#double-faith

I have seen the notion of "dual faith" commonly applied to Christianized Slavic people more and more questioned lately (either totally or partly) by scholars and practicioners alike, and I was wondering if you (and other of your Christian and Pagan Slavic followers if they wish to develop on that too) have ever attached credit to this notion or not at all, or had any other position on this topic.

Have a nice day !

Ah, once again a complex question!

I would like to quickly re-examine the doubts about validity of dvoeverie in two contexts — first being the doubts about the word itself and its historicity, second doubts about the character of pre-Christian influences on the practices of Christian Slavs.

Dvoeverie (dual-belief, dual-faith) could be very simply defined as preservation of pagan elements by Orthodox Christian communities. This term is used predominantly to refer to Russian religious practices and carries the implication that, while intermingling of pre-Christian and Christian religious practices can happen in any culture, Russia was particularly susceptible to it and displays this phenomenon to a much greater degree, as a result preserving extraordinary number of pagan practices.

Aforementioned term started being used in this context only in mid 19th century, but many scholars who introduced (re-introduced) it into Slavic studies claimed that it has medieval origins and that even medieval Orthodox writers (who would have a better understanding of Slavic paganism than we do) already bemoaned the prevalence of pagan traditions in Orthodox communities (on the territory of present day Russia). 

This idea has been disproven Stella Rock who in her book "Popular Religion in Russia, ‘Double belief’ and the making of an academic myth” shows that, while the word dvoeverie is indeed of medieval origins, it wasn’t used to denote blending of Orthodox and pagan religious practices. According to Rock’s research ”dvoeverie” referred to Orthodox Christians who sympathize with Roman Catholics or a state of spiritual doubt within an Orthodox Christian, and therefore described ”inability to remain unwaveringly Orthodox”. However the second belief referred to by medieval writers using the term ”dual-belief” was never paganism. On that account the context in which the word started being used since 19th century changed significantly — which results in the term coming under a lot of criticism as confusing and misleading.

I don’t really have any strong stances on whether the term should still be used or should be abandoned in the context of pagan beliefs — whatever most scholars will settle on I will follow. I’m of the opinion that as long as everyone involved knows what phenomenon is being discussed the name assigned to it is of secondary importance.

Now onto the problem of pagan influences.

Scholars supproting the existence of dvoeverie usually tend to belong to one of the two main ”camps":

those believing that the Orthodox Christianity was forced to adapt to resistant, prevalent paganism;

those believing that the Orthodox Christianity assimilated Slavic paganism and created a syncretic blend of old and new traditions that was Christian enough to be acceptable to the Church.

Camp 1 tends to support theories of active resistence of the rural pagan peoples to conversion and conscious attempts to preserve pagan beliefs hidden under a thin veneer of Christianity. To many Soviet scholars dual-faith was a symptom of class struggle, although considering the circumstances in which their work was conducted and published this narrative may have been overplayed.

Camp 2 tends to support theories of unconscious preservation of pagan traditions by the people, poor education of Orthodox clergy and neophytes leading to lack of understanding of what is Christian and pagan and creative syncretism of the two faiths.

Onto my personal feelings: I do not believe that ”double-faith” was a form of deliberate resistence of Christianity or a form of conscious class struggle, although I accept that in early days of Slavic Christianization Christianity may have been more common among the elites and that the way different social classes practice the same religion could vary greatly.

Another really interesting interpretation of dvoeverie that I’ve encountered describes it as ”spiritual bilingualism". The believers are "fluent” in two different belief systems and may choose to use the vocabulary of one or the other depending on the circumstances. Occasionally they may also code-switch, code-mix or use borrowings, consciously or unconsciously.

You can still encounter elements with pre-Christian roots in Slavic religious practice as well as many other aspects of Slavic culture. This much is undeniable no matter what name we slap on the phenomenon. Now all that is left is for us to argue about how prominent those elements are and which, and to what degree pre-Christian can be synonymous with pagan.

I imagine that, yes, it could be pretty difficult for early Christians to discern which aspects of their old way of life were specifically ”pagan” — and even the Christian preachers probably struggled with that. It’s worth remembering not everything that is ”unchristian” must be pagan — we can for example see many instances of priests forbidding the newly Christian Slavs revelry, dancing and music but there are doubts as to whether those prohibitions were targetting specific pagan practices or merely marking certain behviors are inappropriate for a devout Christian. At the end of the day what constitutes paganism isn’t all that clear to us.

I will not hide that I personally enjoy including Slavic traditions with strong pre-Christian undercurrent in my Slavic paganism tag — but I am aware that most of the people practicing them don’t see them as ”pagan”. As a Slavic pagan I have quite limited resources when it comes to reliable sources on pre-Christian religious practices and so nevertheless tend to analyse a lot of folk practices looking for elements that are part of local cultural heritage rather than solely Christian cultural heritage, trying to figure out how that could be included to enrich and nuance my personal religious practice which is based on (or perhaps inspired by) pre-Christian Slavic faith though marked with appreciation and inclusion of later Slavic culture. Simultaneously I’m acutely aware that I am likely to come up wrong about things more than a few times. And at the same time I believe we should avoid replicating mistake of romanticizm by uncritically believing that the ”folk” managed to preserve pure and unchanging cultural and religious traditions of the pagan Slavs.

I think it’s perfectly normal for a religion to take on a new ”local flavor” through the influences brought in by the practitioners. Both the culture of the practitioners and the proximity of other faiths will make their marks on the religion in question. It happened to the many forms of Christianity and it happens now, to reconstructed pagan religions. For example in some discussions I observed on Tumblr recently the differences in practices of modern American and Scandinavian heathens were highlighted - a result of the way the practitioners and their culture shape the religion. I find it unavoidable. It’s only natural that earlier pre-Christian and, yes, pagan elements found their way into later practices of Christian Slavs. It’s only natural that Slavic culture of Christianized Slavs finds its way into reconstructive attempts of modern Slavic pagans. Still, I think if you strive for reconstruction or even revival of a pagan religion and not merely an aesthetic repackaging of your local dominant belief you should know what are the core ideas of both religions and where the concepts that form the pillars of your practice came from.

Obviously your knowledge and understanding of your practices will be improved and revised over time. There is nothing wrong with changing your opinions and practices to accomodate new information and new insights. You don’t need a phd before you begin, although some research is anvoidable. In electing to follow the path of revival/reconstruction you implicitly accept the difficulties it introduces into your life and religious practice — and the difficulty will vary depending on both the religion elected and the individual electing.

I warn you — I reserve the right to change my mind once I have more information about the subject in question. I welcome all my followers to add their own thoughts, although please do so politely, acknowledging that a) most people participating in the discussion are laymen with no systematized education on the subject b) this is a tumblr discussion and not anybody’s doctoral dissertation.