Category: Global Orthodoxy
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St John Maximovitch on the Purpose of the Russian Diaspora
Last week, the World Russian People’s Council, chaired by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, issued a document called “The Present and Future of the Russian World.” The document contains several problematic ideas. It describes the “Russian World” in this way: “The borders of the Russian world as a spiritual, cultural and civilizational phenomenon are significantly wider…
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The Ecclesiology of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Over Time
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is undoubtedly one of the most consequential figures in modern Orthodox history – not only the longest-tenured Patriarch of Constantinople ever, but also a man whose leadership has proven decisive for Orthodoxy around the world. It is for this reason that, in my article on the political history of the past century…
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Athenagoras: The EP is not an Orthodox Vatican
For a while now, I’ve been documenting the close relationship between the U.S. government and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in the early years of the Cold War. It was thanks in large part to American influence that Athenagoras attained the throne in Constantinople, and he relished the idea that he was an agent of Americanism, the…
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Meletios Metaxakis’s Support for St Tikhon
The 1923 Pan-Orthodox Congress is most (in)famous for proposing the Revised Julian (“New”) Calendar, which was subsequently adopted by many (but far from all) of the world’s Orthodox Churches. The Congress occurred at one of the most tumultuous moments in church history (you can read all about the crazy year that was 1923 here). One…
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A Non-Chalcedonian Bishop Converts to Orthodoxy in 1912
The following is a translation from Asad Rustum’s History, vol. 3 pp. 357-362. It is not only interesting in terms of the description of the ceremony, but also because the conversion seems to have occurred through the Syriac bishop’s contact with Russian pilgrims. Recalling this moment of hope for Christian unity in Syria– just 112 years…
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St Raphael Hawaweeny vs the Pope of Rome
In 1894, Pope Leo XIII issued a papal encyclical on the “Eastern Rites” — that is, the Uniates, those groups who use ancient Orthodox liturgical rites but submit themselves to the Pope of Rome. In 1898, St Raphael Hawaweeny, then an archimandrite in New York, published a response in a periodical called Faith and Reason, and…
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Patriarch Bartholomew’s Enthronement Speech
On October 22, 1991, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was enthroned in Istanbul. As far as I can tell, his enthronement speech has never been published in English, although a broadcast of the enthronement — available on YouTube — conveniently includes an English voiceover. My research assistant Cassidy Irwin transcribed that voiceover. Here is that transcript. ***…
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Amazing 1915 Letter on Jurisdictionalism in American Orthodoxy
The following remarkable letter appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on March 18, 1915. It offers a well-informed but obviously partisan perspective on the Orthodox reality in America and globally in 1915 — in the midst of World War I. There’s so much happening in this letter, so many layers. It has to be one of…
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Freemasonry and the Orthodox Church
If you search the internet for Orthodoxy and Freemasonry, most of what you’ll find will be condemnations of the movement. You might also find my 2012 article on Freemasonry in American Orthodox history. But, as far as I know, there hasn’t been much work done to document the basic history of Orthodoxy and its interaction…
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How Did Orthodoxy Get Into This Mess?
It almost goes without saying that the Orthodox world is a mess right now. The situation in Ukraine alone is a disaster: a Russian invasion of the country backed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by the state, and a recognized-by-only-some Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) that was created…