Month: June 2009

Address given at the SVS conference on Orthodoxy unity in America, June 20, 2009.

Highlight: Met. Jonah introduces into official discourse the need to de-imperialize Orthodox ecclesiology.

1917 Council and Tomos: St Tikhon’s Vision Then and Now

Metropolitan Jonah

The Great Council of 1917, and the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church that it began, are aspects of the de-imperialization of the Orthodox Church and its canonical structures. This began a process of the transcendence of the imperial domination of Orthodox ecclesiology, which reigned from Constantine and Theodosius to Nicholas II, and the beginning of the adaptation to a new era in which the Church is independent of the state. This was the beginning of a new conciliar vision, which has developed significantly over the past century. What it did is to set up a new set of structural and canonical interpretations, demanding a worldwide rethinking of Orthodox ecclesiology.

The fruit of this vision, partially, is the Orthodox Church in America, and her autocephaly. The conflict with the old ecclesiological and canonical interpretations forms the context for the issues surrounding the acceptance or rejection of the autocephaly. This conflict is, however, also the fruitful ground for a creative resolution to the issues confronting the OCA, and the Orthodox Church throughout the world.

The Orthodox Church in Russia began preparing for a great Council over a hundred years ago, particularly in 1905. In the final decades of the Russian Empire there was a tremendous intellectual ferment among the clergy and intelligentsia of the Russian Church that not only sought a way out of the morass of the Oberprokurator system suppressing the Patriarchate, established by Peter the First, but that was also very much in dialog with the social, political and cultural developments of the time. The Russian Empire not only had tens of thousands of churches, and over a thousand monasteries, in its own territory, using Slavonic and a “standard” practice also taught in the seminaries and academies; there were dozens of missions to tribes of many languages, as well as extensive foreign missions, including that to North America. Each of these served in the local language, generated liturgical and catechetical material in these languages, and recruited and trained local indigenous clergy.

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Hartford Institute for Religion Research

HT: Orthodox Christian Laity

A Quick Question

How many Eastern Orthodox are there in the USA?

The quick answer: Far less than usually reported.

The longer answer: According to a recent study of Orthodoxy in the United States, the real membership (number of adult adherents and their children) in all Eastern Christian Churches in the USA can be estimated at about 1,200,000 persons. This figure is considerably less than the commonly accepted estimations, which range as high as over four million.

The greatest disproportions between “claimed” and actual memberships were found in the two largest Orthodox jurisdictions:

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (typically claimed 1,954,500* members versus 440,000 actual adherents)

Orthodox Church in America (1,000,000* versus 115,000 actual adherents)
* membership figures are from the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, National Council of Churches, 2000.

The most likely reason for this discrepancy is the common practice of equating Church membership with the total number of representatives of a corresponding ethnic group including second and third American generations of the original immigrants, independent of these persons actual relationship to the Orthodox Church.

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First of all, thank you to St. Vladimir Seminary, St. Andrew House, and Orthodox Christian Laity for sponsoring the webcast. Thank you to Ancient Faith Radio, and Executive Producer Dean Calvert and crew for making the webcast possible.

I saw perhaps a quarter of it. The first seminars dealt with historical themes, important and interesting (had to concentrate though) but I won’t comment on them here. I found the lecture on the “myth of autocephaly” very interesting, particular how the narrative of how autocephaly was obtained shapes contemporary self-understanding in the autocephalous Churches. This deals more with how historical narrative functions in a community, than the veracity of the actual narrative. (Of course, veracity is contentious term since history is, at bottom, narrative. Nevertheless, some history is “truer” than others, witness the attempts by the Marxists and other culture barbarians to rewrite it.) Back to the subject…

Dr. Paul Meyendorff, professor of Liturgical Theology at St. Vladimir Seminary, clearly understands the power of the internet. It gives voice to the laity and makes it impossible to hide malfeasance are two points he brought out. It’s a qualified good of course, but the Church hierarchy must come to grips with the fact that business as usual just doesn’t work anymore. Reference was made to a previous discussion that touched on this topic but I did not see it. Dr. Meyendorff wants others to grasp this as well. (We at AOI get it.)

Mr. Charles Ajalat, Chancellor of the Antiochian Archdiocese was perhaps the most outspoken but voiced ideas many people say privately. It was good to hear them expressed in a public forum. Some of them include reestablishing a married episcopate because in some cases we are not drawing the level of leadership talent that we need. He was more critical of the Chambesy conference than AOI has been because it offered a structure (the Bishop assemblies) that too closely mirrored SCOBA and thus could become ineffectual, another roadblock to unity. Fr. Mark Arey from the GOA countered his assertion by listing programs under SCOBA sponsorship such as OCMC (the mission program), IOCC (world aid), OCPM (prison ministry) and so forth, but Mr. Ajalat replied that these programs arose largely through the private initiative of priests and laity, not hierarchical leadership. He is correct in this.

Fr. Mark Arey, Ecumenical Officer of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, mentioned the importance of unity despite the differences. This is a good caution. However, not much more was offered beyond this. I was expecting some comment on the Orthodox-Hellenism-Greek historical apologetic, especially since it appears that the Chambesy conference effectively repudiated it. Constantinople’s position is that unity in America requires that all jurisdictions come under Constantinople, so I thought at least the idea would be defended but not a word on it.

I missed Met. Jonah’s talk unfortunately. Had a hospital call in the morning and then completely forgot about it until it was over. However, Met. Jonah made a comment in the discussion portion I have never heard a hierarch make: The Antiochians and the OCA should “come together” as a first step in establishing an American Church. Bold idea, especially coming from someone in leadership.

As mentioned at the outset, I only caught bits and pieces of the three-day seminar. Still, you could sense the shift in momentum towards an American Orthodox Church that seems to be growing. The next conference on Orthodox Unity will be sponsored by Orthodox Christian Laity in October. Info posted separately.