Tag: Constantinople
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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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Early stages of the Bulgarian schism from Constantinople
We just finished running a series of six articles on the 1872 Council of Constantinople, published contemporaneously in the Methodist Quarterly Review. The following article is from about a decade earlier, and describes the early stages of the Bulgarian split from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This piece is from an American journal called The Independent,…
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The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 6
This is the final Methodist Quarterly Review article dealing with the aftermath of the 1872 Council of Constantinople. From the Methodist Quarterly Review, April 1874. The Bulgarian Church question has, on the whole, attracted less attention during the year 1873 than in the previous years. The Bulgarians, undoubtedly, have the sympathy of the Slavic…
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The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 5
This article is the fifth in a six-part series on the 1872 Council of Constantinople. In this installment, we learn about the aftermath of the Council. The one bishop who refused to sign the Council’s decree was the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and when he returned to Jerusalem, he was deposed by his Holy Synod. This…
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The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 4
This article is the fourth in a six-part series on the 1872 Council of Constantinople, and this particular report covers the Council itself. It contains what is, to the best of my knowledge, the only complete English translation of the decree of the Council. From the Methodist Quarterly Review, January 1873. The rupture between…
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The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 3
In case you haven’t been following along, this is Part 3 in a 6-part series of articles we began last week, covering the 1872 Council of Constantinople, which famously condemned “phyletism.” All of these articles were published in the Methodist Quarterly Review, within months of the events they discuss. This installment was published in the…
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The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 2
Yesterday, I ran the first of six articles on the so-called “Bulgarian Question,” a controversy that rocked the Orthodox world in the early 1870s and ultimately led to the 1872 Council of Constantinople, which condemned the heresy of “phyletism.” Search the Internet — both Google and the various subscriber-only databases of academic journals — and…
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The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 1
Recently, I had occasion to research the 1872 Council of Constantinople, which somewhat famously condemned “ethno-phyletism.” The issue arose because, as I understand it, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church — which was under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate — declared itself autocephalous. Anyway, before I began this research, I could probably tell you three or…
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The Dionisije Conundrum and why deference doesn’t work
I’m assuming, in this short article, that you’ve read about Serbian Diocese v. Milivojevich. But for those who haven’t: the Serbian Holy Assembly deposed Bishop Dionisije Milivojevich, and Illinois courts basically overruled the deposition on the grounds that the Holy Assembly hadn’t followed its own rules. The US Supreme Court reversed the judgment, holding that…