Thank you all for your replies.
I had not thought at all of the baptismal robe. I *had* thought of the \"white clergy\" thing but it did seem to me that the context seemed to be wider than clergy only. I am hoping to find Tikhon\'s Works someplace (I can read Russian and French). In the meantime I have started reading a biography of St. Tikhon in English.
Certainly Evdokimov\'s context includes all Orthodox, because he specifically cites the Fathers and later Orthodox on the idea that Orthodoxy teaches that both monastics and non-monastics are called by God to the same level of perfection. And the chapter is about the idea that perhaps \"monasticism\" needs to change its form or that there needs to be a new form of monasticism to suit our age the same way that monasticism originally grew up in the context of radical changes in the social and political environment from early Christianity to Constantine and later. So whatever Tikhon\'s context was, Evdokimov\'s context definitely was about all non-monastics. And he uses the three vows (poverty, chastity, and obedience) as the governing principles for the new form he is suggesting.
I asked my question here because for all I knew there already existed in 18th-century Russia some white-habit folks who were somehow \"monastics in the world\" or \"interiorized monastics\" or \"untonsured monastics\" or something similar. Apparently not.
And yes, I know about the Western practice of having \"third order Franciscans\" and suchlike. My understanding is that Orthodoxy doesn\'t have anything like that, largely because of the principle that Evdokimov enunciates, namely that God\'s call to monastics and to non-monastics is identical. And I\'ve heard the principle also that Orthodox regard monasticism and plain ol\' laity as being extremes of a continuum rather than being qualitatively and radically different.
Please don\'t fasten too much on my precise words, since I am from memory summarizing these various folks. And if there are inaccuracies here, they are mine and not the authors\'.
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