The Orthodox Churches Today

Since the end of the Second World War all the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe have found themselves under Marxist governments: the Churches of Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, and the smaller Churches in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

The ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch survive as much diminished communities, representing the Churches which once formed the heartlands of Christianity. The Patriarchate of Alexandria, whose head has the title of Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, has in recent years established new congregations in Central and East Africa, where numbers of local Africans have joined the Orthodox Church.

Meanwhile, Orthodox Christianity has been spread­ing outside traditionally Orthodox countries. The Russian Orthodox Church carried out extensive missionary activity in the territories absorbed into the Russian Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the very end of the eighteenth century, Russian missionaries began to work in Alaska and soon laid the foundations of an Orthodox Church in North America. A Russian diocese was set up in 1840. Immigration from Greece and other Orthodox countries in Europe led to the establishment of Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and Romanian parishes, which were at first under the jurisdiction of the one Russian diocese. But in the early twentieth century separate ethnic jurisdictions were set up, fragmenting the original unity of Orthodoxy in America. Political conditions in Europe in the twentieth century have still further increased the numbers of immigrants from Orthodox countries. Those in diaspora from countries under Marxist rule have tended to split along political lines. Some recognise the authority of the patriarchates in the mother country. Others refuse to do so, doubtful of their spiritual independence from the government.

The existence of parallel, national, episcopates is a denial of the Orthodox understanding of the Church, which affirms the principle that there can be only one bishop in any one place, as the focus of the unity of all local Christians. But the strength of the national traditions within Orthodoxy has so far proved greater than that of strict Orthodox theology, and emigres from Orthodox countries often regard their church as their one remaining link with their native land and culture. Nevertheless the spread of Orthodoxy to most parts of the world by emigration has meant that Orthodoxy has ceased to be exclusively Eastern. In most places where they have settled, Orthodox Christians have attracted converts from among the local population, and the vernacular has increasingly come to be used in worship. In Western Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere Orthodoxy now fives side by side with other Christian traditions, and is in contact with them locally, as well as through its now strong involvement in the international ecumenical movement.

All the Orthodox churches are united by a common faith and by common forms of worship. They recognise a primacy ofhonour in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The immediate jurisdic­tion of the Ecumenical Patriarch has suffered severe losses since the end of the First World War, when conflict between Greeks and Turks led to the emigra­tion to Greece and elsewhere of the majority of the Greeks in Turkey. But his jurisdiction extends to all Greek Orthodox living outside Greece and Cyprus.

It includes, too, Mount Athos, which forms a self­governing monastic community within the Republic of Greece. In recent years the Holy Mountain has experienced a renewal of monastic life, with significant numbers of young and often well-educated men joining the monasteries. Monastic life remains important throughout the Orthodox Church, and it is from the monks that bishops are always chosen.