A faith is on the edge of vanishing in Georgia after being exiled from Russia centuries ago

GORELOVKA, Georgia (AP) — A 10-year-old boy proudly stands beside his father and listens to the monotone chanting of elderly women clad in embroidered headscarves and long colorful skirts. It is Ilya's first time attending a night prayer meeting in Gorelovka, a tiny village in the South Caucasus nation of Georgia, and he is determined to follow the centuries-old hymns that have been passed down through the generations.

There is no priest and no iconography. It's just men and women praying together, as the Doukhobors have done since the pacifist Christian sect emerged in Russia in the 18th century.

Thousands of their ancestors were expelled to the fringes of the Russian Empire almost two centuries ago for rejecting the Orthodox church and refusing to serve in Czar Nicholas I's army — much like the thousands of men who fled Russia two years ago to avoid being drafted to join Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Today, only about 100 Doukhobors remain in the tight-knit Russian-speaking farming community in two remote mountainous villages.

“Our people are dying,” 47-year-old Svetlana Svetlishcheva, Ilya's mother, tells The Associated Press, as she walks with her family to an ancient cemetery.

Some 5,000 Doukhobors who were banished in the middle of the 19th century established 10 villages close to the border with the hostile Ottoman Empire, where they continued to preach nonviolence and worshipped without priests or church rituals.

The community prospered, growing to around 20,000 members. When some refused to pledge allegiance to the new czar, Nicholas II, and protested by burning weapons, the authorities unleashed a violent crackdown and sent about 4,000 of them to live elsewhere in the vast Russian Empire.

Nonviolence is the foundation of Doukhobor culture, says Yulia Mokshina, a professor at the Mordovia State University in Russia, who studies the group.

“The Doukhobors proved that without using force, you can stand up for the truth,” Mokshina says. “They fought without arms but with their truth and internal power.”

Their plight caught the attention of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, also a pacifist, who donated the profits from his final novel “Resurrection” to help around 7,500 Doukhobors emigrate to Canada to escape persecution.

And all the while, the prayers never stopped, not even when the Soviet authorities relentlessly cracked down on religious activities.

“There hasn’t been a single Sunday without prayer,” Yuri Strukov, 46, says with pride, in the village of Orlovka, where he has lived for 30 years.

Like others in the rural community, Strukov owns cattle and produces cottage cheese, sour cream and a brined cheese called suluguni, which he sells in a nearby town. His way of life is challenging — he braves freezing temperatures during winter and droughts in the summer, and the remote village is a three-hour drive from the nearest big city — which does not appeal to many Doukhobors any longer.

“The community has changed because it became small," Strukov says. "The fact that there are few of us leaves a heavy residue in the soul.”

In Soviet times, the Doukhobors maintained among the best collective farms in the region. But the nationalist sentiment that bubbled up in Georgia as the collapse of the Soviet Union loomed prompted many to return to Russia in the late 1980s.

“We didn’t relocate, we came back,” says 39-year-old Dmitry Zubkov, who was among the first convoy of 1,000 Doukhobors who left Gorelovka for what is now western Russia in 1989. Zubkov and his family settled in the village of Arkhangelskoye in Russia's Tula region.

Strukov also thinks about moving.

After several waves of Doukhobors departed, ethnic Georgians and Armenians — Orlovka is close to the Armenian border — moved in, and he says relations between them and the ever-shrinking community of Doukhobors are tense. His four family members are the last Doukhobors living in Orlovka.

But the prayer house and his ancestors' graves keep him from leaving.

“The whole land is soaked with the prayers, sweat and blood of our ancestors," he says. "We always try to find the solution in different situations so we can stay here and preserve our culture, our traditions and our rites.”

Doukhobor rites have traditionally passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth, and Strukov's 21-year-old daughter Daria Strukova feels the urgency to learn as much as she can from senior community members.

“I’m always worried that such a deep and interesting culture will just get lost if we don’t take it over in time,” Strukova says.

She says she considered converting to the Georgian Orthodox Church as a student in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where that faith wields great influence. But her doubts were dispelled as she listened to a Doukhobor choir during a prayer meeting.

“I realized that this is what I missed, this is what I couldn’t find anywhere," she says. "I know now that the Doukhobor faith will always be with me till the end of my life.”

Zubkov says Strukova's wavering faith is not unusual among Doukhobors in Russia. Once they assimilate into Russian society, experience big cities, speak the same language and share traditions with the locals, of course they will be tempted by the predominant religion.

“People didn’t want to stand out," he says. "Unfortunately, we have been assimilating very fast.”

Around 750 Doukhobors settled in Arkhangelskoye more than 30 years ago. Now, only a few elderly women attend Sunday prayers, and only a couple of Doukhobors sing traditional anthems at funerals.

Zubkov predicts that within a decade the culture will disappear from Arkhangelskoye altogether.

The Doukhobors whose families started anew in Canada more than a century ago don't feel a strong connection to the villages that are sacred for the Strukov family. They say what is important is their faith and the pacifist principles that underscore it.

“We do not hold any specific place and historical places ... in some kind of spiritual significance,” said John J. Verigin Jr., who leads the largest Doukhobor organization in Canada. “What we try to sustain in our organization is our dedication to those fundamental principles of our life concept.”

But Ilya, in Gorelovka, is comforted by the knowledge that his community, culture and faith are rooted in a place established by his ancestors.

“I see myself a tall grown-up going to the prayers every day in Doukhobor clothes," Ilya said. "I will love coming here, I love it now too.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Ilya Strukov, 10, kisses a tombstone on a grave of his Doukhobor ancestors at a cemetery outside of the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Yuri Strukov, left, his son Ilya, daughters Nina and Daria, and his wife Svetlana Svetlishcheva, right, pray before a meal in their house in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Yuri Strukov, second left, his son Ilya, left, and his daughters Daria and Nina in traditional Doukhobor dresses embrace each other after Easter prayer at the former Orphanage house where Doukhobors has worshiped for years, in the remote mountain village of Gorelovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Yuri Strukov, second left, and his son Ilya, left, pray at the former Orphanage house where Doukhobors has worshiped for years, on Easter in the remote mountain village of Gorelovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Daria Strukova, right, helps her sister Nina Strukova, left, put on a traditional Doukhobor dress in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Daria Strukova lays out traditional Doukhobor dresses in her family home in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Daria Strukova takes Easter cakes off a stove in her family home in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Ilya Strukov, 10, looks on in the kitchen as his family cooks dinner in their house in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Svetlana Svetlishcheva, left, and her daughter Nina Strukova, right, talk as they cook dinner in their house in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

A cat looks out of a window of a cowshed at Yuri Strukov's farm in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Svetlana Svetlishcheva feeds the cattle alongside her husband Yuri Strukov at their farm in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Yuri Strukov, 46, milks a cow at his farm in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Yuri Strukov's house in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Yuri Strukov, 46, his son Ilya, 10, and his daughter Daria, 21, pray at the Doukhobor cemetery outside of the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Yuri Strukov, 46, milks a cow at his farm in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Nina Strukova, Daria Strukova, Ilya Strukov and their mother Svetlana Svetlishcheva walk to a cemetery outside the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Women in traditional Doukhobor dresses pray at the former Orphanage house where Doukhobors has worshiped for years, on Easter in the remote mountain village of Gorelovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing a government shutdown deadline, the Senate rushed through final passage early Saturday of a bipartisan plan that would temporarily fund federal operations and disaster aid, dropping President-elect Donald Trump's demands for a debt limit increase into the new year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had insisted Congress would “meet our obligations” and not allow federal operations to shutter ahead of the Christmas holiday season. But the day's outcome was uncertain after Trump doubled down on his insistence that a debt ceiling increase be included in any deal — if not, he said in an early morning post, let the closures “start now.”

The House approved Johnson's new bill overwhelmingly, 366-34. The Senate worked into the night to pass it, 85-11, just after the deadline. At midnight, the White House said it had ceased shutdown preparations.

“This is a good outcome for the country, ” Johnson said after the House vote, adding he had spoken with Trump and the president-elect “was certainly happy about this outcome, as well.”

President Joe Biden, who has played a less public role in the process throughout a turbulent week, was expected to sign the measure into law Saturday.

“There will be no government shutdown," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

The final product was the third attempt from Johnson, the beleaguered House speaker, to achieve one of the basic requirements of the federal government — keeping it open. And it raised stark questions about whether Johnson will be able to keep his job, in the face of angry GOP colleagues, and work alongside Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who called the legislative plays from afar.

Trump's last-minute demand was almost an impossible ask, and Johnson had almost no choice but to work around his pressure for a debt ceiling increase. The speaker knew there wouldn’t be enough support within the GOP majority to pass any funding package, since many Republican deficit hawks prefer to slash federal government and certainly wouldn’t allow more debt.

Instead, the Republicans, who will have full control of the White House, House and Senate next year, with big plans for tax cuts and other priorities, are showing they must routinely rely on Democrats for the votes needed to keep up with the routine operations of governing.

“So is this a Republican bill or a Democrat bill?” scoffed Musk on social media ahead of the vote.

The drastically slimmed-down 118-page package would fund the government at current levels through March 14 and add $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers.

Gone is Trump’s demand to lift the debt ceiling, which GOP leaders told lawmakers would be debated as part of their tax and border packages in the new year. Republicans made a so-called handshake agreement to raise the debt limit at that time while also cutting $2.5 trillion in spending over 10 years.

It’s essentially the same deal that flopped the night before in a spectacular setback — opposed by most Democrats and some of the most conservative Republicans — minus Trump’s debt ceiling demand.

But it's far smaller than the original bipartisan accord Johnson struck with Democratic and Republican leaders — a 1,500-page bill that Trump and Musk rejected, forcing him to start over. It was stuffed with a long list of other bills — including much-derided pay raises for lawmakers — but also other measures with broad bipartisan support that now have a tougher path to becoming law.

House Democrats were cool to the latest effort after Johnson reneged on the hard-fought bipartisan compromise.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said it looked like Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, was calling the shots for Trump and Republicans.

“Who is in charge?” she asked during the debate.

Still, the House Democrats put up more votes than Republicans for the bill's passage. Almost three dozen conservative House Republicans voted against it.

“The House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working-class Americans all across the nation,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, referring to Trump's “Make America Great Again” slogan.

In the Senate, almost all the opposition came from the Republicans — except independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who said Musk's interference was “not democracy, that's oligarchy.”

Trump, who has not yet been sworn into office, is showing the power but also the limits of his sway with Congress, as he intervenes and orchestrates affairs from Mar-a-Lago alongside Musk, who is heading up the new Department of Government Efficiency.

The incoming Trump administration vows to slash the federal budget and fire thousands of employees and is counting on Republicans for a big tax package. And Trump's not fearful of shutdowns the way lawmakers are, having sparked the longest government shutdown in history in his first term at the White House.

“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now,” Trump posted early in the morning on social media.

More important for the president-elect was his demand for pushing the thorny debt ceiling debate off the table before he returns to the White House. The federal debt limit expires Jan. 1, and Trump doesn't want the first months of his new administration saddled with tough negotiations in Congress to lift the nation's borrowing capacity. Now Johnson will be on the hook to deliver.

“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Trump posted — increasing his demand for a new five-year debt limit increase. "Without this, we should never make a deal."

Government workers had already been told to prepare for a federal shutdown that would send millions of employees — and members of the military — into the holiday season without paychecks.

Biden has been in discussions with Jeffries and Schumer, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “Republicans blew up this deal. They did, and they need to fix this.”

As the day dragged on, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell stepped in to remind colleagues “how harmful it is to shut the government down, and how foolish it is to bet your own side won’t take the blame for it.”

At one point, Johnson asked House Republicans at a lunchtime meeting for a show of hands as they tried to choose the path forward.

It wasn’t just the shutdown, but the speaker’s job on the line. The speaker’s election is the first vote of the new Congress, which convenes Jan. 3, and some Trump allies have floated Musk for speaker.

Johnson said he spoke to Musk ahead of the vote Friday and they talked about the “extraordinary challenges of this job.”

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves, Mary Clare Jalonick, Darlene Superville and Bill Barrow contributed to this report.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., celebrates as the Senate begins voting on the government funding bill just in time to meet the midnight deadline, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., celebrates as the Senate begins voting on the government funding bill just in time to meet the midnight deadline, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks to reporters after passing the funding bill to avert the government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks to reporters after passing the funding bill to avert the government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Capitol is pictured in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., emerges from a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., emerges from a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., talks with reporters after attending a meeting with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., as the House works on a spending bill to avert a shutdown of the Federal Government, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

FILE - President-elect Donald Trump poses for a photo with Dana White, Kid Rock and Elon Musk at UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden, Nov. 16, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks briefly to reporters just before a vote on an interim spending bill to prevent a government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. The vote failed to pass. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)