Religious teaching of Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets and orthodox tradition

Abstract

The topic of this article is the correlation of Orthodox tradition and spiritualism in the Russian culture of the last third of the 19th — early 20th centuries. The object of the study are materials pertaining to the spiritualistic activity of Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the main events of the spiritualistic activity of Molokhovets, to reveal the sources and means by which she was creating her religious doctrine, and to demonstrate the main aspects of this doctrine. The article also aims to show the dependence of this dosctine upon the Orthodox cultural context and prove through this example the main thesis about the decisive role of Orthodoxy in assimilating spiritualism as a cultural phenomenon on the Russian soil. The article proposes the following main ideas: the religious doctrine of Molokhovets had been shaped by the early 1880s; the most important sources of her doctrine are specific hermeneutics of the sacred texts and Orthodox liturgy, messages received by the medium E.F. Tyminskaya, as well as “dreams” and “visions” of Molokhovets; the topics of her doctrine reveal the desire of Molokhovets to show the unity of all possible extremities, above all of science and faith, and to get rid of the confl ict between science and religion, characteristic of the latter half of the 19th century.

Keywords

• православие
• спиритуализм
• спиритизм
• история религии
• история России
• Е. И. Молоховец
• Е. Ф. Тыминская