Sophie Koulomzin
Professor of Christian Education [1954–1973]
Sophie Koulomzin (December 3, 1903–September 29, 2000), renowned Orthodox Christian religious educator, was born Sophie Schidlovsky in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1903. She was the daughter of Sergei Schidlovsky, the last vice president of the Czar's Duma, or Parliament. A life of privilege was replaced by one of poverty as the family endured the first years of Soviet rule, then fled, first to Estonia, where her father died, then Berlin, then Paris.
In Germany, she studied philosophy at the University of Berlin and took part in philosophical discussions led by Nikolai Berdyaev, The Rev. Sergius Bulgakov, and Semyon Frank, leading Russian religious thinkers and former Marxists who became liberal Christians and were expelled from the Soviet Union by Lenin in 1922. They were formative in her development as a broad-minded Orthodox Christian activist.
In 1926, a scholarship from the John D. Rockefeller Fund took her to the U.S., where she graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in Religious Education. Returning to Paris, she became a leader of the Russian Christian Student Movement, taught émigré children in church schools and summer camps, and edited two volumes of church school lessons. This experience strengthened her conviction that “what émigré children needed most of all was to experience being Orthodox in a non-Orthodox culture,” laying the foundation for her work in Orthodox religious education in the United States.
Mrs Koulomzin was married in 1932 to Nikita Koulomzin, an engineer who was also of aristocratic descent. They had three daughters, Elizabeth, Olga, and Xenia, and a son, George. During their family’s time in Paris, Mrs Koulomzin did social work among poor Russian émigrés, working with Elizabeth Skobtsova, who became the Orthodox nun known as “Mother Maria” and died in the Ravensbrück concentration camp as punishment for rescuing Jews during the German occupation. Mother Maria has since been canonized by the Orthodox Church. Surviving the occupation, the Koulomzin family lived in Paris and then in the French provinces, where they also helped Soviet prisoners of war taken by the Germans.
In 1948 the Koulomzins moved to Nyack, N.Y., and Mrs Koulomzin resumed work as a religious educator, creating an English-language education program and lecturing across the country. She founded the Orthodox Christian Education Commission (OCEC) to coordinate the work of the various Orthodox Christian church jurisdictions in America.
Faculty in 1958 At Union Seminary: back row (left to right): Boris Ledkovsky, Fr Paul Schneirla, Veselin Kesich, Archimandrite Dr Firmilian, Nicholas Ozerov; front row: Sophie Koulomzin, Alexander Bogolepov, Fr Alexander Schmemann, Nicholas Arseniev, Serge Verhovskoy
Beginning in 1954, she taught for nearly 20 years at St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary. Her tenure at the seminary began with an invitation from Seminary Dean Fr Georges Florovsky to present a lecture on Christian education to a clergy meeting. Her expertise was immediately recognized and she was hired to teach a regular course on religious education. Mrs Koulomzin worked alongside theologians and scholars whom she had known from her life in France, including Fr Alexander Schmemann, whom she had taught as a young boy in her religious education classes in Paris.
Fr Schmemann wrote the forward to Mrs Koulomzin’s book, Lectures in Orthodox Religious Education (now out of print), which summarized the course she taught each year at St Vladimir’s Seminary. He enthusiastically affirmed Mrs Koulomzin’s aptitude for her work, saying, “...in the Orthodox Church in America nothing is more needed today than a clear formulation of religious teaching…No one is better qualified to guide us in this responsible task than Mrs Sophie Koulomzine. Her academic teaching is the fruit of a life-long experience in the field of religious education and her work during the last years as Executive Secretary of the Orthodox Christian Education Commission has won the admiration of those, who are privileged to be associated with her.”
Saint Vladimir's Seminary 1962 yearbook biography
In 1970, St Vladimir’s Seminary recognized Mrs Koulomzin’s great contributions and work in building up Orthodox religious education in America and abroad by awarding her the Degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa.
Mrs Koulomzin spoke of her life’s work in humble terms, writing in her 1980 memoir, Many Worlds: A Russian Life, that the Orthodox community’s “appreciation of my personal work was often exaggerated. As a matter of fact I was an elderly woman, a housewife, a mother and grandmother, with no theological education, but bearing within me the heritage of a great Christian culture and of a great Orthodox revival, shaped by catastrophic historic events. I could speak to teachers and parents in our common, family-life kind of language, making our daily life experience part of our experience of life with God. My particular capacities happened to meet at the right moment the strong need of the people. The greatness of their need and of their receptivity conferred on me a dimension I did not really have” (p. 301).
After her official retirement in 1974, she continued working. At the time of her death she was president of “Religious Books for Russia,” founded to send Bibles and religious literature to Russia.
Mrs Koulomzin's books, including God Is with Us, History of the Orthodox Church, and Our Church and Our Children, have become classic texts in Orthodox Christian Religious Education, including within Russia itself. Her memoir, Many Worlds: A Russian Life, written when she was 77, ends with an account of her first visit back to her homeland, in 1970. In July 1999 Patriarch Alexy II, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, issued her the “Order of St Olga” for her many years of service to the Church.