Reference Room - Two
PAROCHIAL DOCUMENTS
Several things need to be remembered and clarified about these documents:
1) These were ordained by the Consistorium of the Volga churches for both the Reformed and Lutheran bodies.
2) These were instituted by this body of theologians and were to be implemented as a general rule by the pastors of the local congregations as a matter of choice. Some pastors followed up with these, while others may have neglected such a requirement. They were to be shared by the pastors of the receiving church to where the family would go to and to be used as a letter of transfer from one congregation to another.
3) In other words, it was referred to as an, “Entlassungen Schein” or by translation into the English it meant, “an honorable discharge or release from the family’s home church to be carried forward to the next or receiving pastor and congregation”. This information was very important as it provided the receiving pastor and congregation with information about the status of the incoming family and official documentation concerning their legalized marriage, births, baptisms, confirmation, etc. etc. We can further appreciate the value of these documents, as the Russian government of the day was not that well structured in matters of maintaining statistical information, while the church had to rely on its own records for evidence concerning its parishioners.
Several of these documents I have seen in conjunction with my research and writing. The practice was carried out even in Canada among other congregations. As for my wife and myself and our children we were given a similar “letter of honorable discharge and release” as we entered into fellowship with another congregation. And that occurred in recent time. Today, this “form” or documentation is a mere formality and does not hold the same significance as in an earlier time in Russia. I still retain a copy of this document in our family files.
Several of our senior people, who migrated from Norka, Russia and the Reformed Church there, brought these documents with them. The German Reformed Church pastors in our area of Stony Plain, Alberta, used them. I distinctly remembered these as the “Entlassung Schein”. Basically the receiving pastor was not suppose to accept that family into the fellowship of the local church until he had received such documentation and that he was fully aware of anyone connected to that family.
I might add that I have never heard anyone refer to this document as being a mandatory edict from the Czar. This statement was made on Volga List Serve shortly after the question was raised on the List. I checked with the person who made this original statement to verify their source. To this point they have not given me any evidence supporting this statement. That statement concerning the Czar’s edict sounds like a fabrication, since there is nothing to support the claim.
Nevertheless, I can certainly appreciate “why” this form was used in the early German-Russian churches, as it would have served numerous purposes:
A) for statistical records in the use of a Census by the local colonies,
B) for statistical records in the general synod of the church,
C) for use by the local government of the region.
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