Archpriest Dmitry Bogoliubov was born on this day in 1869. On December 6, I wrote about Archpriest Leverii Voronov (1914–1995). In 1943, after the Soviet authorities permitted the restoration of the Patriarchate, the church leadership began to search for candidates to teach the future clergy. Ever since the last classes had graduated from the Russian pre-revolutionary seminaries, the pool of candidates had grown shallow: many bishops and trained clergy were killed and died in prisons and of natural causes, while others fled the Soviet Union. The Russian Church Abroad faced the same challenge at this time. In 1948, its only seminary opened at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY. It was hard to find faculty with theological education to teach there. Dmitry Ivanovich Bogoliubov graduated from Moscow Theological Academy in 1894. His specialty was polemics with sectarians. In this capacity, he served in Tambov, Kharkov and St. Petersburg Dioceses. Mr. Bogoliubov authored of many anti-sectarian treaties. One of them, against the Baptists, was reprinted by Archbishop Vitaly (Maksimenko) in 1936 in New York. Church and state were not segregated in the Russian Empire, as in the Byzantine Empire. The Imperial authorities would persecute those whom the church considered heretics and schismatics. However, there were always people, like St. Theodore the Studite in Byzantium (759–826), who opposed these state retributions against the heterodox. Dmitry Bogoliubov was one such person in Russian. He welcomed the edict on religious tolerance issued by Emperor Nicholas II on Easter of 1905. Bogoliubov actively participated in the 1917–1918 All-Russian Council. The fact he became a priest in 1922 proves that he had a living faith. In Moscow, Fr. Dmitry worked closely with Patriarch Tikhon as dean of one of the church administrative units (blagochinie). He opposed any “deals” with the Renovationist schismatics. In these years, he drew upon his education and experience to defend the faith against anti-religious propaganda. As a result of his activities, in 1924, he was arrested for the first time, but soon released. In 1926, he was arrested a second time and sentenced to 3 years in prison. He served his sentence in the camps in Tomsk Region. In 1929, he was released, only to be arrested again the next year and sentenced to 10 years in prison. After the restoration of the Patriarchate in 1943, Fr. Dmitry wrote to Patriarch Sergii (Stragorodskii) expressing his wish to teach at a seminary. By a resolution of the Academic Council of the Orthodox Theological Institute dated June 7, 1944, Fr. Dmitry was approved for the position of associate professor and appointed the head of the “Department of the History of Exposing the Old Believers and Sectarianism”. In 1946, Holy Trinity St. Sergius Lavra was partially returned the Church. The Lavra became the home of Moscow Theological Academy. The future Metropolitan Pitirim (Nechaev) was a student of Fr. Dmitry Bogoliubov. He recalled that his lectures mostly consisted of his personal recollections. This aspect somehow reminds me of some of my classes at Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville. Source: Deacon Sergei Matiushin, “Bogoliubov,” Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia | 
