Writing a Russian Priest during the latter days of the monarchy

In the process of a long-term novel project set during the decline of Imperial Russia and the rise of Sovietism. One of the main characters is a priest in a small village in the northern part of that country, but the question is: “Am I going about this character in the correct manner?”

Ilya was born in Ekaterinburg in the mid-1850s (ironically the very town the last czar would be executed in) and entered seminary. Over time he began to question the motives and actions of the Russian Orthodox Church. This idea mainly comes from what was recorded in Orlando Figes’ A PEOPLE’S TRAGEDY, which is one of several references being used in my research, which described the ROC priests as being indifferent to teaching Christianity to the masses, with the city-based clergy being lesser aristocrats who didn’t really offer much to urban workers, while rural priests simply didn’t bother to educate the highly-superstitious peasants. This convinces Ilya that the ROC is rejecting the Great Commission in favor of power and wealth.

On that same note, Ilya further rejects that the czar, Alexander III and later Nicholas II, is not God’s representative on Earth and that the ROC is simply treating him as their Pope-equivalent. He feels that the church being grafted at the hip of the monarchy will hurt it in the eyes of the people in the long run: a warning that materializes after the Russo-Japanese War and WWI. The pogroms, likewise, don’t make much sense to him.

The question is that, based on what we know, would such deviations result in his excommunication or would just sending him to an obscure village (as I had planned) be enough?

I doubt many people here would have the knowledge to answer this question, try asking it on reddit ask historians, which is heavily moderated to get answers to your questions that are reliably sourced.