The Schism, parts 3556 - 3559

 3556. This is what The Prune said however, or what it was I think that he said, about the church. It was a large church and you would only have known it was a Russian Orthodox church by the primitive group of onion shaped domes adorning its roof, as well as the cross with the extra diagonal bar. The church was too large for its congregation, all of whom were Russian immigrants who had fled from Russia after the revolution.

 3557. The church was a part of what was then called the “Russian Orthodox Church in Exile,” and that title signified that the church organization considered itself to be still the supreme authority for all the Russian faithful, regardless of what the government or anyone else had to say about it.

 3558. But the congregation was not homogeneous. The very eldest were members of the Old Russian aristocracy, elderly men and women who could remember the Czar, the civil war and the advent of Bolshevism. The younger members were recent escapees from the east, civil servants, bus drives, coal miners and the like.

3559. This mixture was rather like the society of revolutionary Russia consisting of the haves and the have nots, although in this instance it would be more correct to say, “The hads and the had nots.”