The university, established in 1991, is Russia's first theological graduate-level school for the lay men and women, unlike traditional Orthodox seminaries preparing male students for ordination.

Ten departments of the university provide education in theology, history, teaching, missionary practice, religious arts and music, economics, social services and information management.

In the end of the 1980s their alumni set up evening courses of theology that merged in a unified institution in 1991 and, with support of Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, acquired state accreditation as a university in 1992.

[3] The university selects its staff primarily from ordained Russian Orthodox clerics and lay academicians; guest speakers may come from other denominations (most often Roman Catholic Church[4]).

University staff was actively engaged in the 2007 public controversy on the alleged Orthodox clericalisation of school education, opposing the nonsectarian approach of the Russian Academy of Sciences.