Scott M. Kenworthy, "The People's Patriarch: Tikhon Bellavin and the Orthodox Church in North America and Revolutionary Russia" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Apr 6, 2026

Scott M. Kenworthy, a historian of Eastern Orthodoxy and modern Russia, discusses Patriarch Tikhon Bellavin, a humble parish priest who rose to lead the Russian Church. He traces Tikhon’s institution building in North America, his return to Russia in 1917, clashes with the Bolsheviks, church-state reform efforts, and the trials, arrests, and resilience that shaped the Orthodox Church’s fate.

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INSIGHT

Tikhon Took Leadership At Russia's Political Breaking Point

Patriarch Tikhon became head of the Russian Orthodox Church in November 1917 amid the Bolshevik seizure of power.
Scott M. Kenworthy emphasizes he was immediately thrust into defending a church of roughly 100 million believers against an atheist revolutionary state.

ANECDOTE

Tikhon's Hands-On Building of American Orthodoxy

As Bishop of North America (1898–1907), Tikhon traveled nonstop across the continent to build churches, found the first U.S. Orthodox seminary and convene the first North American council.
He secured a separate Alaska bishop, moved the residence to New York, and worked with architect Louis Sullivan on a Chicago church.

INSIGHT

Conciliarism Was Central To Tikhon's Vision

Tikhon championed conciliar participation, believing laity and clergy should shape church life.
He carried this conciliar ethos from his North American council into plans for the Russian church council in 1917.

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On October 28, 1917, just days after the Bolsheviks seized power, the great Council of the Russian Orthodox Church voted to restore the patriarchate, which had been abolished by Peter the Great two centuries earlier. The Council chose Tikhon (Bellavin), the son of a humble village parish priest, to be head of Russia's largest religious confession. At the time, the majority of Orthodox Christians were devoutly religious. Tikhon's vision of the Church, which he began putting into practice during his years as the Orthodox bishop of North America (1898-1907), was that of an organic body which welcomed the participation of all believers. The Bolsheviks had other ideas. They aimed to create a revolution that would be carried out by the state on behalf of the people. And they sought to eradicate religion as "superstition" and not only to disestablish the Church, but to destroy it altogether. Although the alternate Russia which Tikhon represented would be crushed by the superior force of the Bolsheviks, he helped navigate the Church through immense challenges so that, in the end, the Orthodox Church outlived the Soviet experiment. The People's Patriarch tells the story of the clash of visions for the new Russia in 1917 through the lens of the humble man chosen to lead the Church, whose life exemplifies the transformations within the Orthodox Church in late Imperial Russia and its fate during the Revolution. The People's Patriarch is the first critical biography of one of the twentieth century's most important Orthodox Christian leaders, based on an exhaustive use of previously untapped primary sources, including Tikhon's letters and encyclicals, previously classified documents from the top Bolshevik leadership and Soviet secret police, and materials from a dozen archives in five countries.

Scott M. Kenworthy is Professor in the History Department at Miami University (Ohio), where he also teaches for the Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and Religious Studies programs.

Roland Clark is a Professor of Modern European History at the University of Liverpool.

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