Synod of the Orthodox Church in America. American Orthodox Church
Somewhere far, far away, in other countries, beyond the seas and oceans, people unknown to us, just like us, visit the temple, take their children to Sunday school, pray in the mornings and evenings, and make pilgrimages. But it seems that all this is happening a little differently, because both our language and traditions are different... Starting from this issue, we will talk about the peculiarities of the life of Orthodox Christians in other countries of the world. Today we bring to our readers notes from Ekaterina Chernova, a student from Russia who is currently studying in the USA.
The very word “Orthodoxy” sounds unusual in America to Russian ears—Orthodox. Therefore, the Orthodox Church here is called the Orthodox Christian Church, and Orthodox Christians are called Orthodox Christians.
According to the American magazine Washington Profile, among US residents, 56% are Protestants, 28% are Catholics, 2% are Jews, 1% are Muslims, 3% are adherents of other religions, and 10% are non-believers. Orthodox Christians in this country, as “adherents of other religions,” make up less than 2% of the population. I was surprised that on the American continent, like in no other part of the world, there are so many Orthodox jurisdictions. There are parishes of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Cypriot, Georgian, Hellenic, Albanian, Polish, Czechoslovak, American, Japanese, and Chinese Orthodox Churches.
The Orthodox American Church received autocephaly from the Russian Mother Church relatively recently, in 1970. Historical fact: the emergence of the Orthodox Church in America is connected with the missionary activity of the Russian Church. At the end of the 18th century, Russian missionaries - monks of the Valaam and Konevsky monasteries - came to preach the word of God to Russian America, the most remote region of their Fatherland at that time. Anyone who is at least a little familiar with the history of the Russian state will immediately understand that Alaska is the only state in which there are more Orthodox Christians than representatives of any other religion. So it is, because until 1867 the peninsula belonged to the great Russian Empire.
As for the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA itself, today it includes four deaneries: the Atlantic, Eastern, Western and Central states. There are also Patriarchal parishes in New York. The jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate includes the St. Nicholas Patriarchal Cathedral and the Monastery of St. Mary of Egypt with the House of Mercy.
St. Nicholas Cathedral - the first Orthodox Church, which I visited in New York. This is not just the main temple of the Russian Church on the American continent - the cathedral is a decoration of the city and has the status of an architectural monument. Here, in the summer of 2005, a memorial service was celebrated for General A. Denikin - before his ashes were taken to his homeland.
***
The life stories of Orthodox priests and laity in the United States are often surprising. Most likely, this is due to the fact that most Christians are emigrants from different countries peace. Many of them converted to Orthodoxy while already in America. They say that it was here that they understood the futility of human efforts, acutely felt spiritual loneliness, and learned to entrust themselves to the will of God. For some reason, people approach God only when faced with serious problems, having experienced a personal tragedy. How nice it would be if this happened after some joy!
My acquaintances, graduate students from Akron, Ohio, told me that in Russia they did not think much about issues of faith and rarely went to the temple that was nearby. In America, mental hunger is so strong that the nearest Orthodox church a hundred kilometers from home is considered happiness...
When corresponding between English-speaking Orthodox Christians (not only when addressing a clergyman), it is customary to begin and end letters by glorifying the name of God. The phrases "Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory Forever!" (“Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!”) at the beginning of the letter and “With Christ’s love...” (“With the love of Christ...”) at the end are common among Americans who profess Orthodoxy. They believe that in this way they remind themselves and to its addressee about the meaning of earthly existence.
***
In the town of Fair Lawn (New York metropolitan area), where I lived for several months, there is no Orthodox parish. But within a 50-mile (90-kilometer) radius there are about 70 temples. These are Greek, Russian, Antiochian, Romanian and American Orthodox parishes. However, in the city itself, for a population of 50 thousand, there are several Protestant and Catholic churches, a mosque and 11 synagogues! Therefore on church services Orthodox Fire Lawn, like other residents of the capital province, travel to New York or to the neighboring small cities of Paramus or Passaic. In local churches, where the parish is formed by people of different nationalities, services are usually conducted in both Church Slavonic and English. In two languages, priests read the Holy Gospel and deliver sermons. Sometimes “Cherubimskaya” or “Holy God…” is sung in English. And in the churches of the Greek and Antiochian Churches the ancient tradition of shaking hands after the service has been preserved. All parishioners, acquaintances and strangers, shake hands with the words: “Forgive me!” This is reminiscent of Forgiveness Resurrection, but for Russians it is a little unusual.
Passaic is home to the beautiful Peter and Paul Cathedral, which celebrated its centenary in 2002. Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II, as well as the presidents of Russia and the United States, personally congratulated the parishioners of the church on this date. The congregation of this parish consists mainly of grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the “first wave” emigrants who left Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. They practically no longer speak Russian, but have not yet lost their natural nobility and very strictly adhere to the traditions of Orthodoxy.
The rector of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, priest Andrei Kovalev, decided in his youth that he would certainly become a monk. But his confessor saw that the child was destined for a different path, and blessed the future priest to start a family. Now the father has a growing son. Life in the USA was not a happy place for him and Mother Natalia. To make ends meet, the two of them worked hard, even loading ice-cold trays of frozen food. But one day everything changed - by God's providence they received a residence permit, then a parish and a good house. Help them, Lord!
In addition, the Church of the Holy Chief Apostles operates a dating service. Here Orthodox Christians are helped to find a life partner who is a fellow believer, because in America it is difficult to do this on your own. Membership and events are paid, admission costs $100 - this is the whole pragmatism of America.
According to my observations, in America the relationship between the priest and the flock is somewhat different than in Russia. Communication here is more intimate and accessible. For church parishioners, it is common practice to stay after the service for tea and visit the priest at home, having called in advance. On parish websites, in addition to information about the order and time of services, contact numbers of the priest, deacon, churchwarden, regent, you can read the instructions and congratulations of the rector to his flock.
***
I celebrated 2005 with American family Orthodox Greeks in the temple of the Greek Orthodox Church in the city of Paramus. A beautiful New Year's custom has been preserved here since ancient times. Due to the fact that many Greek Orthodox attend Russian and American Orthodox churches, this tradition is maintained there as well.
So, for many centuries in a row, on the eve of the New Year, Orthodox Greeks bake very large bread, kneading a coin into the dough. On January 1, on the day of remembrance of St. Basil the Great, ready-made bread, which is called “St. Basil’s bread,” is brought to the temple for consecration. During the service, the bread is in the altar. After the service, the priest divides it into small parts so that each parishioner gets a piece. The first part is intended for Jesus Christ, the second - for the Most Holy Theotokos, the third - for the Church, the fourth - for the rector of the temple, the fifth - for mother... And so on until all parishioners receive their share. A person whose piece of bread contains a coin receives a blessing from the priest for the coming year. And the one who received such a coin last time shares with those present the joys and sorrows of the past year.
Then I got the St. Basil coin, so I had to answer what the year 2005 from the Nativity of Christ meant for me. She told the parishioners of the temple in Paramus how she used the talents given by God - whether she multiplied them or indifferently “buried them in the ground.”
***
A three-hour drive from New York is the Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Nektarios, the Wonderworker of Aegina. It is located in a picturesque location, among beautiful green hills and many saucer-shaped lakes filled with clear spring water. The address of the monastery is: 100 Lakes Anawanda Rd. Roscoe. Here nature itself sings a hymn to Divine love...
The monastery was founded 7 years ago by the Athonite ascetic Archimandrite Ephraim (Moraitis). The abbot of the monastery, Father Joseph, once warmly received and listened to me, provided me with a letter of recommendation and blessed my stay in the USA.
For some time, the monastery entrusted to Father Joseph was a metochion monastery St. Anthony's in Arizona. It is currently undergoing construction. The monastery of St. Nektarios owns 180 acres of land (73 hectares), on which a chapel, monastic cells, a refectory, and a comfortable hotel for pilgrims, in which there are male and female buildings, were erected. Several more buildings are being reconstructed. As in Russian monasteries, church services here are strict and lengthy, with Matins beginning at four in the morning. The wonderful chants are reminiscent of the chants of our northern Athos - Valaam. The brethren of the monastery are mainly Greeks. Their natural temperament is expressed in some expression of the external image of prayer - in certain parts of the service they lower their whole body onto the monastery floor, and so, prostrate, they pray, thereby showing complete submission to the will of God.
***
According to the director of a private American secondary school in New Jersey, Mr. Andrew Kourkoumelis, in fact, 95% of Orthodox Christians in America marry people of other religions. He believes that this is why children in such families grow up without any religion at all. Historically, many Russians in the United States connect their lives with Russian Jews, so a significant part of schoolchildren are children who are faced with a choice of religion. They are often baptized, which means they formally belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. But we have to admit that very few of them regularly attend church services, and some know nothing at all about their religion. In order to somehow improve the situation, Mr. Kourkoumelis conducts optional Orthodox lessons at school.
Children here learn to make sign of the cross, venerate the icons, they are explained the meaning and rules of the priestly blessing. Together with their director, they go to church on the twelfth and great holidays. This also applies to children from non-Orthodox families, as well as Jews, if they express a desire to attend Divine Liturgy. Mr. Kourkoumelis prays and believes that one day they will receive the Sacrament of Baptism and become Orthodox Christians.
***
More than ten Orthodox Theological Seminaries have been opened in the United States, the largest on the east coast are in Jordanville (belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia) and in Crestwood, near New York (belongs to the American Orthodox Church). Most students and seminaries were former Protestants or Catholics, but then converted to Orthodoxy.
According to Orthodox Americans, the Church on the continent survives only because thousands of their fellow citizens have accepted the Orthodox faith. Therefore, today in the USA there are many Anglo-Saxons, German and Italian Americans, Jews, Spaniards, for whom Orthodoxy has become the only life-giving religion, and the Orthodox Church - the only grace-filled Church. I think it will not be an exaggeration to say that Orthodoxy in America sanctifies the American people and the American continent.
Of course, in Christ there is neither an American nor a Russian - we are all one in Him. No matter what continent we are on, no matter what language we speak, no matter how outwardly our national and cultural traditions may differ, there is the Sacrament of Communion that unites everyone. Heart Orthodox Christian responds vividly to the gentle wave of grace during the Divine Liturgy, wherever it is celebrated - in the majestic patriarchal cathedral in America, in the Greek Orthodox monastery or in a small church, lost in the vast expanses of his native Russia.
New York, USA
Part 1.April 2010 marks the fortieth anniversary of the Orthodox Church in America. The Orthodox Church in America, the youngest autocephalous ("self-governing") church in the family of Orthodox churches, began with the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska (1794) and, through the suffragan bishopric of Alaska (1857), grew first into a diocese North America and the Aleutian Islands (1900). This diocese in turn became a metropolitan area of the United States and Canada in 1924, an ecclesiastical region consisting of several dioceses. In 1970, the metropolitanate received recognition of its autocephaly.
The Orthodox Church in America is unique in the Orthodox world. In her inner life she is guided by the canons of the ancient Church and is free from the pressure of both political regimes and a certain national group. Being faithful to the Orthodox tradition, she at the same time conducts active missionary work in the most open and free society of our time.
In Alaska, Orthodox apostolate began even before the American colonies entered into their struggle for independence. With the discovery of Alaska, Russian industrialists and traders naturally poured here. Already by 1780, five Russian companies were operating in the Aleutian Islands and on the coast of Alaska. With the arrival of the Russians, their faith began to spread. A member of the Alaskan expedition, John Lediard, wrote in his diary in 1776 that they found a Russian colony of about five hundred people in Unalaska and witnessed how at night the Russians, Aleuts and Kamchadals sang evening prayers together, as they understood, according to the tradition of the Greek Church. 
Catherine’s government responded to the calls of industrialists for the cultural and religious colonization of Alaska. In 1793 it authorized the sending of a missionary group of eight monks. However, her activities in Alaska were short-lived. Most of the missionaries died or returned home. Only one of them, monk Herman, remained among the natives throughout his long life filled with exploits. Having canonized him under the name of Rev. Herman of Alaska in 1970, the year it declared its independence, the Orthodox Church in America made him its patron saint. 
However organization Orthodox church life in Alaska is associated with the name of another missionary - a Siberian priest Innokentia Veniaminova. Veniaminov served in Alaska from 1824 to 1858 - fifteen years as a missionary priest and twenty-two years as a missionary bishop. In 1858, after Yakutia and the Amur region were annexed to his Alaskan diocese, his residence was moved to Blagoveshchensk-on-Amur. A suffragan bishop was appointed to Novoarkhangelsk in Alaska.
Being a man of great physical strength, endurance and diverse talents, Innocent built a church, founded a school, and created a meteorological station on his own. Having become familiar with the local dialect, which did not even have a written language, he adapted the Cyrillic alphabet to it as an alphabet, created a primer and grammar and translated the Gospel of Matthew and the Liturgy into the literary language of the Aleuts, which he himself formed, and also wrote a short catechism in it. Several times he traveled around his Alaskan diocese on dog sleds or in a homemade kayak. During one of these trips, Innocent visited San Francisco, where he made friends with Franciscan missionaries, finding with them common language- Latin. Later, he sent them a hand-made organ as a gift, since Catholics complained that they did not have enough of it for worship.
Innocent was also the first scientific discoverer of Alaska. For his works on the ethnography of this region, he was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Thanks to his authority and persistent pressure, the local Russian administration began to implement Catherine's legislation, which prohibited the use of force against the natives and encouraged education among them. The spread of Orthodoxy among the Aleuts and its transformation into their national faith is the result of Innocent’s selfless missionary activity. Innocent's apostolic ministry drew the attention of the Holy Synod to him, and he was unanimously elected to the see of Metropolitan of Moscow - the highest church rank in the Russian Church of the synodal period until the restoration of the patriarchate in 1917. In this capacity, he did not abandon his care of Alaska and established the Russian missionary society. Metropolitan Innocent died in 1879 and almost a hundred years later in 1977 he was canonized by the Moscow Patriarchate on the recommendation of the Orthodox Church in America, for which he remains a holy apostle and heavenly patron.
Metropolitan Innocent had a prophetic vision of the development of Orthodoxy on the American continent, for which he at one time planned the formation of a local Church. Thus, in his letter to the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Count Tolstoy, in connection with the sale of Alaska to the United States, Metropolitan Innocent wrote that he sees in this one of the ways of Providence by which Orthodoxy can penetrate into the United States, where, according to his observations, they “started attacking it.” pay serious attention." To this end, Metropolitan Innocent proposed to transfer the bishop's residence from Alaska to San Francisco, appoint a person who knows English as bishop, as well as replace all Russian clergy and clergy with people who know English, and allow the Orthodox Church in America "to celebrate the liturgy and other church services in English; for which, it goes without saying, service books should be translated into English, and English-language theological schools should be established for the training of missionaries and clergy in America."
Although the Alaskan missionary Innokenty outlined a project for the gradual transformation of a foreign Russian diocese through an exarchate into a local American Church, more than a hundred years passed before this project was realized.
Part 2.
Like other American immigrants, Orthodox immigrants from different countries brought their faith to the New World. Beginning at the end of the last century, they found here some of the beginnings of the church organization founded in the United States by the mission of the Russian Church. Although the first Russian Orthodox chapel (St. Helena) was founded in California, at Fort Ross near San Francisco, back in 1812, the apostolic presence of the Russian Church began only after the sale of Alaska to the United States. In 1868, a multilingual Trinity parish was founded in San Francisco - made up of Greeks, Russians and Serbs - in which services were performed in several languages, including English, and in which English was the language of parish meetings. Two years later, the parish began publishing a multilingual Orthodox newspaper, Slavyanin. At the same time, in 1870, a separate diocese of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands was created, the bishop of which moved his residence to San Francisco. This transfer was authorized a few years later, under his successor. 
In 1870, Orthodoxy appeared on the east coast - in New York. Here he became his preacher Father Nikolai Bjerring, a former Catholic professor who converted to Orthodoxy after the adoption of the dogma of “papal infallibility” at the First Vatican Council. Bjerring was ordained a priest in May 1870 at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and sent to New York on an Orthodox mission. In New York, he founded a house church and began publishing the Journal of the Eastern Church in English. Like the San Francisco parish, the community of Fr. Bjerringa united various Orthodox immigrants in New York: Greeks, Serbs, Syrians, Arabs. Divine services were performed alternately in English and Slavic. Having wide acquaintances in American society (Fr. Bjerring was personally acquainted with the former President of the United States Grant), he did a lot to familiarize the American intelligentsia with Orthodoxy. In 1884, he collected all the English translations of the services published in his Journal of the Eastern Church and published them as a separate book.
However, the activities of Fr. Bjerringa was an exception. The Russian Orthodox Church was not yet ready for missionary work in the United States itself. Here she found herself in unusual political, cultural and religious conditions. The United States, with its boundless personal freedom and initiative, religious tolerance and the absence of any state pressure on the churches, was a legend even for Western Europe, not to mention Russia. The difference in psychology and political consciousness was aggravated by the special position of the Russian Orthodox mission abroad, which was more of a church-diplomatic nature, duplicating the diplomatic presence of the Russian government. The church mission was considered by the Church and, to a greater extent, by the imperial apparatus, as a religious emissariat of the Russian Empire. It is no coincidence that the clergy and episcopate who served abroad received pensions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs upon their return to Russia. This left a certain imprint on the consciousness of the clergy, who partly perceived their work abroad as a temporary mission of a semi-diplomatic nature, which would end with a return to Russia and would be rewarded accordingly. As for bishops, the duration of their service was determined by the Holy Synod. The bishop was considered a high church official, and his appointment was approved by the emperor himself. The bishop did not belong to himself, could not refuse the appointment, and could not extend the term of his ministry. This situation hardly helped the clergy to penetrate the specifics of American conditions. By the time the bishop began to settle in America, he was most often recalled back.
In addition, due to American democracy, completely different relationships developed between believers and the church hierarchy than those to which the Orthodox Church was accustomed. First of all, the Russian Empire, as well as Byzantium, from which it inherited its religious and political organization, was characterized by the concept of “sacred property.” What belonged to the Church was called "sacred property", was under the jurisdiction of the hierarchy and could not be transferred or sold into secular hands. Although Peter's reform in Russia opened up opportunities for widespread violation of this principle, it did not try to abolish it, which, along with the abolition of all property, was accomplished only by the Bolshevik revolution. This understanding of “sacred property” was developed in the Roman Catholic Church and was not even disputed by Orthodox theology.
The main feature of church life in Russia and in Catholic countries There was an almost complete exclusion of the laity from all aspects of church life: the clergy served, and the laity donated money. The laity have no voting rights, cannot choose a priest, let alone a bishop, have no elected officials of their own, and have no control over church finances and property. Priests, like bishops, were appointed and transferred by the Synod without any participation of parishes.
This state of affairs persisted for centuries and was a reflection of philosophy, in which power was always understood as a principle descending from above, and not belonging to the people, or at least as something to which the people must express their consent. In Russia, for example, every official was appointed from above, and this entire hierarchy of appointments went back to the emperor, who was “the autocrat of God’s will.”
In the Russian Empire, the entire social fabric was dominated by the principle of hierarchy, either civil or ecclesiastical. Neither dioceses, nor parishes, nor further secular organizations, such as consistories or “elders,” had elected officials. Only from the end of the 19th century was very limited parish self-government allowed in the western regions of the Russian Empire, where Western influences and the presence of Uniates with a tradition of self-government were strong.
The state was no less arbitrary in the management of church property. After the reforms of Peter the Great in the 18th century, church property was regulated by civil and church legislation, reflecting the principles of the state religion. Although theocratically church property belonged to the Church, in practice the Church itself was part of the state organism, and its property was state “sacred property.”
The situation was completely different in the United States. There is no concept of “sacred property” here at all. Church buildings are bought and sold. Any group of believers can form a religious corporation and acquire property without asking anyone for permission. In addition, Orthodox immigrants found themselves in an environment in which open discussion of issues, voting, elections, constant control of voters over elected officials and accountability of officials were the normal state of affairs.
The specifics of American conditions influenced the creation of new forms of church life, unknown in countries of state Orthodoxy. Orthodox immigrants here followed the natural path of independently organizing their church life, forming religious corporations and acquiring church property in the name of the corporation. If the Russian Orthodox hierarchy did not actively encourage a new style of relations, it was not able to particularly prevent it. It was only facilitated by the high turnover of the clergy and the frequent change of bishops.
Despite these qualitatively new conditions and the poor preparedness of the Russian Church to witness to the non-Orthodox, the Russian diocese was able to take care of those groups of Orthodox immigrants who turned to it. These were mainly Serbs, Arabs, and Romanians from Transylvania. However, the main backbone of the Russian Orthodox diocese was destined to consist of immigrants from Austria-Hungary, Carpatho-Russians, or Russins.
Thus, multilingual parishes began to grow within the Russian diocese in the United States. Different national groups: Serbs, Arabs, Bulgarians, etc. (with the exception of the Greeks, who in the mass remained isolated and independent) - created either ethnically homogeneous or mixed multilingual parishes, turning to the Russian bishop for an antimension and with a request to send a priest who could serve them in their native language or in English. Since since ancient times in the Orthodox world the principle of the jurisdiction of one bishop or the administrative authority of one local church in the territory of its mission and spiritual care has been observed, no other local Orthodox churches have laid claim to the territory of America, which was under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. Attempts by American Greeks and Arabs to obtain priests from the Patriarchs of Constantinople or Antioch or from the Synod of Athens were unsuccessful. The latter either were not interested in the fate of their fellow tribesmen who left for America, or did not want to get involved with the Russian Empire, which jealously observed its church rights in America.
Thus, by the force of things, the Russian diocese, taking care of various national groups, became the embryo of the American multinational local Church. Unexpectedly, many Uniate parishes found their way back to Orthodoxy through it. If the Russian hierarchy came to terms with the state of affairs in which church property belonged to the laity, then the Catholic hierarchy in America was not happy with this situation. She demanded complete control over church property. This led to conflict with immigrants from Eastern Europe who belonged to the union. At the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, immigration to America from eastern regions The Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Galicians, called "Carpatho-Russians", who had belonged to the union for several centuries. Before their arrival in America, the American Catholic hierarchy, which consisted primarily of immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Poland, did not know the Uniates. By disdaining their distinctive features - married clergy and the Byzantine rite in the Slavic language - the American hierarchy alienated the Uniate communities and their clergy. In addition, the Uniates, recent immigrants who used their labor income to build churches themselves, were frightened by the state of affairs in which the churches they built belonged to a hierarchy that was psychologically alien to them. Discouraged and irritated by the attitude of the Catholic hierarchy, Uniate parishes began to turn to the Russian bishop with a request to accept them into the Orthodox diocese, so that their church property and parish self-government would be retained. The initiator of this movement was the Uniate priest Archpriest Tovt. In 1890, he convened the first conference of Hungarian priests in Pennsylvania, dedicated to discussing Uniate problems in America. The following year, 1891, organized O. Alexey Tovt The Intercession parish in Minneapolis in the state of Minisota was the first to convert to Orthodoxy, marking the beginning of the massive return of Uniate parishes. As a result, more than eighty of them joined the Russian Orthodox diocese. They brought with them a tradition of self-government and communal organization to which the Orthodox Church in America owes much of its existence.
Here it is necessary to say especially about the tradition of brotherhoods that the Galician parishes brought with them to America. From the very beginning of its growth, the American Church used a ready-made form of Orthodox democracy, introduced back in the 16th century with the aim of opposing Uniatism. Certificate Patriarch of Antioch Joachim, given in 1586 to the Lviv brotherhood, gave the believing people the right to denounce and even excommunicate infidels and denounce bishops. Brotherhoods arose outside Lvov in Vilna, Mogilev, Polotsk and other cities. After the Council of Brest, these brotherhoods became centers of literary polemics and theological work. They organized schools, opened printing houses, and published books.
The participation of the people in the life of the Church, which found its expression in brotherhoods, became a distinctive feature of the religious life of Western Rus', even when the latter was drawn into Uniatism. The spirit of conciliarity, which faded in the Russian Church under the influence of Petrine bureaucratization, was preserved here. Immigrants from Galicia brought with them this tradition of brotherhoods. In need of mutual material and moral support, they, recalling centuries-old experience, created the “Greek Catholic Mutual Aid Society,” which had its own fraternities in different cities of the United States: Minneapolis, Chicago, Pittsburgh and others. In 1895, the Holy Synod gave its blessing to this Orthodox federation of brotherhoods. Their number soon grew to two hundred, and they covered the entire country. One of the main tasks of the brotherhoods was the creation of new parishes. At the apogee of its activity, the federation, renamed the Russian-American Orthodox Mutual Aid Society, had 224 local organizations with a membership of 9,719. Thanks to the activities of the society, the number of parishes in the American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in America grew to 315. 
Orthodox brotherhoods on American soil are characterized by a revival in conditions of political freedom of the spirit of Orthodox conciliarity. This revival found its outstanding patron in the head of the American diocese from 1898 to 1907, Bishop Tikhon Belavin, later the Patriarch of Moscow. Tikhon began by organizing various national groups within a single diocese. As a result of his trip to Russia in 1905 and his personal report to the Holy Synod, he managed to achieve the transformation of the diocese into an archdiocese with suffragan bishops for both territories and national groups. The first such suffragan bishop consecrated to lead a group of Orthodox Arabs was Bishop Raphael of Brooklyn, professor of Arabic at the Kazan Theological Academy, invited specifically to work among Arab immigrants in the USA. 
Under Tikhon, groups of Serbian and Greek parishes also formed, for which he began to look for candidates for possible bishops. Tikhon also supported the initiative to create a group of Albanian parishes. During his administration of the diocese, thirty-two Uniate Carpathian parishes joined Orthodoxy, three suffragan bishoprics arose: one in Alaska with a see in Sitka, another for the Syro-Arab mission in Brooklyn, and a third for Canada. The question of suffragan bishops for Serbs and Greeks was also raised. Archbishop Tikhon planned that over time all these groups would develop into a diocese within the framework of a single American Church, which, in his opinion, could grow to full independence, passing first through the form of the Russian exarchate, then autonomy. Another side of his activity was the creation in the United States spiritual education, which would prepare Americans for Orthodox pastoral service. He improved the missionary school that existed in Minneapolis and turned it into a theological seminary, the students of which gradually eliminated the need to sign priests from Russia. Under him, a translation of the main Orthodox liturgical texts into English was published.
Finally, the third and perhaps most significant aspect of Archbishop Tikhon’s activity was his attempt to give Orthodox form the spirit of self-sufficiency and independence that prevailed among Orthodox communities in the United States. The movement for the revival of conciliarity in the Russian Orthodox Church began with the revolution of 1905, but the ideas that led to this movement were discussed even earlier at the turn of the century at religious and philosophical meetings in St. Petersburg in 1901-1903, where the clergy first met with the liberal intelligentsia and where, along with various theological issues, the topics of democratization of the internal structure of the Church and especially its liberation from the power of the imperial bureaucracy were discussed.
Subsequently, between two revolutions (1905 and 1917), these ideas received more detailed development and led to the convening of All-Russian Local Council 1917-1918 , who restored the patriarchate and elected Tikhon to the patriarchal see, whose merits include the fact that he was the first Russian bishop to begin the successful revival of church conciliarity, although not on Russian soil, but in the conditions of American democracy, which were more conducive to the restoration of church conciliarity than the Russian autocracy. On the eve of his departure from the United States, Archbishop Tikhon convened a council of Orthodox clergy in Mayfield, from which the conciliar history of the Orthodox Church in America began. Starting from this council, the Russian archdiocese, and then the metropolitanate, will gradually revive the genuine Orthodox tradition, which has completely disappeared from the practice of the Orthodox churches. In his diocese, Tikhon laid the foundations for a multinational Orthodox federation in America. He envisioned an autonomous Orthodox Church, governed by a synod of bishops presided over by a virtually independent hierarch who would be a member of the ruling synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.
One of the early historians of the Orthodox Church in America wrote that “if this plan had been carried out before the war and this kind of autonomous Orthodox Church had already been established in America, political events in Europe would have had little or no influence on church life in America , except that they would only strengthen the independence and unity of the American Church. The sad disorganization and destructive division of the Church in America as a result of political events in Europe would be impossible."
However, the pre-revolutionary synodal structure of the Church and its imperial consciousness did not contribute to this. And the American diocese itself during this period was neither financially, ideologically, nor psychologically ready for autonomy or autocephaly.
Archbishop Tikhon's successors in the see of the New York Archdiocese were not up to par with his understanding of the situation in America and his vision of church tasks. None of them continued Tikhon's conciliar undertakings. The next council was convened after the Russian Revolution, in 1919, on an emergency basis to save the Russian church organization itself in America.
Under Tikhon's successors, the multinational Orthodox federation that Tikhon had created within the Russian diocese began to disintegrate. Russian imperial psychology, accustomed to looking down on other national Orthodox groups, lack of interest in them and proper understanding of their own national problems, insufficient care about the organization of their church life - all this caused the awakening of ethnic church separatism, which matured precisely in these years, but was able to take shape in various national Orthodox jurisdictions in America after the fall of the Russian Empire, when under its rubble and under the blows of the atheistic regime the Russian Orthodox Church itself was reduced to such a helpless state that it could not even think about protecting any of its jurisdictional rights. 
True, Tikhon’s immediate successor, Archbishop Platon Rozhdestvensky, who occupied the department from 1907 to 1914, launched significant work among the Uniates. It was under him that most of the Cariato-Russian Uniate parishes became part of the Russian diocese. Under him, the “Russian Emigrant Society” was organized in New York, which helped immigrants at first, and a daily newspaper began to be published. During his archpastorship, Great Russian immigration to the United States began. Before the revolution of 1905-1907, Russia did not know the emigration of the Orthodox population itself. The Russian political emigration was small and lived in Europe; it was hostile to religion in general, and Orthodoxy in particular. Until 1905, i.e., before the adoption of the constitution, the Russian Empire was not a rule of law state; Orthodoxy was the state religion. Mostly Jews and other disenfranchised religious minorities emigrated from Russia: Baptists, Mennonites, Tolstoyans, etc. For the Orthodox population there was no need to emigrate. People with entrepreneurial inclinations could start new life in the most vast Russia; there was no need to leave for a country of a foreign language and culture; it was enough to go somewhere beyond the Urals. The Great Russian emigration itself began after the revolution of 1905-1907, and mainly consisted of elements somehow involved in the revolutionary movement.
During the First World War, already under Plato's successor Archbishop Evdokim Anti-monarchical and anti-hierarchical sentiments began to intensify in the Russian church environment, especially since in the United States they found fertile ground in the American style of political and church democracy. During these years, there were several famous revolutionaries in the United States, including Leon Trotsky. Naturally, they had political influence on the Russian emigrant environment, calling on it to break with the Church, while within the Church giving rise to opposition among the laity and junior clergy in relation to the hierarchy. The anti-church nature of the revolutionary agitation was facilitated by the fact that during the two centuries of the synodal period, in the minds of the Russian Orthodox people, the Church was inextricably fused with the political structure of the empire. Both in the minds of the revolutionaries and in the minds of the clergy and hierarchy, the Orthodox Church and Russian statehood were inseparable. Therefore, it is not surprising that revolutionary negativism, caused by the political situation, extended to the Church, and, first of all, to its hierarchy.
Among the emigrants, atheistic lectures began to be organized on the topics: “The Truth about God,” “Religion and the State,” etc. The American Orthodox clergy was not always ready to answer. In particular, the priest, who was invited as an opponent, did not appear at the lecture of a certain Zorin “Religion and State”. However, Russian revolutionary sentiments had resonance only in the Russian emigrant environment. The bulk of believers in the diocese were already quite Americanized and alien to Russian revolutionary passions.
By the beginning of the revolution, the North American diocese was one of 64 dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church and, in terms of its church size, was considered the eighteenth largest. It consisted of five bishops, 700 parishes and over 400 priests of all Orthodox nationalities, had five monasteries and one nunnery and a theological seminary with 70 students. The diocese even planned to open its own courtyard in St. Petersburg, but this project, like many others, was disrupted by the revolution.
Part 3.
The revolution, having dealt a deafening blow to the Church in Russia, could not but have catastrophic consequences for its American diocese. However, the fall of the Russian autocracy meant much more to the Church than the loss of state support. It marked a new era in the life of the Church and called for the rebirth of the entire church political worldview.
If the main canonical structure of the Church was formed before the Roman Empire turned to Christian ideology and therefore turned out to be free from imperial influence, then all the later development of the church structure went in close contact with the empire, first Byzantine, then Russian. The very concept of “Orthodoxy” was a state invention and had not so much ecclesiastical as ideological origin. It first appeared in the edict "On the Catholic Faith" roman emperor Theodosius the Great(IV century), which prescribed the binding nature of the Nicene Creed for everyone subjects of the empire.
Beginning with the first ideologist of the Christian empire, the bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who introduced into church use the concept that “the power of the emperor on earth is a reflection of the power of God in heaven,” which is why the monarchy is highest form reign, and ending with the last great ideologist and practitioner of the subordination of the Church to the state - Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev, who argued that the autocratic power of the emperor is sacred in itself due to its totality and indivisibility, the Orthodox Church was not only in the grip of the empire, but also in indissoluble spiritual bonds with it. Its political consciousness was that of imperial autocracy. 
So, already at the turn of the 20th century, when Russian society demanded radical political reforms, Orthodoxy in the person of its two most popular exponents - Bishop Feofan the Recluse and prot. John of Kronstadt, - declared his devotion to the Byzantine idea of the sacred kingdom. On the other hand, the emperors also thought of themselves as political trustees of the Church. From the time Emperor Constantine called himself a bishop for outsiders, and the Church allowed that the emperor as an “ecumenical bishop” could convene church councils, Orthodox kings naturally considered it their mission to inculcate Orthodoxy and patronize it at the expense of all other religions. From the first Christian emperor to the last Russian tsar, they extended their power to every Orthodox Christian on earth. Thus, Constantine wrote to the Persian king in defense of Persian Christians, and Russian emperors They were faithful to the end to the task of liberating all Orthodox Christians from the power of the Turks and uniting them under the sovereign Orthodox scepter. 'Cause fall Russian monarchy For Orthodoxy it meant not only the cessation of patronage both in Russia and abroad, but also the need for a restructuring of all church life.
At its initial, February, stage, the revolution provided the Russian Church with the greatest benefit, fateful for its entire future history: the All-Russian Church Council was finally convened. Although preparations for the council had been going on for a long time, since the revolution and the resignation of the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod Pobdonostsev, and church leaders increasingly insistently demanded its convocation, the tsarist government postponed it under various pretexts. The Church managed to convene a council only when the leftmost faction of Kerensky on the democratic spectrum came to power. The council elected a patriarch and established new structure church governance in accordance with the ancient church canons and the principles of Orthodox ecclesiology. The basis of everything administrative reform the most ancient canonical principle was laid down - the election by the entire Church of its shepherds - which restored the organic place of the laity in the life of the church body.
|
The North American Diocese also played a significant role at the council, sending two representatives: Archpriests Alexander Kukulevsky and Leonid Turkevich. The first was a member of the commission to develop the parish charter, and at his suggestion, the commission adopted the charter of the American diocese as the basis for the project. Prot. Leonid Turkevich nominated Metropolitan Tikhon Belavin, his employee and boss for the American diocese, as a candidate for patriarch. The latter was elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. Both delegates brought the decisions and spirit of the council to America. Kukulevsky then presided over the All-American Church Council in Cleveland in 1919, which took place at a very difficult time for the diocese. And Turkevich headed the American metropolis from 1950 to 1965. |
The attempts of the renovationists to destroy the American archdiocese and take away its church property, on the one hand, and the state of confusion and anarchy, on the other, forced the hierarchy to convene in 1924 third All-American Cathedral in Detroit. The Council approved Metropolitan Platon, renamed the archdiocese a metropolitanate and proclaimed the temporary autonomy of the American metropolitanate until the convening of an All-Russian Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. The council also determined the structure of church authority: at the head of the metropolitanate is the metropolitan, who governs the Church together with a synod of bishops and representatives from the clergy and laity elected at periodically convened All-American Councils.
This decision of the Detroit Cathedral to proclaim autonomy and restore the cathedral government of the metropolis was made in accordance with the decree Patriarch Tikhon, which contained an order to the diocesan bishops, in the event of a break in communication with the highest church administration or the termination of the latter’s activities, to assume full power in their dioceses and lead them with the help of the clergy. According to the same patriarchal decree, in the event of a prolonged autonomous situation of the diocese, the diocesan bishop must divide his diocese into several dioceses, give suffragan bishops full rights and install new bishops, taking into account that subsequently, when the central church authority is restored, all these measures will be approved by it.
Following the patriarchal decree, the Detroit Council, probably without realizing the historical significance of its decision, broke with more than a thousand years of imperial tradition and restored in practice the canonical conciliar structure of Orthodoxy. This declaration of autonomy occurred as the church body of American Orthodoxy began to fragment into isolated or even warring national and political jurisdictional factions.
The church confusion that followed the revolution in Russia, the absence of undisputed power, financial difficulties, the scale of the political disaster - all this distracted the Russian hierarchy of the American metropolitanate from urgent concern for other national groups that were under its leadership. The post-revolutionary confusion could only contribute to the final maturation of the spirit of separatism, which grew gradually in non-Russian Orthodox groups, without meeting due understanding from the Synodal Church. If the authority of the Russian Empire, which previously stood behind the Russian hierarchy, maintained various national groups of Orthodox Christians in America under its auspices, then with its fall, the tendencies of national separatism burst out and, not finding sufficient opposition from the Russian hierarchy, resulted in the creation of a network of parallel Orthodox jurisdictions.
How was Orthodoxy so easily able to change its canonical church nature and its fundamental principle area? As the Orthodox church historian and theologian noted, over the centuries of the existence of the Orthodox Church as autocephalous churches in national states, a collapse of universal consciousness occurred in Orthodoxy. Church autocephaly, which was sought not so much by the churches as by the governments, began to be understood by them under the influence of state-national consciousness in the sense of the legal independence of churches from each other. And although the local principle was not abolished and in theory continues to remain the canonical norm, in practice it was replaced by a national-political understanding. While the Orthodox lived in their homeland, they belonged to their local churches. With the beginning of mass emigration, national enclaves were formed in other countries. The appearance “abroad” of their country, that is, outside the territory of their local Church, of hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christians with bishops and clergy created a situation in which the Church began to be identified with a national immigrant group. This led to the actual abolition of the principle of locality - the fundamental canonical principle of the Orthodox Church.
The Diaspora showed that, according to Fr. Alexander Schmemann, national churches have essentially turned into "religious projections of a given people, or even a given state. ... The Orthodox Church has degenerated into a federation of national churches, the relationships of which are built by analogy with the relations between sovereign states: that is, on the principles" non-interference" in each other's affairs and "protection of their rights." The Orthodox diaspora, accordingly, began to be built on the principle of independent ethnic jurisdictions - "national-state-church embassies of their peoples abroad."
These embassies can coexist side by side and not even notice each other. This could only be facilitated by the general nature of American religiosity, since the United States is a country of immigrants who have the opportunity to preserve their national cultural identity here.
Perhaps even more than other emigrant groups, the Orthodox in America reflect the national diversity of their history. Hence the multitude of Orthodox churches, each of which represents a small member of that church body, the head and body of which are located on other continents. The last half century, which brought with it the communist regimes a split in Orthodoxy on political grounds, led to the division of already existing national churches into warring jurisdictions. The common feature of all these jurisdictions was that they were formed in parallel with the deterioration and complication of the position of the Russian archbishopric in America. Between the 1920s and 1970, when the Russian archdiocese received the status of autocephaly, Orthodoxy in America existed in the form of many independent and often non-recognizing jurisdictions: one Greek, three Russian, two Serbian, two Antiochian, two Romanian, two Bulgarian , two Albanian, three Ukrainian, one Carpathian and several smaller church groups.
In this article we will talk only about two Russian jurisdictions, the so-called “Karlovatskaya”, or Russian Church Abroad, And Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate, since these two jurisdictions have been putting pressure on the American metropolis, trying to deprive her of independence or, at least, impose her own church-political guidelines on her.
The Russian Church Abroad was formed at a congress of bishops who emigrated from Russia in 1923 in Yugoslavia, in the town of Karlovci (hence its other name “Karlovatskaya”) under the patronage of the Serbian Patriarch. Having emerged as a temporary church administration for Russian emigrants, the Karlovac synod soon declared itself the Russian national Church in diaspora. Having taken a politically restorationist position (restoration of the House of Romanov), he put the Russian Church and the Patriarch in a difficult position.
Even before the Karlovac Council, in May 1922, Patriarch Tikhon officially declared that hierarchs who went into political emigration do not have the right to speak on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church, that their statements do not represent “the official voice of the Russian Orthodox Church due to their political nature and do not have ecclesiastical and canonical significance."
After the Karlovac Council, the Patriarch issued a decree categorically prohibiting Karlovac church administration, while at the same time entrusting the management of all Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe Metropolitan Eulogius with center in Paris. However, citing the fact that the patriarch and church hierarchy in Soviet Russia are under godless power and therefore, at best, the hierarchy is paralyzed, at worst, it collaborates with the regime, the foreign synod of bishops not only continued its activities, but also proclaimed itself the highest church administration for the entire Russian Church both in Russia and abroad.
Essentially, as Fr. expressed it. Alexander Schmemann, “the council of bishops, officially calling itself “foreign,” that is, not having its own territory, divided the whole world into dioceses and districts and named its bishops bishops of Europe, America, Brazil, Canada, Australia, etc. - in other words, he founded local churches" for the Russians who found themselves there. This was a violation of the canonical principles of Orthodoxy, which are based on the concept of local episcopate, and a deviation into philitism, that is, the creation of the Church on a national basis, condemned in the last century in the district message of the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs. If this claim, with all its absurdity, was simply unrealizable in relation to the Church in Russia, then in emigration it could only sow division and confusion. The Foreign Synod demanded submission from the head of the Russian exarchate in Western Europe, Metropolitan Eulogius, and from the head of the American archdiocese, Metropolitan Platon, both hierarchs appointed Patriarch Tikhon. The Karlovac Synod also demanded from Plato the abolition of the autonomy adopted at the Detroit Council. These claims forced both Plato and Eulogius to withdraw from the synod and break with it. The synod responded to this by creating parallel jurisdictions in Europe and America. Actually, on American soil, the Synodal Church grew into a more or less significant jurisdiction only after the war, starting in the late 40s. Until this time, the Moscow Patriarchate posed a great threat to the metropolitanate.
After death Patriarch Tikhon under mysterious circumstances in 1925 and the arrest of all the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne appointed by him, the Soviet government settled on the metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky- deputy third locum tenens - who, after a short stay in prison, under obvious pressure from the GPU, began to make an inevitable, perhaps, compromise with the regime, sacrificing step by step the independence of the Church. Soon after the consolidation of church power in the hands Metropolitan Sergius under pressure from the regime, he began to try to extend the church power of Moscow to the centers of Russian Orthodoxy abroad: the Western European Exarchate and the American Metropolis. The obvious reason for the offensive of the Moscow Patriarchate was the desire of the Soviet government to bring under its control the masses of Russian political refugees in Europe and America.
Back in 1928, Metropolitan Sergius demanded that Metropolitan Platon subscriptions about non-participation in political activities directed against the Soviet regime. This requirement was repeated again in 1933. Having received a refusal from the American metropolis, the Moscow church administration sent a bishop to America with the aim of creating an exarchate in the USA, subordinate to Moscow, and imposed a ban on Metropolitan Platon. In the thirties, the influence of this exarchate in America was still small. However, the pressure of the Moscow Patriarchate on the metropolis continued under Plato’s successor Metropolitan Theophilus, elected in 1934 at the Cleveland Council, which confirmed the full administrative independence of the metropolis and its right to independently elect its high priest. In response to this decision of the council, the Moscow Patriarchate issued a decree in 1935 prohibiting Metropolitan Theophilos, even to the point of repentance. As if in response to this, Theophilus tried to consolidate various Russian Orthodox groups in America. He managed to conclude an alliance with the Karlovac jurisdiction and with the independent Carpathian diocese. The bishops, clergy and parishes of these groups were part of the metropolitanate under Theophilus, although the latter retained its autonomy. Sixth All-American Council in 1937 adopted the status of this reunion. The Union of Russian Orthodox Christians in the United States lasted until World War II. By the beginning of the war, the American metropolitanate had 400 thousand believers in 330, divided into eight dioceses.
The war period turned out to be a new stage for the growth of self-awareness of the metropolis as an American local Church. In 1943, the first Orthodox chaplain was appointed to the United States Armed Forces from among the metropolitan clergy. In 1944, the Metropolis celebrated the 150th anniversary of Orthodoxy in America, brought here by Russian missionaries and taking firm roots. In World War II, the United States and the USSR were allies against a common enemy; After two decades of bloody terror, the Soviet government recognized the Church, restored the patriarchate, decided to elect a patriarch, and introduced some semblance of religious freedom. Election Metropolitan Sergius Patriarch in September 1943 dramatically changed the attitude of the Allies towards the USSR. Taking advantage of the growth of pro-Soviet sentiment in the United States and gaining wide popularity in connection with this, the Exarch of the Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan Benjamin began to vigorously agitate among the American Orthodox for the subordination of the metropolitanate to the Moscow Patriarchate, since the main reason for the separation - the persecution of the Church in Russia - "ceased to exist." On the other hand, the Foreign Synod, meeting in October 1943 in Nazi-occupied Vienna, condemned the election of the patriarch. Sergius's successor Patriarch Alexy, elected in 1945, again demanded submission from the metropolis and was again refused by its synod of bishops. Seventh All-American Council 1946 confirmed the autonomy of the metropolis. Having failed to achieve the desired submission on her part, Patriarch Alexy, repeating the 1935 ban in December 1947, extended it to all bishops of the metropolis.
Like previous bans, this one did not have any noticeable impact on the life of the metropolis. The end of the 40s was generally marked by a sharp decline in the influence of the patriarchal exarchate among American Orthodox Christians. Resumption Stalin's repressions in 1948, with the start of a grandiose anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR and the beginning of the Cold War, this influence came to a natural end. But during this period, the schismatic influence of the Karlovac jurisdiction began to grow, which turned out to be longer and more painful. With the defeat of Nazi Germany, which patronized the Synodal Church Abroad, the latter moved its headquarters from Munich to New York without any coordination of its action with the leadership of the American metropolis. With the influx of the second wave of refugees from the USSR: participants in the Vlasov movement, prisoners of war who were threatened by Stalin’s camps, the Karlovac jurisdiction, emphasizing its anti-Soviet character, began to grow rapidly in numbers and soon spread to the United States and Canada.
To this day, the position of the Karlovac Church remains the same. It still claims full ecclesiastical authority over all Russian Orthodox Christians in the world. After the metropolis received autocephaly, the Karlovac Synod accused it of submitting to the Soviet “false church”, on the one hand, and indulged in Western reformism, on the other, and forbade all its members from any communication with it.
It is appropriate to note here that, despite the irreconcilability of their church-political positions, both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Foreign Synod are like two peas in a pod. Both inherited from the synodal era of the Church in Russia servility towards state power, both are imbued with the spirit of imperial great power. Both envision church life only under the auspices of the state. The Karlovac Church is in captivity in the dream of pre-revolutionary Orthodoxy autocratic monarchy and even canonized the last king; The patriarchy is in captivity of the Soviet totalitarian empire, completely following its foreign and domestic policies. The latter's justification is that her captivity is real, not fictitious. For both, as Fr. noted. Alexander Schmeman, characterized by heightened church nationalism and the replacement of church-canonical consciousness with state international law. Both are conservative in the field of theology and liturgical life, afraid of any reforms and renewal, any breath of church freedom. Therefore, it is no coincidence that many Karlovac bishops easily transferred to the Moscow Patriarchate.
It is also no coincidence that both independently condemned in 1936 one of the most prolific and versatile Orthodox theologians of our century O. Sergius Bulgakov, - professor of the Orthodox Institute Rev. Sergius in Paris. In this condemnation, both the Karlovac Synod and the Moscow Patriarchate, which made the condemnation by hearsay, since Bulgakov’s works were not available in Russia, tried to strike a blow at the Sergius Institute itself, rightly called “the first truly free Russian theological academy in history.” The very spirit of novelty and theological creativity frightened both. However, it is to theological creativity that the Orthodox Church in America owes its emergence. Not so much thanks to church diplomacy, but thanks to the efforts of theological and church consciousness, the American metropolis was able to turn into a local autocephalous Church. A few words should be said about the development of this consciousness.
Since the middle of the last century, a theological awakening began among the Russian Orthodox intelligentsia, focusing on revealing the role of Orthodoxy in Christian history and in the modern world and on thinking about the nature of the Church. The ancient ecumenical councils did not theologize on the topic of the Church. The united Catholic Church was a self-evident given for Christian existence. The councils only defined the canonical contours of this reality. Their main themes were questions of God and the God-man: trinitology and Christology.
In modern times, the problem of the Church arose before Russian theology as a reaction to the deplorable state of the Church under the rule of the imperial bureaucracy created by Peter, in particular, and as a reaction to the tragic division of the Christian world and to mutual alienation, if not hostility, Christian churches at all. Begun by the Slavophiles Kireevsky and Khomyakov, continued Vladimir Solovyov, and then by a galaxy of religious thinkers of the early 20th century, this theological revival gradually captured wide circles of church leaders and created the ground for church reform and renewal. But Orthodox thought in Russia was not destined to bear mature fruits. The revolution, together with normal church life, interrupted the natural development of Orthodox thought. However, this development was able to continue in exile. Its center became the Russian Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Sergius in Paris, which brought together the luminaries of Russian theological thought who found themselves in exile. Among many theological topics, the institute said a new word in the doctrine of the Church and ecclesiology. The merit of rethinking the Orthodox teaching about the Church belonged to the professor of the institute O. Nikolay Afanasyev, who wondered what the concept of "Catholic Church" meant in early Christian consciousness. According to his research, the concept of “catholicity” did not mean the geographical distribution of the Church, but its ontological omnipresence, which is actualized at every liturgy, at every Eucharistic meeting, presided over by a bishop, surrounded by the clergy and the believing people of God. Where the Eucharist is celebrated, Christ is present with the Church of saints, in which the fullness of the “universal” or “catholic” Church is given. Episcopal grace is, first of all, the grace of the Eucharistic presence, from which flows the right of the priesthood, the installation of priests as Eucharistic delegates of the bishop and deacons as ministers of the local Church. Therefore, in every bishop the fullness of the apostolic charisma is revealed, and in this sense all bishops are equal. The names "metropolis" or "patriarchy" do not refer to the catholic nature of the Church, but to its geopolitical and demographic aspects. Therefore, the patriarch or metropolitan in each local Church is not so much placed above the Church as he is its high priest, first among equals in the college of the episcopate. This understanding, embedded in the liturgical and canonical practice and theory of Orthodoxy, prepared the ground for overcoming the jurisdictional approach, according to which the bishop of a geographically larger area or more important administrative center (metropolitan or patriarch) exercises authority over the bishops of smaller areas. Thus, eucharistic ecclesiology came to replace the jurisdictional understanding of the Church as an institution headed by a hierarchy.
However, the ecclesiological teaching of Fr. Afanasyev did not immediately bear practical fruit. It took many years of cultivating the church consciousness of the hierarchy and the people for this understanding to begin to determine church life. The theologian who developed and popularized this teaching in America was the rector of St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York, father Alexander Shmeman, himself a student of Afanasyev at the Paris Theological Institute. After the war, such luminaries of Russian theology as O. Georgy Florovsky, Georgy Fedotov, Nikolai Lossky, Nikolay Arsenyev, - the last elected rector of the free Petrograd University. A practical application of Eucharistic ecclesiology was the book by Bogolepov, professor of canon law, " On the road to American autocephaly". Her thesis was as follows: since the fullness of the Church is where the bishop at the head of the church community celebrates the Eucharist, and for the consecration of a bishop three bishops of this area are needed, since, according to Orthodox canons, three bishops are necessary for the ordination of a fourth, which means that any church district in which there are three dioceses with a minimum number of three bishops and a theological school for training the clergy can be considered churchly self-sufficient and, in this sense, ready for autocephaly, i.e. .self-government. 
The problem of autocephaly is not a problem of church power, but of church self-sufficiency. In the ancient Church, each ecclesiastical region could be considered autocephalous to the extent that it could provide itself with new bishops, since through the ordination of a bishop elected by the church people, a meeting of other bishops, the principle of Orthodox conciliarity is expressed. The Eucharistic communion of the Orthodox episcopate with each other is characterized by unity Orthodox faith and testifies to him. Through it, the unity of local churches is realized in the multiplicity of their unique national and historical traditions. The presence in the American metropolis of six bishops who could ordain new bishops, and theological schools that train clergy, testified that the American Church is de facto autocephalous, since it is self-sufficient. This practical application of the principles of Eucharistic theology in the field of ecclesiology gave the American metropolitan church canonical grounds to seek legal recognition of its independence, which by force of circumstances it proclaimed in 1924 and then consistently defended.
Bogolepov’s book “On the Road to American Autocephaly” was published in 1963. Following her, the discussion of this topic began to be more and more persistent in the Orthodox American press, in theological and church circles. In the end, the demand for autocephaly was put forward in a conversation with representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate. As a result of negotiations that lasted several years, the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate came to the conclusion that the granting of autocephaly to the American metropolis is inevitable and is only a matter of time, that the American metropolis is independent, de facto autocephalous, that its return to Moscow jurisdiction is fundamentally impossible, that the very fact of the fifty-year the development and flourishing of the Russian diocese, which proclaimed its autonomy, testifies to its viability.
With all these possible considerations, a favorable combination of both intra-church and political events in the USSR also played a significant role. Patriarch Alexy and the members of the ruling synod of the Russian Orthodox Church have learned something since 1946, since the last ban imposed by the patriarch on the metropolis. The church-imperial ambition, revived with the Stalinist Concordat, was blown away by the wind.
The unexpected Khrushchev persecution of religion in 1959-1964, which with the stroke of a pen took away two-thirds of everything that the Church managed to restore with such difficulty in the post-war years, served as a lesson to the Moscow Patriarchate that without having supporters and defenders at home, it is necessary to seek and create them for abroad. This was precisely what dictated the policy in the ecumenical and inter-Orthodox arena of the then chairman of the department of external relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Nikodim We can say that in his activities he followed the Lord's parable about the unfaithful steward (Luke 16: 1-9) with its advice: “make friends with unrighteous wealth, so that when you become poor, they will receive you into eternal abodes.” But not only these considerations, but also the unconditional ecclesiastical and diplomatic genius of Metropolitan Nikodim prompted him to decide to agree to the American demands for autocephaly. Metropolitan Nikodim understood that Moscow was powerless to subjugate the Russian metropolitanate in America again. On the other hand, he also knew about the jurisdictional stripes of Orthodox Christians in the Western world. The Russian metropolitanate, lost among these national jurisdictions, for all its self-sufficiency, would remain an insignificant pawn. Its elevation to the status of an autocephalous church in America promoted this pawn to the queen. By granting it autocephaly, the Moscow Patriarchate would receive a new and unprecedented advantage in the international Orthodox arena, and the creation of a free Orthodox autocephalous church in America, a church with Russian roots and connected by filial ties with the mother Russian Church, changed the position of all Orthodoxy already on the ecumenical, all- Christian world stage. In the free world, along with Western churches a Western, free, autocephalous, local Orthodox Church arose. Thus, Metropolitan Nikodim, chairman of the department of external church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, convinced the Patriarch and the synod to agree to the demands of the Russian metropolitanate in America. However, this readiness of the Moscow Patriarchate would not have been enough if there had not been a favorable climate of political uncertainty in the USSR at that time. The Brezhnev leadership, which had overthrown Khrushchev, was still precariously in power. The Prague Spring and the emergence of the human rights movement in the USSR in 1968 contributed to this uncertainty. In foreign policy, the Soviet regime sought an end to the Cold War and sought detente. Soviet tanks in Prague demanded redemption; the regime wanted to show its ability to be liberal. All these factors helped the Soviet government to blink, or to allow an independent act of the Moscow Patriarchate, by which it simultaneously renounced its claim to jurisdiction over the American metropolitanate and reduced its claims to jurisdiction over the Japanese Church by granting it autonomy.
So on April 10, 1970, the Russian Orthodox Church granted the American Metropolis the canonical status of autocephaly. This was a huge victory for Metropolitan Nikodim, his brilliant chess move - promoting a pawn to a queen. The tomos of autocephaly was signed by Patriarch Alexy six days before his death. The patriarch ended his long and compromised life with a gallant act. A metropolitan delegation led by Theodosius, Bishop of Alaska, head of the Orthodox Church in America since 1978, went to Moscow and accepted the Thomas of Autocephaly after the death of Patriarch Alexy from the hands of the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Pimen, who soon after became patriarch.
Convened in October of the same year 14th All-American Council metropolis officially proclaimed its autocephaly with the name Orthodox Church in America, thus becoming the first council of the local Orthodox Church in America. The emergence of the Orthodox Church in America, as one might expect, caused a storm both in the American Orthodox diaspora with its ethnic jurisdictions and throughout the Orthodox world. The most hostile attitude to this was the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Karlovac jurisdiction, which refused to recognize the Orthodox Church in America for opposing reasons. However, in America, a number of church groups, such as Albanian, Romanian and Bulgarian, chose the path of joining the Orthodox Church in America while maintaining their national autonomy in the manner of exarchates within a single Orthodox hierarchy. Their bishops joined the synod of the Orthodox Church in America. The Orthodox Church in America enjoys recognition and equality in the family of Orthodox churches. Only the Patriarchates of Constantinople, as well as the Jerusalem and Alexandria patriarchates associated with Constantinople, still do not recognize its autocephalous status.
The Orthodox Church in America is at the forefront of the modern movement for the rapprochement of Christians, which was far from automatic. The Russian Church represented the most isolated branch of European Christianity. Even at the beginning of this century, only a small number of church leaders were familiar with Western confessions. Only after the revolution of 1905 did contacts between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Christian West begin to grow. The extremes of Orthodox isolationism were inherited by the Russian Church Abroad, which, with its constant condemnations of ecumenism, illustrates an almost paranoid fear of meeting and dialogue with Western Christianity.
However, the revolution and exile to the West forced the most enlightened part of the church intelligentsia to overcome this isolationism and seek meeting and cooperation with Western Christians not only on practical paths, but also on the paths of theological discussion. From the very beginning of the ecumenical movement in the 20s, Russian theologians from the Paris St. Sergius Institute played an active role in it. The theological delegations of the institute practically participated in all major conferences of the movement. One of the veterans of this movement - Nikolay Aksenyev, who participated in it since 1925 as part of the Orthodox delegation, subsequently taught at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. Two future rectors of this seminary, known for their creative role in the ecumenical movement, O. Georgy Florovsky and participated in the opening of the World Council of Churches conference in Amsterdam in 1948. Over the many years of their teaching, pastoral and writing activities in the United States, they raised several generations of church leaders for whom theological openness to the problems of Christianity in the modern world and participation in dialogue with non-Orthodox people became natural. Orthodox Church in America - member American Council of Churches. At one time the chairman of this council was a cleric of the Orthodox Church in America, prot. Leonid Kishkovsky. The voice of the Orthodox Church in America is now one of the most powerful Orthodox voices in the ecumenical movement.
Since the mid-50s, the metropolis began to lose its ethnic character. English has become official language metropolis, its press, teaching, worship, the consciousness of the new generation of believers and clergy was drawn primarily to the mission, Orthodox witness in American society. Also, since the mid-50s, there has been an increasing influx of Americans converting from unbelief or from other confessions to Orthodoxy. This influx has increased significantly since 1970, i.e., with the proclamation of autocephaly, which opened the way to Orthodoxy not only for individuals, but also for entire church units: parishes, monasteries. Thus, the Orthodox Church in America included a whole Old Catholic(i.e. not recognizing dad) Mexican diocese, converted to Orthodoxy. Based on it, it was created Mexican Exarchate Orthodox Church in America.
A survey of five hundred believers who converted to Orthodoxy over the past 30 years, conducted for the Seventh Council of the Orthodox Church in America, found that about 60 percent of converts had converted in recent years, as the Orthodox Church in America as a local Church began to gain greater prominence in American society. Thus, the formation of the local Church opened the doors to Orthodoxy for Western people coming from other religious and cultural traditions.
Currently, the Orthodox Church in America has 14 dioceses, of which eleven are territorial and three are ethnic: Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian, one foreign exarchate - Mexican - and separate parishes in Australia and Latin America. At the head of the Church is the Metropolitan, the Archbishop of Washington and All America and Canada, elected by the local council of the Orthodox Church in America, who governs the Church between councils together with the synod of bishops and the metropolitan council, elected from the clergy and laity. According to the ancient rule, the synod of bishops meets twice a year: in autumn and spring. Currently, the head of the Orthodox Church in America, the Archbishop of Washington, is Metropolitan Yona, a born American who converted to Orthodoxy in adulthood. With his own personality, he testifies to the missionary nature of our Church.
According to recent statistics, the Orthodox Church in America has 589 priests and deacons serving in 549 parishes, of which 468 are located in the United States, and the remaining 81 are abroad: in Canada, Mexico, South America and Australia. The church has a higher theological school - St. Vladimir Theological Academy, which has a high academic reputation throughout the Orthodox world, and two theological seminaries - St. Tikhon's in Pennsylvania and Svyatogermanovskaya- in Alaska. It also has several male and female stauropegial monasteries and separate diocesan monasteries and hermitages. Orthodox Church in America - 15th autocephalous, i.e., the “self-led” Orthodox Church in the world. She enjoys the full freedom that the American democratic system provides religious organizations, and is governed in accordance with Orthodox norms by regularly convened councils (now every three years) of the episcopate, clergy and lay delegates.
The emergence of the local American Church meant a revolution in Orthodoxy. In the person of the Orthodox Church in America, Orthodoxy has overcome its thousand-year captivity of statehood and nationalism. The historical cataclysms of our century helped her break the strongest bonds that connected her, as part of the Russian Church, with the Orthodox empire. Among American Orthodox groups, only the Orthodox Church in America has taken the path of complete Americanization and liberation from both foreign influences and dictates, and from ethnic determinism. In the person of the Orthodox Church in America, Orthodoxy shows its ability to exist organically in the conditions of freedom and pluralism of Western society. The Orthodox Church in America is not a model of ecclesiastical perfection, but it is an expression of the vitality of Orthodoxy.
Afterword.
(This essay was written as a whole in the mid-1980s and reflects the state of affairs during the division of the world into Western and communist. After the fall of the communist regime, the position of both the Russian Church both in Russia and abroad, and the position of Orthodoxy as a whole, changed dramatically. Reconciled with the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Church Abroad, thereby healing the wound of schism among the entire Orthodox world. But in general, history remains history, and modernity only confirms it, since the author of this essay is currently working on a more complete and. the version of this story brought to this day, the basis of which nevertheless remains the events reflected in this essay).
The emergence of the Orthodox Church in America is connected with the missionary activity of the Russian Church. At the end of the 18th century, Russian missionaries - monks of the Valaam and Konevsky monasteries - came to preach the word of God to Russian America, then a remote part of their own Fatherland. At the same time, they did not set themselves the goal of Russifying the local population - one of their first tasks was the translation of the Holy Scriptures and liturgical books into languages local peoples. And the seeds of the faith of Christ, sown here, bore abundant fruit, and St. Herman of Alaska and St. Innocent (Veniaminov) were glorified as saints. By the end of the 1960s, negotiations between representatives of the American Metropolis and the Russian Orthodox Church began, as a result of which in April 1970 the Orthodox Church in America was granted autocephaly.
HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
Vast areas of North America, especially its most remote northern parts, were mostly discovered and explored by intrepid Russian explorers. “Hundreds of Russian names over a vast area, from the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands almost to San Francisco Bay, from the southernmost point of Alaska to the northernmost, testify to the remarkable feat of our people.” “Back in the 18th century, exploring a region unknown to Europeans until that time, Russian people brought here the first seeds of Russian Orthodoxy. Among the Aleuts and residents of Alaska, the name of the citizen of the city of Rylsk, Kursk province, merchant Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov (1748 -1795) - the founder of that land of the first permanent Russian settlements, establishing peaceful trade with the local residents, teaching them crafts, literacy, numeracy, ..., preparing translators, craftsmen and sailors from the local residents, Shelikhov simultaneously sought to instill in them the basic concepts of the Orthodox faith in the Triune God, in Christ the Savior, taught them the initial prayers, sometimes baptized them, since at first there was no priest among the industrialists, he installed large wooden crosses in various places as symbols of the fact that the honor of the first visit and development of these places belongs to the Russians; Orthodox people"(Adamov A. Shelikhov G.I. - M., 1952. P. 3..).
According to the proposal of Grigory Ivanovich and a person close to him, also a merchant, a resident of the city of Irkutsk, Ivan Larionovich Golikov, the Holy Synod appointed in 1793 the first Orthodox mission to Alaska, composed mainly of Valaam monks led by Archimandrite Joasaph (Bolotov) . According to the “Instruction” received by the head of the mission from Metropolitan Gabriel of St. Petersburg, main goal it consisted in spreading the light of Christ among the local American population and creating the Orthodox Church in a foreign land.
In September 1794, after a long ten-month journey, the mission arrived at its destination - on the island. Kodiak. Missionaries were expected here harsh conditions: inhospitable climate, foreign customs and food that made the monks sick. The difficult task lay ahead of bringing people to the knowledge of the true God, for a long time who lived in the darkness of paganism and idolized the forces of nature.
Upon arrival, the missionaries immediately built a temple, baptized and educated the natives. By the end of 1796, the number of Christians in North America reached 12 thousand. The success of the mission was greatly hampered by the cruel and unfair attitude of Russian industrialists towards the local population, about which the head of the mission, Archimandrite Joasaph, repeatedly sent reports to Russia. Having received no answer, he himself and two other monks went to Siberia in 1798 to resolve this important issue. Archimandrite is here. By decision of the Holy Synod, Joasaph was consecrated Bishop of Kodiak, vicar of the Irkutsk diocese, so that, having the authority of a bishop, he could overcome obstacles to the success of missionary work in Alaska. But on the way back, the ship on which the newly consecrated bishop was located sank, and everyone died.
Of course, this was a huge loss, but by the Providence of God the most prominent missionary became the Monk Herman of Alaska, the only monk in the mission who was not ordained. With his preaching and deeds of Christian charity and love, he attracted many natives into the fold of the Orthodox Church.
In 1811, due to an escalating conflict with the head of a company of Russian industrialists, the Holy Synod was forced to close the American diocesan see and transfer the affairs of the mission to the Irkutsk diocese.
In 1823 on the island. Priest John Veniaminov (later Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna) arrived in Unalaska. It is difficult to overestimate his contribution to the education of America. Possessing truly apostolic zeal and extensive knowledge in the field of ethnography and linguistics, Fr. John studied the language and customs of his flock well. A school for boys was opened on the island of Unalaska, where he himself taught. Father John even created a written language in the Aleuts, which they did not have before, and translated many biblical liturgical and instructive texts.
After the death of his wife, Fr. John (in 1849), with the blessing of his confessor Saint Philaret (Drozdov), took monastic tonsure with the name Innocent, and soon was consecrated Bishop of Kamchatka, Kuril and Aleutian. Arriving at the department in the city of Novoarkhangelsk (the center of the then Russian possessions), the saint founded the All-Colonial School for the training of sailors, cartographers, doctors, etc. among the local population.
In 1867, Alaska was sold to America, and in the Russian Church there was talk about the abolition of the mission, but Bishop Innocent saw in this the Providence of God arranging everything for the good. At this time, he wrote that in order to spread the Orthodox faith throughout the United States, pastors should be specially trained so that they have a good command of the English language, and thus Orthodoxy could spread throughout America.
In 1872, the episcopal see was transferred from Novoarkhangelsk to San Francisco; At the same time, English was introduced into church services.
At the end of the 19th century, a mass of emigrants, Ukrainian landless peasants, arrived from Russia to Canada in search of a better life. Orthodox Ukrainians became one of the first bearers of the Christian faith in this country. They united into parish communities, erected churches and invited clergy.
The Carpatho-Russians of the former Austria-Hungary also left their native lands. Experiencing social need, they left their native Carpathians for America. Many of them belonged to the Uniate schism, but the Lord soon raised up from their midst good shepherds who brought many into the fold of Orthodoxy. Among these good workers in the field of Christ, Archpriest Alexy Tovt especially worked. Later (in 1916) the Pittsburgh diocese was even opened, the parishioners of which were mainly Americans of Carpathian origin. In total, in the period from 1891 to the First World War, about 120 Uniate Carpathian parishes reunited with the Russian Orthodox Church in America.
In 1905, the diocesan center of the Aleutian and North American Diocese was moved to New York due to the increase in the number of parishes in the western United States. At the request of the growing Orthodox community in New York, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church allocated 20 thousand dollars, and in 1904 a magnificent temple was erected in the name of St. Nicholas. Through the efforts of Archbishop Tikhon, the missionary school that existed in Minneapolis was transformed into a seminary, a Theological School was founded in Cleveland, a male monastery was opened in Pennsylvania, and liturgical books were also translated into English.
By 1918, the American diocese had four vicariates - Alaska, Brooklyn, Pittsburgh and Canada; consisted of three missions (Albanian, Syrian, Serbian), 271 churches, 51 chapels, 31 deaneries, 257 clergy, about 60 brotherhoods; had the St. Tikhon's Monastery in South Canaan, an orphanage at the monastery, a Theological Seminary, and church schools; numbered up to 300 thousand believers. The North American Mission also had its own press organs, among which the official one was the "American Orthodox Herald". An Orthodox folk newspaper, Svet, was also published, which aimed to maintain the spirit of the people, the memory of the fatherland, and the defense of Orthodoxy in the American flock.
The fullness of Russian Orthodox church life in America already at the beginning of the century led Russian church leaders in the United States to think about the independence of the Church. In 1906, Archbishop Tikhon, in his report to the Pre-Conciliar Commission in Russia, recommended that the American Diocese be given broad autonomy. The same was repeated in 1916 by Archbishop Evdokim (Meshchersky). However, the dream of Archbishop Tikhon and his successors was not destined to come true then.
The 1917 revolution in Russia had a very painful impact on Orthodox life in America. On the eve of the revolution, Archbishop Evdokim (Meshchersky) of North America and several priests left for the Moscow Council of 1917–1918. Because of the events that unfolded in Russia, Archbishop Evdokim was unable to return to America, and soon became a Renovationist. Regular relations between the Church in America and the Church in Russia became impossible. Moreover, all spiritual and financial support provided by the Russian Church towards the American Orthodox Church immediately ceased. The American Church found itself in a very difficult situation, which provoked the emergence of many and very critical problems.
In order to resolve these problems in the American Church, it was decided to convene a Council, the second in a row, which was carried out in 1919. It was decided to elect a new diocesan bishop. After the departure of Archbishop Evdokim, the American Church was ruled by his senior vicar, Bishop Alexander (Nemolovsky). Almost unanimously, the Second All-American Council elected him Archbishop of North America, and this election was confirmed by His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon.
But he did not hold this post for long. Having encountered the difficulties of governing under conditions of forced separation from the Mother Church, he did not want not only to remain in the department, but even to continue his stay in America. As soon as Metropolitan Platon (Rozhdestvensky) of Kherson and Odessa, who had previously occupied the North American See from 1907 to 1914, arrived in America from Russia, His Eminence Alexander transferred to him all the affairs of managing the diocese (1922), and he himself left for Europe.
Metropolitan Plato's position as the ruling bishop in America was determined at the American Council of 1922, and in 1923 official notice of his appointment to the North American See was sent to him.
Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, Orthodoxy in America was structurally unified, under the authority of the Russian bishop. But when the October Revolution took place, fragmentation occurred: the Greeks founded their own diocese, the Serbs - theirs, the Arabs - theirs, etc. Thus arose, quite contrary to the normal canonical order, the existence of parallel jurisdictions on a single territory. A big problem was also the existence of schismatics from the Living Church.
In 1924, the Fourth All-American Council, in view of the need for strong local government of the Church, proclaimed the temporary self-government of the Church in America, which should exist until such time as it would be possible to restore normal relations with the Church in Russia. The Council also reaffirmed the election of Metropolitan Plato and decided to begin developing a permanent, complete charter for the American Orthodox Church, but due to various problems and difficulties in the organization, the Church was governed by various temporary charters for the next thirty years until it finally came to the approval of a permanent one.
Metropolitan Platon died in 1934. The Council was convened again, which again struggled with the problem of different jurisdictions, with the living church problem, etc. In this regard, the temporary self-government of the American Church was once again confirmed, and Archbishop Theophilus (Pashkovsky) was elected its head. He became Metropolitan of All America and Canada.
Some church historians have a slightly different view of the causes and consequences of the American Church's transition to self-government. In particular, prof. K. E. Skurat in his book on the history of Local Churches writes: “The life of the Orthodox Church in America would undoubtedly have returned to normal if Metropolitan Plato had drawn the correct conclusions from the events that took place in Russia, and, while maintaining filial obedience to the highest church authority, would have directed all its spiritual forces to the construction of local church life. The American Church would not have experienced the severe internal crisis into which it soon found itself, especially after the arrival from Moscow of the “living churchman” - the married bishop John Kedrovsky, who managed to present himself before the American court in his capacity. “true” representative of the highest church authority in Russia and take away the cathedral in New York with his residence from Metropolitan Platon. Unfortunately, the “Foreign Synod of Bishops” soon began to demand recognition of its authority over him from Metropolitan Platon. , Metropolitan Plato did not draw the proper conclusion from all this: to affirm the unity of the Orthodox American flock with the Mother Church, but led it along the path of alienation. He sometimes began to use the church pulpit for political speeches directed against the Mother Church and Russia.
In the conditions of separation from the Mother Church, the Greek Catholic Church in North America appeared alone in front of well-organized and purposefully operating Catholic and Protestant missions. The leaders of the Orthodox Church in America had to not think about the spread of Orthodoxy on the American continent, which was inherent in their glorious predecessors, but were more concerned about preserving their flock. First of all, the Vatican did not fail to take advantage of the difficult situation of the diocese, which began to attract to itself, on the basis of union, Orthodox parishes that had been knocked out of their rut. Protestants also tried to keep up with him. The latter began to attract the distressed Orthodox Church to their side, providing it with material assistance. Thus, they assigned a monthly “salary” to Metropolitan Plato, and also allocated the necessary funds for the convening of the Detroit Council in 1924, which adopted the first anti-canonical resolution on the temporary autonomy of the Russian Orthodox Church in America without prior consultation and consent from the Mother Church , although he noted the need to regulate relations with the Russian Church in the future.
When His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon learned about the non-canonical activities of Metropolitan Platon, he immediately in January 1924, by a special decree, relieved him of the administration of the North American diocese. Metropolitan Platon did not accept the patriarchal decree and consistently led the American flock towards its complete separation from the Mother Church. The situation was further complicated by the fact that on April 7, 1925, Patriarch Tikhon died. After the death of His Holiness the Patriarch, internal church schisms in the Russian Orthodox Church revived and, naturally, the main attention of the highest church administration was now directed to streamlining internal life. Only in March 1933, by the decision of the Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) and the Holy Synod, the rector of the Three Hierarchs' Compound was sent to America to clarify the situation on the American continent, as well as to become familiar with the actual attitude of Metropolitan Plato to the Mother Church and the Motherland he left behind. in Paris, Archbishop Veniamin (Fedchenkov)."
In connection with the statement of Metropolitan Plato about the severance of canonical relations and his withdrawal from subordination to the Mother Church, by the decision of the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius and the Holy Synod in 1933, Veniamin (Fedchenkov) was appointed ruling bishop of the North American diocese with the title of Archbishop of Aleutian and North American, in the title of Exarch of the Moscow Patriarchate. Thus, the Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate in North and South America was established, uniting parishes faithful to the Mother Church and existing until April 10, 1970, when, in connection with the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in America, it was abolished.
In the 40s, the Church in Russia gained some freedom and the election of a patriarch took place (1943). The Church in America rejoiced at this and sought reconciliation with the Mother Church. In this regard, at the 7th All-American Council (1946) it was decided to ask the Russian Mother Church for autonomy. At that time, negotiations were unsuccessful.
At the 13th All-American Council (1967), the question was raised about officially changing the name of the Church, which then sounded: Russian Orthodox Greek-Catholic Church in America. The bishop forbade the Council to make a decision on this issue, as he considered it too premature. After a lengthy debate on the issue, the bishops still allowed an informal vote. The vote took place, and the overwhelming majority was in favor of renaming the “Orthodox Church in America.”
By the end of the 1960s, negotiations between representatives of the American Metropolis and the Russian Orthodox Church began again, as a result of which, in April 1970, the Orthodox Church in America was granted autocephaly. This new status of the Church was accepted and confirmed in October 1970 at the Fourteenth All-American Council, which became the first Council of the Local Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America. At this time, the Primate of the Church was Irenaeus, Metropolitan of All America and Canada.
Fifteenth in diptych in the great family of autocephalous Orthodox Churches, the Local Orthodox Church in America has everything necessary for its independent existence. It has 16 dioceses, has more than 500 parishes (in the USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela) and has about a million flock.
In 1971, the Albanian diocese in the USA was accepted into the Orthodox Church in America according to its request. In the same year, the Orthodox Church in America organized a mission in Australia, headed by an administrator with the rank of archimandrite. The mission's activities yielded positive results - in 1974, several Orthodox Russian communities of "Karlovites" received canonical status under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America.
In the spring of 1972, over 20 priests and about 20 thousand laity of the Mexican National Old Catholic Church (formed in the 20s of the current century) joined the Orthodox Church in America. In this regard, the Mexican Exarchate was formed.
Even before the declaration of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in America, part of the Orthodox Romanians along with priests - about 40 parishes in the USA and Canada, separated in 1951 from the Church in America of the Romanian Patriarchate. The latter separated the affiliated parishes into an autonomous diocese called the “Romanian Orthodox Bishopric of America” and awarded its bishop the title “Detroit and Michigan.”
Currently, the Orthodox Church in America has male and female monasteries, three Theological Seminaries and an Academy. There are also courses for training deacons. As a rule, the courses are accepted for people of mature age who already have a civilian specialty. Almost every parish has Sunday schools. Programs and materials for them are prepared and published by the Committee for Religious Education of the Church.
Publishing activities are also widespread: a church calendar is published annually, as well as many magazines and newspapers in different languages. In addition, there are other publications in both English and Russian. different organizations, associated with the Church - the Federation of Russian Orthodox Clubs (it includes Orthodox born in America), the All-American Organization of Orthodox Women, mutual aid organizations, brotherhood and sisterhood, etc.
Submit your application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of receiving a consultation.
In the 20s of the 19th century, Father John Veniaminov arrived in Alaska and began missionary preaching. Among his many accomplishments was the translation of Scripture and worship into local dialects, for which he also created an alphabet and grammar. Around 1840, Father John was elected to episcopal service and took the name Innocent. Orthodoxy is spreading among Alaska Natives, but Bishop Innocent also visits California and the Orthodox community of Fort Ross, north of San Francisco. As a result, he returns to Moscow and becomes Metropolitan of Moscow (a few years ago he was canonized).
Along with the growth of church life in Alaska, more and more immigrants are arriving in what we now call the “lower 48.” In 1860, a parish was founded in San Francisco - now it is the Holy Trinity Cathedral, and gradually parishes began to appear throughout the country. With an influx at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries.
In 1917, a revolution broke out and communication between the North American diocese and the Russian Church was interrupted. In the early 1920s, Patriarch of Moscow Saint Tikhon, who headed the North American diocese from 1897 to 1907, issued a decree calling on dioceses remaining outside the borders of Russia (by that time the Soviet Union) to independently organize their lives until normal relations with Russian Church. Shortly thereafter, at a council of all bishops, priests and lay representatives of North America, it was decided that the North American Church could no longer maintain administrative ties with the Church of Russia, especially after the arrest of Patriarch Tikhon (who subsequently died in 1925). Accordingly, various ethnic groups, which had previously been part of a single diocese, established separate “jurisdictions” within the “mother” Churches of their historical homeland. This gave rise to the sad current situation numerous jurisdictions, with overlapping interests, which are based more on ethnic identity than on the non-canonical principle of a single Church in a given territory.
In the early 1960s, the Orthodox Church of America - then called the "Metropolitanate" - entered into negotiations with the Russian Church to resume canonical communion. In 1970 it was restored, and the Metropolis was granted "autocephaly". This not only gave the Metropolis the right of self-government independent of other ecclesiastical centers, but also served to recognize the fact that, after almost 200 years, the Church in North America had become truly the local Church of all North Americans, regardless of their ethnic origin. At the Council of Hierarchs, Priests and Laity, held that same year, the Church adopted the name “Orthodox Church of America.” The Orthodox Church in America received autocephaly from the Russian Mother Church on April 10, 1970.
Canonical territory - USA; The jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America also extends to some parishes in Canada, Mexico and South America.
Today, the Orthodox Church of America, in addition to the parishes of the former “Metropolitanate,” includes the Romanian Orthodox Diocese, the Albanian Orthodox Archdiocese, the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese and the Mexican Exarchate. Moreover, over the past twenty years, about 250 new parishes have been created, having virtually no ethnic roots and using only English in worship.
The Orthodox Church of America is a full member of the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of America (SCOBA), along with the Greek, Antiochian, Ukrainian, Carpatho-Russian and other archdioceses and dioceses. Hierarchs and priests of the Orthodox Church of America regularly concelebrate with clergy of other jurisdictions that are members of SCOBA, a visible manifestation of this unity is the annual service for the Solemnity of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday of Lent.
The Orthodox Church of America, being self-governing, has the right to elect its own First Hierarch without any external approval.
From November 12, 2008 to July 7, 2012, the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America was Metropolitan Jonah, former Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada.
By the decision of the Holy Synod of Bishops dated July 9, 2012, the senior consecrated member of the Synod, His Eminence Nathanael, Archbishop of Detroit, governing the Romanian Diocese, was appointed Locum Tenens of the Orthodox Church in America. His Eminence Michael, Bishop of New York and New Jersey, has been appointed administrator of the Orthodox Church in America.
On November 13, 2012, the XVII All-American Council, which opened in the city of Parma (Ohio), elected His Eminence Tikhon as the sixth Primate of the Orthodox Church in America.
Many people admire how beautiful and majestic ancient European churches are. However, America also has something to show. After all, just because a church is young does not mean that it is necessarily ugly. You may be surprised at the scenery that will unfold before your eyes if you decide to visit some of the most beautiful and impressive churches in the United States.
Cathedral of Saint John Divine
This cathedral is located 20 minutes from Times Square in New York, it takes up an entire block and is also incredibly tall. In fact, it is the only church in the world that is larger than St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. The limestone and granite structure is so impressive that it rivals any European church.
Washington Cathedral
There is no shortage of churches in Washington, but none is more remarkable than the Washington Cathedral. This cathedral has become the place where the funerals of all great people are held - 21 presidents and other significant figures for the country were buried here. Its appearance is also striking and can give competition to European churches. It is also worth noting a very eccentric detail - a statue of Darth Vader was recently erected on one of the towers as a modern symbol of evil.
St Mary's Cathedral
It is amazing and amazing that this cathedral still exists. It was first built in 1899 and soon became a parish school. The building was rebuilt in 1920, although there was a severe shortage of resources due to the effects of the First World War. By 1960, many residents had fled the region, and in 1988 the cathedral was prepared for demolition, but last-minute money was allocated for major repairs and the rescue of 26 nine-foot angel statues.
Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis
The archbishops of St. Louis in the early twentieth century were incredibly persistent in their desire to build the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. Even a devastating tornado could not stop them from raising one million dollars to build a cathedral in the Byzantine and Romanesque styles. In 1908, the cornerstone was laid and the cathedral was dedicated to Christ and King Louis IX.
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral was built in 1907 when the local archbishop noticed a growing need for a larger place of worship for local people. The cathedral itself was created in the bozar style. In 2012, the Vatican announced that this cathedral has a "bond of spiritual affinity" with St. Peter's Basilica, meaning if you make a spiritual pilgrimage to this cathedral, it is equivalent to a pilgrimage directly to the Vatican.
Chapel of the Crown of Thorns
This chapel is located deep in the Ozark Mountains and is built on hundreds of tons of rocks, allowing it to almost completely blend into the surrounding area. This structure is 48 feet tall and has 425 windows that offer wonderful views of the surrounding forest. Arkansas resident Jim Reed once bought this land to build his retirement home here, but instead decided to create a peaceful place where travelers could pray without interruption.
Cathedral of St Mary's High Hill
There are several brightly colored churches in this vibrant German-Czech area between Houston and San Antonio, but this one is known as the queen of them all. The church was built in 1906 and has 18 stained glass windows depicting biblical scenes. They were bought in Germany by local residents and donated to the cathedral. Inside you will also find carved statues, murals and more.
Memorial Presbyterian Church
This church is the oldest Presbyterian church in Florida. It was built by Henry Flagler in memory of his daughter, who died due to complications during childbirth. Its design is inspired by the Venetian Renaissance style (namely St. Mark's Basilica). The church has a 150-foot dome with a 20-foot Greek cross on top.
Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France
The Basilica of St. Louis, which overlooks the famous Jackson Square, is the oldest church in continuous use in the United States. The basilica was built in 1720 and dedicated to the French king Louis IX, at that time both colonists and slaves were baptized there. Unfortunately, the original church burned to the ground in 1788 and was rebuilt in 1794.
Grace Cathedral
Grace Cathedral in San Francisco was built in the image of Notre Dame Cathedral in France. The intricate stained glass windows that decorate the church were inspired by various biblical scenes. These stained glass windows were made in a medieval style, the story is told from the bottom up, as if rising to God.
Pilgrim's Chapel
Located about 45 minutes from Los Angeles, Pilgrim's Chapel is the perfect combination of nature and architectural genius. This chapel is also called the "glass chapel", as it is almost entirely made of glass, so that from inside there is a stunning view of the surrounding forests. It was created by Lloyd Wright, the son of the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
St. Andrew's Cathedral
This cathedral is located in Honolulu's historic district and serves as a reminder of Hawaii's long Anglican Episcopal history. This first Gothic cathedral in Hawaii was built on the initiative of the British royal family, who even donated part of their royal gardens to be placed on the cathedral grounds. Construction was completed in 1886.
Related articles
The best amulets against the evil eye and damage Amulet against the evil eye with hands for children
How to read the Psalter correctly
Delicious dishes with sausages
A glimpse of Bella. Romantic chronicle. A glimpse of genius. Messerer about Akhmadulina Boris Messerer glimpse of Bella romantic chronicle
I dreamed that I was sailing on a boat on the river
How to cook beef entrecote in a frying pan
About the company Foreign language courses at Moscow State University
Which city and why became the main one in Ancient Mesopotamia?
Why Bukhsoft Online is better than a regular accounting program!
Which year is a leap year and how to calculate it