.

The Riga council and the revolution of 
The revolution of  began with Bloody Sunday, the suppression of a peaceful workers' demonstration in St Petersburg on  January led by the Orthodox priest Georgii Gapon: for some contemporaries, this  Ukaz,  June , ibid.
showed that the clergy had the potential to act as an arbiter between the authorities and the workers.  The Baltic province of Livland had the highest number of strikes per worker in the empire. On  October  troops suppressed the workers' demonstration in New Market square in Tallinn, which resulted in hundreds of victims and was called a 'bloodbath' by contemporaries. Following Tsar Nicholas II's October Manifesto on  October , which granted several democratic freedoms, numerous political meetings were organised and political parties formed. However, the end of  saw an escalation of radicalisation that resulted in the rise of political radicalism, crime, boycotts of the tsarist officials and refusal to pay taxes. In the countryside, where the Orthodox Church had its main base, popular discontent turned against Baltic German landlords: in the course of a few months in ,  estates were ransacked and set aflame, causing damage estimated at around twelve million roubles.  In response to the violence, martial law was introduced on  December and the government sent in suppression squads, which relied on the active support of Baltic Germans, that executed  people and sentenced hundreds more to jail, forced labour and exile.  Altogether in the Baltic provinces, , people involved in revolutionary events were sent to Siberia.  Following the convening of the Duma, the first Russian parliament, in April , the burning of estates and repression in the Baltic subsided. The central government allowed private schools to open which used the native language for tuition and it allowed teaching in native (Latvian, Estonian and German) languages in the first two years of elementary schools; workers' conditions improved with the legalisation of a ten-hour working day and the universities received more autonomy.
In January  Archbishop Agafangel (Preobrazhenskii, -)  issued a circular letter to all parish priests in the Riga diocese, inviting them to advocate before the authorities for the arrested and accused participants in the revolution. Arguing that there was often no way to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent when courts martial were used, he called on the clergy to become mediators between the Estonian and  Ibid. -.  Consecrated as a married parish priest, Aleksandr Preobrazhenskii became a monk after the death of his wife in , taking the new name Agafangel: in  he was consecrated as a bishop. In the Orthodox tradition bishops had to be first tonsured as monks.  I R I N A P A E R T Latvian populace, including Lutherans, and the authorities.  He established an aid committee for the families that had lost their breadwinners.  The archbishop's efforts were supported by the clergy and were gratefully received by local members of the public.  An escalation of violence in the Baltic took place in late autumn , and the Orthodox Church took an active role in mediation in January and February , that is after the Riga council, which took place in September . Thus, the summoning of the council cannot be regarded as a response to the violence. In some ways, the Orthodox Church's response can be seen as a continuation of the course taken in spring .
The unfolding revolution made possible the long-awaited expansion of religious toleration. The decree of  April  legalised conversion from Orthodoxy to other Christian confessions and solved the problem of mixed marriages and their offspring. The total number of converts to Lutheranism between  and  was , men and women, peaking in -.  Following the routinisation of corporate clerical representation at congresses between  and , the diocese of Riga in  witnessed the most extraordinary gathering of all representatives of the clergy, including indigenous clergy (both priests and sacristans) and laymen. Held on  September , the Riga council (Rizhskii sobor) was the first to host delegates elected either by deanery assemblies or by brotherhoods. Afanasii Vasil'ev, a member of the Baltic Orthodox Brotherhood and author of a detailed report about the congress in the Church Herald, sang the praises of Agafangel: 'God blessed Archbishop Agafangel with the good thought: to invite the lower members of the clergy and laymen to participate in the congress.' 'The first sign of reviving sobornost'' was what he called this gathering in Riga. According to him, the Riga council was in the vanguard of church renewal. The presence of representatives of almost all of the Church, with the exception of monastics and women, was organised with episcopal permission. In response to the new era of religious toleration, Riga's diocesan authorities provided the Orthodox with an opportunity to address all grievances, complaints and suggestions from the parishes, brotherhoods and educational institutions.
Calling representatives from the parishes and brotherhoods to take part in the congress in , Agafangel was not acting out of line. In other borderland dioceses with mixed confessional populations, such congresses were also called in the wake of the April manifesto on religious toleration. In the diocese of Polotsk, for example, Bishop Serafim (Meshcheriakov) called the clergy and laity to a diocesan congress in Vitebsk on - November : this event played host to more than  priests and 'many enlightened and pious laymen'. The author of the church chronicle of Ludzen parish in Vitebsk province commented that given the representative character of the delegates and the range of questions on the agenda, it was, due to the presence of the laity, the first true diocesan congress in the eparchy's history. 

The composition of the council
The delegates of the council were a mixed bag. There were authoritative archpriests from cathedrals in Riga and Tartu, representatives of the Riga seminary, priests and psalmists from rural parishes and representatives of the brotherhoods. In contrast to the earlier clerical congresses, attended only by deans, priests made up just over half of all the delegates: the lower clergy (deacons and psalmists) constituted more than a third of the council, and the laity the remainder. Another feature that made this council different was that delegates of non-Russian origins constituted about  per cent. This corresponded to the growing proportion of Estonians and Latvians among the clergy ( per cent according to the  census). The Estonian and Latvian representatives were primarily psalmists. Russians dominated the lay people invited as representatives of the brotherhoods.
The clerical representatives were diverse. None of the members of the Riga consistory were elected, while the representatives of deaneries were parish priests rather than deans. Several Russian priests came with mandates from brotherhoods, not deaneries. The large number of Estonian and Latvian clergy in diocese of Riga was a result of the Riga seminary's recruitment policy, which, with some exceptions, stipulated that Estonian and Latvian boys should make up two-thirds of the student body. In some periods, this number was even higher. Between  and , the ratio of Estonian to Russian boys was :, while in the era that followed Alexander III's annulment of the status quo between the Baltic German elites and the tsar (-) (labelled by some as 'russification'), the ratio was :.  However, the Russian clergy attempted to challenge this legislation, and non-Russian delegates were seldom represented at  Psalmists, many of whom were in their late twenties and early thirties, took an active role in the council. 'There was at the council', wrote Vasil'ev, 'total freedom of opinion: a psalmist from an Estonian or Latvian parish fearlessly and passionately argued against not only an archpriest from a cathedral but sometimes against the archbishop himself.'  Psalmists (köster in Estonian, psalmotas in Latvian), often with an incomplete seminary or teacher's education, helped the priest at the altar, read, sang and taught in parish schools. Many psalmists were responsible for church choirs and contributed to the development of local Orthodox music.  Since the Orthodox parishioners of Riga diocese were in the main landless agricultural labourers unable to support parish priests, the government introduced a payroll (shtaty) for the clergy. The average annual salary of a priest was , roubles and for a psalmist - roubles, provided that they taught at the parish school.  Tensions between psalmists and priests were not exceptional before the  revolution, an event in which the lower clergy took active part, calling themselves the 'spiritual proletariat'.  Psalmists objected to the way in which priests tried to control school affairs and finances. Since Orthodox schools were less well-off than counterparts established by the Ministry of Education, psalmists with teaching credentials often left to find jobs in secular schools.  Even though clerical salaries in Riga diocese differed from the distribution of income in other parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, where priests received about  per cent of church income and psalmists only  per cent, it was clear that the position of psalmists in Riga diocese was not financially stable. This was why psalmists' lower material status was brought up in the council of .  The delegates tried to solve the problem by proposing the introduction of two positions for psalmists, one entirely concerned with the church and the other with the school.  Psalmists were actively involved in the discussion around clerical election at the council. The delegates criticised the figure of the powerful church dean, who 'looks on his parish as his private fiefdom for his personal benefit'.  The delegates believed that elected priests would have a closer link with their parishes. It was possible that elections would allow popular psalmists to apply for priestly positions, while some parishioners might be able to obtain psalmist positions. The council ruled out this possibility, introducing an educational barrier: only those who had gone through at least five years in the spiritual seminary, or graduates of the teaching seminary could apply to be a psalmist.
The lay representatives at the council were primarily members of brotherhoods, which had been active in Riga diocese since the s and s. The brotherhoods consisted of representatives from the laity and clergy and were responsible for materially supporting and promoting Orthodoxy in the region. The representatives of two influential brotherhoods, the Baltic Orthodox Brotherhood (eight) and the Brotherhood of SS Peter and Paul (seven), came to the Riga council as delegates. It remains unclear why other brotherhoods, for example that of St Nicholas in Saaremaa, were not represented. While brotherhoods were idealised by some voices within the Church, others were sceptical, regarding brotherhoods as instruments of official Synodal policy.  In the imperial borderlands, where Orthodoxy was perceived as being besieged by a non-Orthodox majority, brotherhoods played an active role, sometimes acting without official permission from the authorities.  The lay members of brotherhoods in the council came from different social groups and professions: a merchant, a lawyer, state officials and teachers. Many of them were actively involved in brotherhoods, seeing them as civil associations that channelled their zeal for social mission and provided them with a society of like-minded people, connections to higher circles etc. For example, Petr Rutskii (-), a member of the Riga branch of the Brotherhood of SS Peter and Paul, was a teacher at the Alexander I high school in Dorpat (Tartu) and the author of handbooks,


I R I N A P A E R T maps, guidebooks and teaching materials. Rutskii published the first handbook listing all civil organisations in Livland province in , noting , organisations, including brotherhoods, which he placed among 'miscellaneous societies'.  He argued that the tradition of civic organisation, originating in the Middle Ages, was based on the principle of mutual aid, which he characterised as a wonderful feature of these institutions.  He pointed out that the majority of peasant-based societies in Livland appeared only after the s, which he credited to the emergence of Russian national self-consciousness and the 'truly Russian school' that accompanied the transfer of power from the 'partial local nobility to the impartial government that takes care of everyone'. 

Archbishop Agafangel and the council
Archbishop Agafangel (Preobrazhenskii), who has gone down in history as a possible successor to Patriarch Tikhon, but was prevented from filling this role by the Bolsheviks, was bishop of Riga from  to . The son of a priest and a talented graduate from the Moscow Theological Academy, he became a bishop after losing his wife in childbirth. Before his appointment to Riga, he served as rector in the Tobolsk and Irkutsk seminaries, as suffragan bishop of Irkutsk and as bishop of Tobolsk. Compared to his predecessor, Agafangel had a different approach to Riga diocese, with its majority Lutheran population, Baltic German elites disgruntled by the russification policies of the s and a majority of priests of non-Russian origin. In contrast to Bishop Arsenii (Briantsev), he did not antagonise the Lutherans and Baltic German elites, but paid more attention to consolidating unity between different groups of clergy and the episcopal office. He encouraged the pastoral movement, the establishment of religious-pastoral societies, preaching in teetotaller tea houses and collegiality: he thus demonstrated his intention to be as egalitarian as was possible in the Synodal Church. He made concessions to the needs of the non-Russian Orthodox, financing the publication of two Orthodox periodicals in Latvian and Estonian. Agafangel's stance towards the Lutheran majority was unusual: he respected the local population's desire to maintain the faith of their forefathers while calling on Orthodox believers to show steadfastness, devotion and mutual love so they could serve as moral examples to the non-Orthodox.  Agafangel's convening of the Riga council in September of  was an attempt to involve the entire diocese in reform, with the agenda formulated at local deanery gatherings and in the parishes and with delegates from the priesthood elected at a grassroots level. Agafangel demonstrated his intention to allow free discussion during the congress and allowed the vice-chair of the council to be elected rather than appointed. During the discussions, he made efforts to explain his disagreement with the most radical proposals by appealing to canon law and common-sense arguments rather than using his right to veto without explanation.  The archbishop's responsibility was to seek the Synod's approval of the council's resolutions and the proposed model of diocesan management, but this approval was not forthcoming.
It was not a coincidence that the special consultation (Особое совещание), established in  in order to regulate the status of the parish, had Bishop Sergii (Stragorodskii) of Finland as its chair: he was later replaced by Agafangel. Both bishops were instrumental in bringing projects of parish reform based on their respective dioceses to the discussion table. Yet, the final result was far from the expectations of the Riga delegates or the project developed at the ad hoc Preconciliar Commission. 

The rhetoric of sobornost'
During the debate on parish reform, the delegate Afanasii Vasil'ev stated that the Church is sobornaia (Catholic in the sense of the Nicaean Creed): 'The foundation of this sobornost' can be found in the doctrine on the unity of the triune God, as well as in the human person, who consists of the mind, will and heart, the trinitarian unity of the basic elements of humanity, which can be considered human sobornost'.' On the basis of the theology of the Trinity and the anthropological unity of mind, heart and will, Vasil'ev derived the essential sobornaia nature of the Church, represented as an organism (cf. Cor. xii.-). In addition, he appealed to apostolic times, when all decisions in the Church were made soborno, through councils.  In  the Preconciliar Commission started its work in St Petersburg, while all diocesan bishops were invited to submit their reports on church reform in mid-. We do not know who influenced Agafangel and provided him with the materials for his report, but we can be sure that the Riga council was very important preparation. The  Рижский епархиальный собор, -. While the protocols did not mention the names of the speakers, we can make this conjecture on the basis of Vasil'ev's writings.  I R I N A P A E R T notions of sobornost' discussed at the council, especially during the session on parish reform, were vocalised by Vasil'ev. As a representative of the Baltic Orthodox Brotherhood, a public servant in the Ministry of Education and a controller in the Cabinet of Ministers, he was involved in the government's programme of railway construction. A son of a мещанин (unprivileged city dweller), he studied law at Moscow University in the s. After years of service, he received the rank of state counsellor, which gave him the right to hereditary nobility. In his public life he was actively involved in the Pan-Slavist movement, setting up local branches of the Slavonic Committee, travelling to the Balkans and collecting donations to support poor Orthodox families in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  In  he founded a society called Sobornaia Rossiia, which was not very influential.  He published his Slavophile ideas widely and promoted a romantic, organic vision of the Church.  It is not clear how Vasil'ev got invited to the Riga council, but as he is sitting next to Agafangel in the group photo (see Figure  below), it can be assumed that he was a high-profile guest. However, since he was an outsider, his views cannot be taken to reflect the mindset of the local clergy and laity. In particular, there is no evidence to suggest that the word sobornost' had any equivalent in Estonian or Latvian at the time. Yet, we cannot discard these ideas as being totally irrelevant for local Orthodoxy.
The Riga council of  had a blueprint in the writings of Archpriest Alexander Ivantsov-Platonov (-), who published a series of articles on church reform in  (reprinted as a book in ). Ivantsov-Platonov's views on the inclusion of the laity in diocesan congresses and his model of the relationship between bishops and their dioceses seem to have been replicated in the Riga council. The aim of semi-annual congresses, as Ivantsov-Platonov wrote, was 'to give the bishop an opportunity to learn the opinions and needs of his flock and help him with the advice of the best people to manage the flock'.  The Riga council's discussion on elected bishops seems to follow Ivantsov-Platonov, who believed that locally elected bishops would maintain close contact with the faithful.

Towards a renewal of the Church
The questions discussed at the council were structured by the delegates quite broadly around the themes 'Church', 'priesthood', 'church schools', 'the ecclesiastical press', 'land questions' and, finally, 'clerical mutual aid'. The range of issues concerning church self-government and the involvement of different groups in it occupied a substantial part of the discussion.
The delegates proposed a bottom-up reform of diocesan life, starting with the parish. The delegates critically reviewed the statute for the parish council and parish assembly that had been adoptedafter fifteen years of deliberationfor the diocese of Finland. According to the Riga delegates, the first paragraph of this document, which limited the parish assembly's responsibilities to church property, had a stifling effect. Instead of the Finnish statute, the delegates suggested using the  Statute on Parish Councils as a foundation while also broadening its social base. In contrast to the Finnish statute, the Riga council adopted a formula that expressed the rhetoric of renewal with regards to the most Figure . The congress of the Orthodox clergy in Riga, . The photograph was taken on the last day of the council, when some delegates had already left. The photographer later glued in pictures of delegates who were not present. Photograph, from the private collection of Alexander Dormidontov.