Resisting the accommodation of Russian piety to the contemporary forms of Greek Orthodox worship, these Christians were anathematized, together with their ritual, in a Synod of 1666–67, producing a division in Eastern Europe between the Old Believers and those who followed the state church in its condemnation of the Old Rite.

Old Believer theology is characterized by this strict adherence to pre-reform traditions, as well as the belief that the reformed church's heresy is coeval with the arrival of the Antichrist.

As a result of this eschatological belief, as well as the church and state's mass persecution of the Old Believers, many fled to establish colonies and monasteries in the wilderness.

No bishops opposed Nikon's reforms (besides Paul of Kolomna, who was banished to a monastery), so the Old Believers had no ability to ordain new priests, meaning the anti-reform priesthood would quickly vanish.

In the early 21st century, the number of Old Believers is estimated to be between 2 and 3 million, mostly in Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and the United States.

This resulted in the holding of the Stoglavy Synod, a Russian church council in 1551, whose decrees formed the basis of Orthodox ritual and liturgy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

In addition, while stressing the need for accurate copying of sacred documents, it also approved of traditional Russian liturgical practices that differed from contemporary Greek ones.

[14]: 274–5 [15]: 316 During the reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich (r. 1645–1676), the young tsar and his confessor, Stefan Vonifatiev, sponsored a group, mainly composed of non-monastic clergy and known as the Zealots of Piety.

Their original aim was to revitalise the parishes through effective preaching, the orderly celebration of the liturgy, and enforcement of the church's moral teachings.

[15] During his time in Novgorod, Nikon began to develop his view that the responsibility for the spiritual health of Russia lay with senior church leaders, not the tsar.

They reached the conclusion that the Russian Orthodox Church had, as a result of errors of incompetent copyists, developed rites and liturgical books of its own that had significantly deviated from the Greek originals.

Nikon wanted to have the same rite in the Russian tsardom as those ethnically Slavic lands, then the territories of Ukraine and Belarus, that were then part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, to attract local Orthodox rebels.

In 1652, he convened a synod and exhorted the clergy on the need to compare Russian Typikon, Euchologion, and other liturgical books with their Greek counterparts.

Such a task would have taken many years of conscientious research and could hardly have given an unambiguous result, given the complex development of the Russian liturgical texts over the previous centuries and the lack of textual historiographic techniques at the time.

Without waiting for the completion of any comparative analysis, Nikon overrode the decrees of the Stoglavy Synod and ordered the printing of new editions of the Russian psalter, missal, and a pamphlet justifying his liturgical changes.

[15]: 316  The new psalter and missal altered the most frequently used words and visible gestures in the liturgy, including the pronunciation of Christ's name and making the sign of the cross.

In addition, the hastily published new editions of the service books contained internal inconsistencies, and had to be reprinted several times in quick succession.

As a side-effect of condemning the past of the Russian Orthodox Church and her traditions, the innovations appeared to weaken the messianic theory depicting Moscow as the Third Rome.

It is argued that changing the wording of the eighth article of the Nicaean Creed was one of the very few alterations that could be seen as a genuine correction, rather than aligning the texts of Russian liturgical books and practices, customs and even vestments with the Greek versions that Nikon considered were universally applicable norms.

[18]: 48 Nevertheless, both patriarch and tsar wished to carry out their reforms, although their endeavors may have had as much or more political motivation as religious; several authors on this subject point out that Tsar Aleksei, encouraged by his military success in the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667) to conquer West Russian provinces and Ukraine, developed ambitions of becoming the liberator of the Orthodox areas which at that time formed part of the Ottoman Empire.

The Bezpopovtsy rejected "the World" where they believed the Antichrist reigned; they preached the imminent end of Creation, asceticism, adherence to the old rituals and the old faith.

Alexander Dugin, sociologist and a former strategic adviser to Vladimir Putin, is a proponent of edinoverie, since it combines Apostolic succession of the ROC, while preserving pre-Nikonite liturgical tradition.

At the end of the 11th century, the efforts of St. Theodosius of the Caves in Kiev (Феодосий Киево-Печерский, d. 1074) introduced the so-called Studite Typicon to Kievan Rus.

The process of gradual change of typica continued throughout the 15th century and, because of its slow implementation, met with little resistance—unlike Nikon's reforms, conducted with abruptness and violence.

Golubinsky, Dmitriyevsky, Kartashov and Kapterev, amongst others, demonstrated that the rites, rejected and condemned by the church reforms, were genuine traditions of Orthodox Christianity, altered in Greek usage during the 15th–16th centuries but remaining unchanged in Russia.

They shared a distrust of state power and of the episcopate, insisting upon the right of the people to arrange their own spiritual life, and expressing the ambition to aim for such control.

[12] Both the popovtsy and bespopovtsy, although theologically and psychologically two different teachings, manifested spiritual, eschatological and mystical tendencies throughout Russian religious thought and church life.

One can also emphasize the schism's position in the political and cultural background of its time: increasing Western influence, secularization, and attempts to subordinate the Church to the state.

Nevertheless, the Old Believers sought above all to defend and preserve the purity of the Orthodox faith, embodied in the old rituals, which inspired many to strive against Patriarch Nikon's church reforms even unto death.

Significant established Old Believer communities exist in the United States and Canada in Plamondon, Alberta; Hines Creek, Alberta;[37] Woodburn, Oregon; Erie, Pennsylvania; Erskine, Minnesota; and in various parts of Alaska including near Homer in the Fox River area villages of Voznesenka, Razdolna, and Kachemak Selo, Nikolaevsk,[38] Beryozova, Delta Junction, and Kodiak, Alaska (Larsen Bay area, and on Raspberry Island).