Molokan
English
Etymology
Borrowed from Russian молокан (molokan, “dairy-eater, nursing infant, white-colored”).
Noun
Molokan (plural Molokans or Molokane or Molokany)
- A member of a Christian sect that evolved from "Spiritual Christian" Russian peasants who refused to obey the Russian Orthodox Church, beginning in the 1600s in the Russian Empire as an indigenous adaptation of the Protestant movement from Europe. Named for their heresy of eating (including dairy foods), instead of fasting, during Lent.
- 1905 January 13, “Guests of Dubious Desirability”, in The New York Times, volume LIV, number 17,170, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 8, column 5:
- As the Molokany are said to be well supplied with money the chances are that they are less flighty and unpractical than their predecessors, but if ever a National crisis arises here, and they refuse to assist in the defense of their adopted land and its institutions, they may regret that they did not remain under the fickle mercies of the Czar.
- 1947, Steven Runciman, “The Patarenes”, in The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →OCLC, section II, page 98:
- The Molokany, who though sternly puritan are less dualist, hold a Docetist view of Christ similar to the Bogomils’; […]
- 1987, Deborah Hardy, “The Villagers at Work”, in Land and Freedom: The Origins of Russian Terrorism, 1876–1879 (Contributions to the Study of World History; 7), Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 40:
- Deich still longed to be among the peasantry and by midsummer found his way to a small Molokan village where he settled for several months. […] Deich records that his propaganda failed, for although the principles of socialism seemed interesting to his new family, the Molokany were too prosperous, too steeped in the virtues of hard work, too satisfied and proud of their accomplishments to seek a different way of life.
- A general term used (in place of a specific term) in literature and news in and about the Russian Empire to label a member of any Spiritual Christian sect (real or imagined: Holy Roller, Doukhobor, Sabbatarian, Quaker, Mormon, etc.), pacifist, dissenter, non-conformist, coward, wimp.