usuühenduste muutumisprotsessid 18. sajandi keskpaigast kuni 20. sajandi lõpuni

Jaanus Plaat

Eesti Rahva Muuseumi sari 2

Tartu 2001. 480 lk, 30 fotot

Hind: 110.- EEK

I. RESÜMEE

Võrreldes ülejäänud Eestiga, on Lääne- ja Hiiumaa kristliku usuelu peamiseks eripäraks 18.–20. sajandil olnud eriti suur ning pidev vastuvõtlikkus uutele usuliikumistele ning vabakogudustele, seega ka muutustele rahva usuelus. Monograafia peaeesmärk on anda võrdlev-ajalooline pilt Lääne- ja Hiiumaa erinevatest usuühendustest ning nende muutumisprotsesside eripäradest 18.–20. sajandil kogu Eesti usuelu kontekstis

Põhjasõjas Venemaa poolt vallutatud Eesti alal jäi domineerivaks luterlik kirik. Alates 1740. aastate algusest hakkas luterliku kiriku raames laiemalt levima vennastekoguduse liikumine. Vennasteliikumine oli 18. sajandil eriti hoogne Lääne- ja Hiiumaal, mis jäid ka 19. sajandil Eestis erinevate usuliikumiste peamisteks keskusteks. Usuliikumised tõid kaasa mitmeid muutusi rahva usuelus, sünnitasid ristiusu rahvapärase käsitluse alusel uusi kodukootud õpetusi ja religioosseid rituaale, talupoeglikku prohvetlust ning usuekstaasi nähteid.

Aktiivselt osalesid usuliikumistes ka eestirootslased. Peale vennasteliikumise olid Lääne- ja Hiiumaa talurahva peamised usuliikumised 19. sajandi teisel kümnendil levinud taevaskäijate liikumine ja 1870. aastatel puhkenud Läänemaa usuline ärkamisliikumine. Viimase tulemusena loodi 1880. aastatel Lääne- ja Hiiumaal Eesti esimesed vabakogudused (priilaste, irvinglaste ja baptistide kogudused). Oluline muutus kirikuelus ja ühiskonnas oli ka siirdumine vene õigeusku 1880. aastatel. Uued usuühendused lõid tõsise alternatiivi luterlikule kirikule, mis ei suutnud Lääne- ja Hiiumaa institutsionaalses usuelus oma senist ainuvalitsevat seisundit säilitada

Lääne- ja Hiiumaal veel mitmeid uusi usuühendusi (nelipühilased, metodistid, adventistid, uršanistid, evangeeliumi kristlased jt). Luterliku kiriku mõju Lääne- ja Hiiumaa usuelus langes veelgi, samal ajal kui vabakoguduste osakaal tõusis. Siiski oli 20. sajandi jooksul peamine muutus Lääne- ja Hiiumaa, nagu ka ülejäänud Eesti usuelus mitte niivõrd uute uskkondade juurdetulek kui suuremate usuühenduste liikmeskonna ja mõju pidev vähenemine, eriti alates sajandi keskpaigast. Selle peamiseks põhjuseks võib pidada üldist sekularisatsiooniprotsessi, mille kulgu mõjutasid 20. sajandi vältel toimunud mitmed muutused Eesti riiklikus staatuses. Eriti aitas sekularisatsiooniprotsessi kiirenemisele kaasa usuvaenuliku Nõukogude Liidu okupatsioon. Usuühenduste mõju suurenemine 1980.–1990. aastate vahetusel jäi ajutiseks. 20. sajandi lõpuks on kristlike usuühenduste tähtsus ühiskonnas jäänud Lääne- ja Hiiumaal väheseks, eriti kui võrrelda seda 18.–19. sajandi usuliikumistega.

Monograafia koosneb sissejuhatusest, kolmest peatükist, eesti- ja ingliskeelsest kokkuvõttest (vt Summary), kasutatud allikate ja kirjanduse loendist, lisadest ja registritest (vt Sisukord). Suurem osa töös esitatud arvandmetest Lääne- ja Hiiumaa ning kogu Eesti usuelu kohta on toodud 60 tabelis. Monograafia on illustreeritud 30 fotoga.

EESSÕNA

SISSEJUHATUS

1. USULIIKUMISED JA UUED USKKONNAD 1740–1918

1.1. Ülevaade peamistest muutustest Eesti usuelus 18. sajandist 1918. aastani

1.2. Vennastekoguduse liikumine 1740–1918

1.2.1. Vennasteliikumine 1740–1743

1.2.2. Vennastekogudus pärast liikumise keelustamist 1743. aastal

1.2.3. Taevaskäijate liikumine

1.2.4. Vennastekoguduse liikumine 1817–1918

1.2.5. Vennasteliikumise olemus ja mõju

1.3. Usuliikumised ja uued vabakogudused 1875–1918

1.3.1. Läänemaa usuline ärkamisliikumine

1.3.1.1. Ärkamisliikumise puhkemine Noarootsis ja levik Mandri-Läänemaal ning teistes maakondades

1.3.1.2. Usuliikumise algus Vormsil

1.3.1.3. Võimude ja ajakirjanduse suhtumine ärkamisliikumisse

1.3.1.4. Liikumise eestvedajad, palvetunnid ja usuäärmused

1.3.1.5. Maailmalõpu ootamine

1.3.1.6. Ärganute suhted “maailmaga”, liikumise seksuaalsed nähted ja mõju rahva elulaadile

1.3.2. Organiseerumisperiood: ärkamisliikumise jagunemine vooludesse ja uute uskkondade teke (1880. aastate algus – 1918. aasta)

1.3.2.1. Suhete teravnemine võimudega ja luterlikust kirikust lahkulöömise algus

1.3.2.2. Lääne- ja Hiiumaa usuliikumiste priikoguduslik vool

1.3.2.3. Baptismi algus ja levik

1.3.2.4. Irvinglased

1.3.2.5. Siirdumine õigeusku

1.3.2.6. Vennastekoguduslik vool

1.3.2.7. Usuliikumised ja vabakogudused mujal Eestis

2. USUÜHENDUSTE ARENG 1918–2000

2.1. Usuühendused omariikluse perioodil 1918–1940

2.1.1. Muutused usuelus Eesti Vabariigi ajal

2.1.2. Kirikute ja vabakoguduste käekäik 1918–1940

2.1.2.1. Eesti Evangeeliumi Luteri Usu Kirik ja vennastekogudused

2.1.2.2. Õigeusu kirik

2.1.2.3. Vabakogudused

2.1.2.3.1. Baptistid

2.1.2.3.2. Priilased

2.1.2.3.3. Irvinglased

2.1.2.3.4. Nelipühilased

2.1.2.5.5. Väiksemad usuühendused: evangeeliumi kristlased, uršanistid, Normanni-usulised, metodistid, adventistid

2.2. Usuühendused võõrvõimude perioodil 1940–1987

2.2.1. Muutused usuelus Nõukogude okupatsiooni ajal 1940–1941

2.2.2. Usuühendused Saksa okupatsiooni perioodil 1941–1944

2.2.3. Uskkondade käekäik Nõukogude okupatsiooni perioodil 1944–1987

2.2.3.1. Sõjast ja repressioonidest tingitud kaotused

2.2.3.2. Nõukogude võimu ümberkorraldused usuelus

2.2.3.3. Ümberkorralduste mõju erinevatele uskkondadele 1945–1953

2.2.3.4. Usuühenduste liikmeskond ja usutalitused 1954–1958

2.2.3.5. Uskkonnad pideva languse perioodil 1958–1987

2.2.3.5.1. Võimude surve tugevnemine ning usuühenduste liikmete ja usutalituste arvu vähenemine

2.2.3.5.2. Lääne- ja Hiiumaa usuühenduste eripärad

2.3. Muutused usuelus 1988–2000

2.3.1. Usuelu taaselavnemine 1980. aastate lõpul

2.3.2. Usuühenduste areng 1990. aastatel

3. LÄÄNE- JA HIIUMAA USUÜHENDUSTE TEKKE NING MUUTUMISPROTSESSIDE PÕHJUSED, OLEMUS JA TAGAJÄRJED

3.1. Uute usuühenduste tekke eeldused ja põhjused (18. sajand – 20. sajandi algus)

3.1.1. Seos usuliikumistega Eesti naabermaades ja mujal Euroopas

3.1.2. Talurahva vahekord luterliku kirikuga

3.1.3. Usuliikumiste seosed sotsiaal-majanduslike ja kultuuriliste olude, rahvusliku ärkamisliikumise ning rahvakultuuriga

3.2. Talurahvalike usuühenduste olemus ja eripära

3.2.1. Uute usuühenduste ühisjooned ja erinevused 18.–19. sajandil

3.2.2. Äärmuslikkus, fanatism ja seksuaalnähted kui Lääne- ja Hiiumaa usuliikumiste eripära

3.3. Usuühenduste liigid ja areng

3.3.1. Sekt, denominatsioon, kirik

3.3.2. Sekti tüüpi usuühenduste liigid

3.4. Peamised muutuste põhjustajad 20. sajandi usuelus

3.4.1. Riigi ja usuühenduste vahekord

3.4.2. Sekularisatsioon

3.4.2.1. Sekularisatsiooni arvulised näitajad

3.4.2.2. Usuühenduste arengu ja liikmeskonna erinevused sekulariseeruvas ühiskonnas

3.4.2.3. Muutused usuelus alates 1980. aastate lõpust: religioosne uuestisünd ja sekularisatsioon

 KOKKUVÕTE

Religious Movements, Churches and Free Congregations in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa: Processes of Change in Religious Organisations from the Mid-18th to the End of 20th Century. SUMMARY

LÜHENDID

KASUTATUD ALLIKAD JA KIRJANDUS

TABELITE NIMEKIRI

LISAD

ISIKUNIMEDE REGISTER

KOHANIMEDE REGISTER

III. SUMMARY

Religious Movements, Churches and Free Congregations in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa from the Mid-18th to the End of 20th Century

According to the confessiondominating in official religious life, Estonia in the 18th century could be called a Lutheran country. Yet the more serious christianising of the previously rather formally Christian country-folk was brought about not by the official Lutheran Church, but the religious movement of Moravian Brethren spreading within the Lutheran Church. The Brethren movement began to spread wider among the Estonian peasantry in the 1740s, gaining strong support in the counties of West Estonia: Läänemaa and Hiiumaa (from the 16th century up to 1946 the island of Hiiumaa formed part of the county of Läänemaa). Läänemaa and Hiiumaa remained the centres of the Brethren movement in Estonia in the 19th century, too. The other influential religious movements were the movement of Heaven-Travellers, which began to spread during the second decade of the 19th century, and the movement of religious awakening, which spread in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa in the 1870s and 1880s. That movement gave rise to the appearance of new Free Churches in Estonia. In the 1880s, an extensive tendency appeared in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa to change from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy.

Several other minor religious movements took place in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa in the first decades of the 20th century, but throughout that century changes in Estonia’s political status and general secularisation have certainly had the greatest impact on religious life. By the year 2000, the Estonian society was in the most part secularised, at least as far as the percentage of people more seriously connected with Christian confessions is concerned. This can be said regardless of the spread of many new religious movements and congregations during the last decade of the century. Similar processes have taken place in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, too; however, these regions have also maintained certain peculiarities of religious life as compared to the rest of Estonia.

The main aim of the monograph is to present a comparative-historical study of the religious movements and congregations in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa in the 18th-20th centuries. Also, the developments in the religious institutions of these counties have been compared to what happened in the religious life of the rest of Estonia and the neighbouring countries. The main emphasis has been laid on changes in the life of the religious organisations of Läänemaa and Hiiumaa and on speciality of these changes as compared to the rest of Estonia. The author has limited himself mainly to Christian congregations and religious movements, although mention is made briefly of the heathen beliefs surviving into the 18th–20th centuries and of the non-Christian beliefs spreading at the end of the 20th century.

In addition to the monographs and articles on different Estonian religious movements and congregations published so far, the present monograph has made use of materials published in Estonian newspapers and of archive sources, mainly of materials in the Estonian History Archive, Estonian State Archive, Estonian Literature Museum and Estonian National Museum. The archive materials (1945–1990) of the Estonian representative of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults of the Soviet Union were the main source for the discussion of the religious life in the second half of the 20th century; before the collapse of the Soviet Union, these materials were not available to researchers. Besides, materials of the ethnographic and sociological fieldwork carried out by the author in the counties of West Estonia in the 1990s, have been used and comparisons made with the results of sociological studies carried out elsewhere in Estonia and in other European countries.

Chapter 1 discusses the religious movements and congregations in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa from the 1740s up to the year 1918, when Estonia was the part of the Russian Empire. The roots of the United Brethren (Moravian, Herrnhuter) movement go back to the 15th-century religious movement of the Bohemian and Moravian brethren, the followers of which founded the Herrnhut community in Germany, in 1722. One of the characteristic features of the Herrnhuter movement was active missionary work. At least 81 missionaries were sent out from Herrnhut in the years 1729–1743, to awaken Estonian and Latvian peasantry to religion. The peasants accepted the German brethren – simple artisans and teachers, in the most part – because they learned the local language and belonged to a lower class than the local German landlords. Nevertheless the success of the Herrnhuter missionaries depended largely on the support of the local Lutheran clergy and landlords. Most of the Herrnhuter missionaries arrived in Estonia and Latvia after 1738-1739, preparing the ground for the extensive religious awakening that spread among the peasantry at the beginning of the 1740s.

In North Estonia, the Brethren movement spread widest in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, where the number of members of the Brethren congregations grew to about 2,000 (in North Estonia as a whole, the number was about 4,800). Side by side with Estonians, active part was taken in the religious movement also by the Estonian Swedes, who had begun settling on the islands and coast of Western Estonia from the 13th-14th centuries onward. The parishes of Vormsi and Noarootsi in Läänemaa, settled mainly by Estonian Swedes, remained the main centres of religious movements in Estonia up to the emigration of Estonian Swedes in the 1940s.

The Brethren did not set up an independent church in the Baltic, remaining, according to their leaders’ wishes, within the framework of the Lutheran Church. Yet the separatism, open enmity towards the landlords and “religious exaggerations” gave rise to a growing dissatisfaction with the Brethren among landlords and clergy. In co-operation with authorities, the anti-Herrnhuter clergy achieved the banning of the movement, in 1743. The Herrnhuters’ prayer houses were closed and the more prominent brethren were forced to leave the country. Yet the obeying of these orders was not controlled very consistently or effectively, depending largely on the attitude of the local landlords. Despite the bans, new Herrnhut brethren arrived in Estonia and secretly carried on their missionary work. Although the religious movement went underground and had to overcome obstacles and repression, it continued with relative success in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, especially when compared to the rest of Estonia.

The first half of the 19th century witnessed a new rise in the Brethren movement. It was favoured by the decree issued by Tsar Alexander I in 1817, allowing the Brethren congregations freely to pursue their activities, and by the movement of Heaven-Travellers which spread mainly within the framework of the Brethren congregations. The centres of the movement of Heaven-Travellers were in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, where the movement began in 1814. There arose several visionaries and prophets who claimed they had seen revelations and who conducted their own charismatic prayer meetings. The Heaven-Travellers, for the most part women and girls, claimed they had been to heaven and hell. They told whom they had met in heaven or who had been in hell, and foretold people their fate after death. As a result of the Heaven-Travellers’ message, the Estonians and Estonian Swedes of Läänemaa burnt their festive dress and jewellery, in order to prepare themselves for the imminent end of the world. Some of the prophets from Hiiumaa were accused of baptising each other with fire and smoke and of celebrating the Holy Communion among themselves. Heaven-Travellers and their enthusiastic adherents caused much trouble to the Lutheran pastors and the German Moravians. In the early 1820s that ecstatic movement gradually died out, but the Brethren congregations in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa successfully continued their activities.

In the mid-1850s, there were almost 5,000 members of Brethren congregations in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, and thousands more participated in the prayer meetings. All over Estonia, the approximately 50,000 full members of the Brethren congregations made up about 6.7 per cent of the population.

Perhaps it is only during the culmination of the Brethren movement that we can speak about a broader spread of an intense Christianity with really devoted adherents all over Estonia. At the same time we must not forget that only a minor part of the population was directly involved in the Brethren movement in the 18th and 19th centuries, amounting to no more than one tenth of the population even during its highest peak. Frequently this minority was also in opposition to the greater part of population who had not experienced religious awakening. No other Christian movements of comparable dimensions, covering all of Estonia, have occurred here after the decline of the Brethren movement. Since the Lutheran and Orthodox Churches remained remote of the Estonian peasantry and the percentage of Free Church members was low, there was actually no reason up to the 20th century to speak about a more serious adherence of Estonians to any Christian confession. The religious life of the 20th century, however, can rather be characterised with the word “secularisation” than “Christianity”. The answer to the question whether Christianity has ever been widely accepted in Estonia at all is rather in the negative than in the positive.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Lutheran Church engaged in active struggle against the Brethren congregations and in the second half of the century the movement suffered an internal decline and a great drop in the numbers of membership. The decision of the 1857 Herrnhut Synod to stop direct activities of the Herrnhut centre in the Baltic region certainly played a part in the decline of the movement, too.

To a certain extent, another religious movement – the Awakening of Läänemaa – was also related to the Brethren movement. Together with the other religious movements in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa in the last quarter of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries, this movement is discussed in sub-chapter 1.3. The Awakening of Läänemaa began with the arrival of two Swedish missionaries, Thure Emanuel Thorén and Lars Johan Österblom. They started working as teachers and missionaries in the Noarootsi and Vormsi parishes in 1873. Due to their active preaching, a new religious awakening began to spread among the Estonian Swedes and soon after among the Estonians, too. Realising how sinful they were people began to strive for a better moral life and salvation of their souls, finally experienced a religious awakening and were “saved”. There appeared more and more local readers (preachers) and so-called prophets whose followers went in for ecstatic practises, such as jumping, dancing, laughing and hand clapping at the prayer meetings.

In the 1870s–1880s, religious awakening swept all over Läänemaa and Hiiumaa. At the beginning of the 1880s, many converts lamented that they could not remain members of the Lutheran congregations because of the immorality and lack of real faith among the members there. The awakened people started to hold their own communion, baptism, wedding ceremonies and funeral services. The attitude of the Lutheran officials toward the movement had been more or less favourable at the beginning, but it became extremely hostile as soon as the converts started to secede from the Lutheran Church, which first happened in Vormsi, in 1880.

As the persecution by the authorities grew more vigorous, the movement dispersed into several factions: converts organised the first Baptist, Irvingite and Free Believers’ congregations in Estonia, and many accepted the Orthodox faith in the 1880s. For instance, on Vormsi Island – the cradle of the awakening movement of Läänemaa – more than 500 people or one fourth of the island’s population converted to Orthodoxy in the 1880s.

In the 1880s, the tendency to convert from the Lutheran to the Orthodox Church also broke out elsewhere in North Estonia, but its centres were in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa. Those who shifted church were mainly motivated by economic and social hopes. After this shift, the Russian Orthodox Church began to build new churches and schools for the peasantry, thus entering into active competition with the Lutheran Church. In Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, 13.2 per cent of the population were Orthodox in 1897.

One of the main reasons why the adopting of Russian Orthodoxy and religious awakening movements spread so rapidly was the remoteness from the people of the Lutheran Church. Up to the founding of the independent Republic of Estonia in 1918, the overwhelming majority of Lutheran pastors were of German origin. Too large congregations also constituted a major drawback of the Lutheran “landlords’ church”. Unlike several popular religious movements and Free Churches, the official church was not able to satisfy fully the people’s religious needs. The language and turns of speech used by the peasant preachers in the prayer house must have been much better understood by the people than the sermon made by the pastor. Probably one of the main secrets of the success of the awakening movements discussed above was in the emotional approach to religion and a more readily understandable message, which the Lutheran Church could not offer. The persecution by the Lutheran Church of the awakened believers often only reinforced the convictions of those that had suffered for their faith and frequently caused hostility towards the Lutheran Church.

In the Estonian congregations of the Russian Orthodox Church, however, most of the priests were Estonians by the beginning of the 20th century. The Tsar’s manifesto of 1905 in principle brought about religious tolerance, which was followed by an upsurge in the activities of the Free Churches and a small-scale re-conversion of Orthodox Estonians into the Lutheran Church. According to the census of 1922, the proportion of the Orthodox had grown to 19 per cent of the population of the Estonian Republic, a development mainly due to the annexing of basically Orthodox territories. 78.6 per cent of the population were registered as Lutheran. In Läänemaa and Hiiumaa the members of the Lutheran and Orthodox Churches made up 82.4 and 12.9 per cent of the population.

Chapter 2 surveys the development of the religious institutions of Läänemaa and Hiiumaa in 1918–2000. First, the period of the independent Republic of Estonia (1918–1940) is discussed. Many confessions suppressed during the period of the Russian Empire got the opportunities for free development under the Republic of Estonia. In Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, religious life outside the Lutheran and Orthodox Churches remained active. In the 1920s and 1930s, several new Free Churches came into being in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa. In addition to the Lutherans and the Orthodox, there were Baptists, Free Believers, Irvingites, Methodists, Evangelical Christians, Pentecostalists, Urshanists, and Adventists, as well as members of the Brethren congregations, part of whom had left the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church (subsequently the EELC).

Although in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa the relative number of so-called sectarians (Free Churches) was higher than anywhere else in the country, their percentage of the total population was not very high, particularly as compared to that of the Lutherans and the Orthodox. At the same time it can be said that whereas most of the sectarians could be considered deeply religious (many denominations such as the Baptists, Free Believers, Pentecostalists, Methodists, and Evangelical Christians granted membership only to the really faithful and some of them did not baptise children nor regard them as members), the percentage of the relatively indifferent church members was rather high among the Lutherans and the Orthodox.

According to the census of 1922, altogether 2,857 persons (3.7 per cent of the population) in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa admitted that they belonged to some Free Church congregations; by the year 1934, the number had risen to 4,458 persons or about 6 per cent of the population, considerably outstripping the other counties. All over Estonia, the number of people adhering to Christian Free Churches had risen to more than 17,000 by the year 1934. By 1940, an estimated 18,000 to 19,000 people may have belonged to the larger Free Churches.

Within the framework of the Free Church congregations there also survived the features characteristic of the religious awakenings of the 18^th–19th centuries – occasionally occurring minor awakenings, manifestations of religious ecstasy, a more popular conception of Christianity. From the year 1940 onward, however, the whole religious life of Estonia underwent a major change in connection with political events.

Sub-chapter 2.2 discusses religious life during the years of Soviet and German occupation. In 1940, the Soviet Army occupied the territory of the Estonian Republic and it was annexed to the Soviet Union. The Soviet suppression of religious institutions and religion as phenomena opposed to the official atheist ideology took force in Estonia, too. The World War II entailed the occupation of Estonia by Germany, in 1941-1944. Even under wartime circumstances, the new foreign power brought some relief to several religious organisations.

After the re-occupation of Estonia by the USSR in 1944, arrests and deportations to Siberia in the families of the leading church activists who had stayed in Estonia started and continued till the 1950s. The war had also left its destructive marks upon many church buildings. The congregations existing in Estonia had to be registered. Several congregations and some smaller denominations (the Jehovah Witnesses, some Pentecostalists and Moravians), however, were forced to stop their activities or worked on illegally.

In Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, independent legal activities were carried on during the Soviet period by the EELC, the Orthodox Church, the Methodist Church, and the Seventh-Day Adventists. In 1945, a great part of Free Churches (Baptists, Free Believers, Pentecostalists, and Evangelical Christians) were forced to join into an alliance called the Evangelical Christian and Baptist Union (subsequently ECBU). In certain parts of Läänemaa, Free Churches tended to be even more influential than the Lutheran Church. In Hiiumaa, the members of ECBU outnumbered the active members of the Lutheran and Orthodox Churches. In the years following the World War II, every fourth grown-up inhabitant of Hiiumaa belonged to the ECBU, and in 1950 members of the ECBU numbered over two times more than Lutheran donating congregation members in Hiiumaa.

In Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, as well as all over Estonia, religious life underwent a long period of decline which lasted till the end of the 1980s, although there were short-lived upsurges in some confessions (e.g. in the years 1955–1958).

From the beginning of the 1960s, the membership of most congregations, participation in the services and religious ceremonies began to fall rapidly in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa. The same happened all over Estonia. The estimated proportion of members of all the legal denominations active in Estonia (in the case of the EELC, the number of donating members, and in the case of the Orthodox Church that of members who participated in big religious ceremonies) dropped from 15 per cent of the population in 1961 to 4.7 per cent by 1987. A particularly severe decrease occurred in the membership of the EELC and the Russian Orthodox Church, whereas the proportion of Free Church members among the faithful increased. By the 1960s, the Orthodox Church was lagging behind the Free Churches (ECBU, Methodist Church, Seventh-Day Adventists) by its donating members’ proportion of the total population of Estonia.

In Läänemaa and Hiiumaa where the relative importance of the Free Churches was greater, the proportion of people adhering to religious denominations also exceeded the average figures for Estonia generally. In 1970, for instance, the donating members of the Lutheran and Orthodox Churches and members of Free Churches made up 17.9 per cent of the population of Hiiumaa and 8.7 per cent of the total population of all Estonia.

During the Soviet period the Estonian Free Churches surpassed even the Lutheran Church by the number of people who regularly attended the services. In 1987, the proportion of people who regularly attended the services of any denomination registered in Estonia could not exceed 1 per cent of the total population, and most of these people belonged to Free Churches.

There are several reasons for the Estonians’ growing indifference towards religion during the discussed period: the general secularisation of society; the weakness of the Lutheran Church; the banning of religious instruction for children; difficulties in schooling a new cadre of clergymen; the almost complete lack of contacts with the rest of the world; the impossibility of legal missionary activities in Estonia, etc.

The lowest point in the activities of the Lutheran Church occurred in the 1970s and the first signs of revival appeared only in the 1980s. The same could be said about the other denominations active in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa and Estonia as a whole.

Sub-chapter 2.3 treats on changes in religious life in the years 1988–2000. In the years 1987–1988, we can speak about the beginning of a national reawakening (the so-called “singing revolution”) in Estonia, largely inspired by the perestroika in the Soviet Union. The search for a national identity and personal origins again brought the EELC into the focus of interest; increasing interest was felt for religion, in general.

At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, the number of EELC members and attenders of church ceremonies grew considerably. Most of the other denominations revived, too, and many new members joined the congregations. New denominations and religious movements began to spread, often introduced into Estonia by foreign missionaries. By the year 1995 more than 500 religious congregations had been entered in the Estonian church register.

After the opening years of the 1990s, broader public began to lose interest in different churches, denominations and religious movements. After 1992, the number of members of most Estonian churches and denominations had stabilised or begun to decline. According to the estimate of the author of the present monograph, the proportion of the members of registered denominations made up 7.7 per cent of the population of Estonia (about 115,000 people), by the mid-1990s. Thus, the percentage of the members of different denominations registered in Estonia had not undergone very significant growth as compared to the year 1987, particularly if we take into account the huge increase in the number of different denominations in the 1990s. In 1997, donating members of the EELC numbered 52,370, which makes up 3.6 per cent of the population of Estonia and is only slightly more than in 1987 (3.2 per cent) and over 5 times less than in 1937.

A significant change in the religious life, particularly since the end of the 1980s, has been the diversification of the expressions of people’s religious feelings, which no longer means associating themselves with some traditional religious institution. According to the sociological studies carried out in Estonia in the 1990s, many people consider themselves religious because of certain attitudes, beliefs and practices, but do not participate in the activities of religious institutions where such attitudes are practised collectively. In addition, Christian concepts have been replaced by different ones.

The above observations of the general trends in Estonian religious life after the collapse of the Soviet Union are valid also for Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, where religious life underwent the same kind of high and low tides as elsewhere in Estonia. However, Läänemaa and Hiiumaa have retained its peculiarity, namely, the relatively greater adherence of the population to various Free Churches than is usual in the other counties. But even though the number of different Christian congregations in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa is still comparatively greater than elsewhere in the country, the general proportion of believers has considerably decreased as compared to the 1920s and 1930s. It seems that the role of different Christian congregations even in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa has grown rather insignificant despite the temporary flourishing at the turn of the 1980s–1990s.

In 1996-1997, studies were made under the supervision of the author of the present monograph, which showed that 33.2 per cent of the inhabitants of Läänemaa and 25 per cent of the inhabitants of Hiiumaa considered themselves religious. The great majority of them associated their belief with Christianity. Yet, at the same time congregation members made up 19.2 per cent of the population in Läänemaa and 18.4 per cent in Hiiumaa. The greater part of them were Lutherans. Most inhabitants of these counties who considered themselves Lutherans or Orthodox, however, cannot actually be regarded as active members of their congregations neither by voluntary payment of the church dues nor by regular attendance at the services, nor can they be considered devoted Christians by the existence or depth of their Christian convictions. The percentage of people strongly bound to their congregation and to Christianity was still higher in the Free Churches.

A particularly great decline has been suffered by the Orthodox congregations. In Hiiumaa, for instance, only one Orthodox church and small congregation continued working in the 1990s, and even then services were held only a couple of times a year, when a priest from Tallinn visited the island; the other two Orthodox churches stood in ruins. The activities of the Brethren congregation have also almost stopped. Only a small group of members of the Estonian Brethren congregation survives in Läänemaa. The number of all the members of the Brethren congregation in Estonia was only around 100, in 1995.

There are also some successful new congregations in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, which gained most of their followers in the 1990s, for example various new congregations of the Pentecostal character. Another more conspicuous new religious grouping today is that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Chapter 3 analyses and sums up the changes in the religious organisations of Läänemaa and Hiiumaa in the 18th to 20th centuries. First, through a comparison of the religious, economical and cultural life of Läänemaa and Hiiumaa and the rest of Estonia, it sets forth the basic factors that assisted or may have assisted in the arising and fast spreading of new outbursts of religiousness in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa in the 18th and 19th centuries. Among these factors figures the poverty of the peasants, as well as the relative backwardness of schools and secular social life. Economic backwardness is most conspicuous in the coastal and island parishes. Most of the greatest outbursts of religious feelings occurred in the poorer coastal parishes of Läänemaa and Hiiumaa. Next, the importance of (socio-)psychological factors in the broad spread of religious movements must be emphasised, as well as the role of leaders, both of local and foreign origin, in the arising and development of the movements.

The difference from the rest of Estonia stands out more clearly in connection with the religious movements of the last quarter of the 19th century. If the earlier movements of the Brethren congregations and the Heaven-Travellers spread wider not only in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, but elsewhere in the country, too, this was not the case with the religious movements of the last quarter of the 19th century. It was the movement of National Awakening that spread at that time in the other Estonian counties; in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, however, it met with the least enthusiastic reception.

The Herrnhuters and activists of new religious movements at the end of the 19th century took a hostile attitude towards popular culture, because of which old beliefs, folk tales and practices were suppressed and forgotten. On the other hand, Läänemaa and Hiiumaa abound in stories about prophets, heaven-travellers, revelations, spirits and everything supernatural. Yet, in the last decades of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries, there existed a rich heritage of older popular beliefs and practices in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa, side by side with Christian beliefs. They existed there together with the popular forms of Christianity spread by different confessions, occasionally intertwining and influencing each other. Therefore it would not be correct to speak about the complete havoc wrought at traditional religion by the earlier Christian religious movements, just like the reports of the complete victory of the religiously awakened over folk musical instruments, clothes, dances, drinking, crime and other “sins” at the highest moments of various religious movements are, as a rule, exaggerated.

Chapter 3 also sets forth the connections of the religious movements of Läänemaa and Hiiumaa and Estonia as a whole with the trends of religious life spreading in the neighbouring countries. Usually, the Christian religious movements in Estonia in the 18th and 19th centuries did not originate among the local peasantry but got at least the initial impact from outside Estonia. Foreign missionaries played an important role in the starting of the religious movements. Both the German Herrnhuters and the Swedish missionaries who started the Awakening of Läänemaa arrived from abroad. A certain role in the conversion of Estonian and Estonian Swedish peasants into Russian Orthodoxy was played by Russian clergy. The religious movements taking place elsewhere also help to understand better the trends of development of the religious movements in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa during the period of their organisation into different Free Churches, in the last quarter of the 19th century. At that time, various Protestant awakening movements and Free Churches were winning broader support in the Baltic guberniyas and Russia’s European territories, as well as in the Lutheran countries of Scandinavia and elsewhere in the world. At the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries, some of these religious movements and Free Churches reached not only West Estonia, but other parts of Estonia, too, mainly through the activities of foreign missionaries.

In their further development, the religious movements in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa acquired several characteristic features, too, especially the movement of the Heaven-Travellers and those of the last quarter of the 19th century. Thus, for instance, the religious awakening movement of Läänemaa features dancing in prayer meetings as a peculiarity, whereas in Hiiumaa, at the beginning of the 20th century, people acted the roles of different animals at prayer meetings. The rituals that gave rise to the name “vat-worshippers”, that is, rituals where a vat was used for baptism or communion, also appear to be a speciality of the revivalist movements of Läänemaa and Hiiumaa. Uncommon are also efforts to “hatch out the God”, to fly to the Heaven (together with a cow), going around naked, hunting the Devil all over the walls, stuffing the Bible into an oven and even attempts to offer people in burnt sacrifice. Yet, reports of such phenomena are frequently unreliable, just like stories about sexual rites practised by the awakened. Even the extreme phenomena in the awakening movements, however, are not fully incredible in the light of reports about similar awakening movements elsewhere in the world. Essentially, the Estonian religious awakening movements of the 18th and 19th centuries were not much different from analogous movements elsewhere in Europe.

Chapter 3 also treats on the differences in the nature, development and membership of the religious movements and denominations, suggesting various possibilities for their classification. The main theoretical framework used here is the typology of sect-denomination-church and the theory of development from sect into church, related to it. The peculiarities of the membership of different types of religious associations in Estonia have been treated comparatively, relying on corresponding studies carried out in West European and North American countries. The membership of Soviet Estonian denominations has also been compared to that of other Soviet republics. Chapter 3 also views the theories of different disciplines studying religion, which help to cast light on the reasons of the broad spread of religious movements in Läänemaa and Hiiumaa and to explain various phenomena within these movements, both on social and individual level. As for the specific phenomena occurring within the movements, religious extremes and fanaticism are dwelt on more thoroughly.

Finally, the main factors that caused changes in the religious life of Läänemaa and Hiiumaa in the 20th century, and primarily secularisation in West Estonia as well as in Estonia as a whole, are analysed. The author found some confirmation to his hypothesis that by the end of the 20th century, Estonian society was among the most highly secularised ones in Europe. By several indicators, Estonia is more secularised than the countries of Northern Europe, which have been defined as the most secularised countries of Western Europe. The author has used sociological studies that cast light on the extent of secularisation in Estonia and the Nordic countries, in the sense of connections with some denomination and with Christian worldview.