Spiritual Christianity in the Russian Empire, and its successors and diaspora, is a type of Christian thought associated with various sects outside the established Russian Orthodox Church, "which rejected ritual and outward observances, believing in the direct revelation of God to the inner man". Its adherents are called Spiritual Christians or, less accurately, "Molokans" in the United States, often confused with "Doukhobors" in Canada. (Molokane were the largest and most organized of many Spiritual Christian sects at the beginning of the Soviet Union).