Category Archives: Orthodox Commonwealth

The New World Order and Communion and Decentralisation

Foreword

I had a great interest in British and European history and geopolitics long before I started lecturing on these subjects at the ESSEC Graduate School of Business in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s. I suppose that I am probably one of the few Orthodox priests in the world who has also worked in lecturing in geopolitics and Western and Russian history. As such, I cannot help applying observations – and they are observations and not opinions – about the political world to Church life. Church life after all exists in the world shaped by politics, so the human side of Church life reflects politics, Cold War and post-Cold War. For example, the decentralisation or deglobalisation, now going on internationally, will be followed in Church life, though Church decentralisation originates from the model of the Holy Trinity, Unity in Diversity. But let us first look at the world and this process of momentous changes, which began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and has now reached the highest political level in the USA.

Part One: The End of the Old World Order

The End of the Millennial Western Cycle

In the last millennium Western Europe gradually came to dominate the world, reaching an apogee in the British and French colonial empires of the nineteenth century, which controlled nearly half of the planet. (Indeed, quite anachronistically today, those two countries, which no longer have colonial empires, still have seats on the unrepresentative UN Security Council). Then, as a result of Western Europe’s twentieth-century suicidal wars, falsely dubbed ‘World Wars’, power passed to the USA and to the ‘Wild West’ in California. Now that the US has also failed to keep its supremacy because of its own countless lost wars, we are returning to the old multipolar, pre-Western Globalist world, a decentralised world, which is what the ever-expanding BRICS, founded in Ekaterinburg in Russia in 2009, is. BRICS exists because it is representative of the real world, unlike the unrepresentative UN Security Council. And BRICS has been hugely boosted by the rout of West in the Ukraine and now by Trump’s tariffs.

The Rout of the West in the Ukraine

The Collective West’s last attempt to cling to power was to try to hang on to its domination by fighting a proxy war in Europe itself, against Russia in the Ukraine. Once Russia had been ‘reduced to rubble’ by the West, as promised by the demented Biden in 2022, the plan was to destroy China. This is why the ‘West is Best’ Westerner, the discredited liar, Boris Johnson, rightly warned that if the West lost in the Ukraine, it would lose its ‘hegemony’, that is, its domination of the world. This is correct as the Western rout in the Ukraine is now obvious. The recent sight of ‘invincible’ German tanks burning in their scores in the south of Russia’s Kursk province, a repeat of the same German defeat there in 1943, tells us the outcome of that attempt. As a result of seeing this NATO defeat, the West has been divided and Trump’s bankrupted USA is walking away, recognising that that his resources are much too limited and the Ukraine lies in the Russian sphere of influence. The ball is in the court of ever-squabbling Western Europe.

The End of Western European Power

With the anti-diplomatic insults wielded by European politicians like Macron and Starmer against Trump (anti-diplomatic because diplomacy only exists where there is free speech, and there is no free speech in Western Europe today, which is why it now has no free trade), it is clear that Western Europe has little future. None of its war criminal leaders, guilty of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, has more than 25% of support from their electorates. Thus, Trump marks the end of the globalist and centralist EU and NATO as he marks the end of centralisation. The EU elite is opposed to such decentralisation because it benefited the most from centralising Globalism, unlike the 90% at the bottom of their societies. That is why, for example, Brexit was supported by the bottom half of society and is opposed by the UK Metropolitan elite of politicians and journalists, who hate economic nationalism in favour of their self-interest.

The End of the EU and the UK

The West is divided. Europe collapses. Leading an authoritarian regime, the unelected EU elite, like the anti-Brexit UK elite, is based on top-down centralisation. European centralisation (‘unity’), like Europe itself, is artificial and depends on a European Deep State, a Superstate, an authoritarian EU or ‘Frankish’ (in the UK, it is not Frankish but Norman) Dictatorship. Thus, the EU is run by autocrats and commissars like von der Leyen. They are opposed to democratic leaders like Georgescu and Le Pen, trying to imprison them, and also to states like Russia and China, where leaders, who govern in the national interest, are very popular. (The only exceptions to unpopularity in Europe are pro-Trump leaders like Orban and Fico). As they say, Western countries are governed by different Parties, but by the same Policy and therefore the Parties are called the ‘Uniparty’. On the other hand, countries like Russia and China are governed by One Party, which changes its Policies in the national interest.

Import Tariffs

The irrational, plutocratic, narcissistic and even megalomaniac import tariffs of President Trump exist because he is the only one who has the courage to try and wipe out the huge US deficit and debt of $36.7 trillion, accumulated since 1991. Though the tariffs are not the solution, they mark the end of Globalism and US domination of the world, known as ‘Unipolarity’. Unipolarity began in 1991 after the fall of Bipolarity and the fall of the Marxist Soviet Union and rule by only one Power, the USA. These tariffs are not new. They echo the attempt by Great Britain to keep its Empire through ‘Imperial Preference’. Although the decline of the British Empire can be dated to 1878, Imperial Preference, that is, British Protectionism, was systematically implemented only in the 1930s. It failed. The introduction of Protectionism, through import tariffs or other anti-free trade measures, is a survival method which comes at the end of empire, when a country is on the way out, as is the USA, despite Trump’s fantasies.

BRICS: Decentralisation Defeats Globalism

As we have said, in 1991 the world moved from Bipolarity to Unipolarity and so Western-controlled Globalism. Today we are rapidly moving back to Multipolarity, which historically speaking is Normality, for Bipolarity and Unipolarity are historically abnormal, as we can see in India before 1711, China before 1839 and Russia before 1917. And today’s Multipolarity is embodied in BRICS, the Alliance of equal and sovereign countries, the model for decentralisation and anti-imperialism. BRICS, with half the world’s population and GDP, already has many representatives from the whole Non-Western world and dozens of countries are waiting to join it, and is led precisely by three of the world’s four largest economies, China, India and Russia. Thus, China overtook the USA in 2020, even on corrupted PPP figures, in reality, probably in 2008. India is fast catching up. And, at No 4, sanctioned Russia, which two years ago overtook Germany and then Japan, already has the largest economy in Europe.

Part Two: The New World Order

The USA versus BRICS

Today, the USA elite has isolated itself through imposing its bullying tariffs and united the world against it. All Afro-Eurasia’s 128 nations are uniting against it, despite resistance from the isolated, discredited and tariffed EU, former US allies, but now isolated from Russia, China and the USA. Thanks to the tariffs, the former enemies, China, Japan and South Korea, have met together. South-East Asia is drawing towards China. China is meeting Pakistan and Afghanistan. India is meeting Bangladesh. China and India are meeting together in friendship. Russia is meeting African countries. Powerful Indonesia has joined BRICS. Few of these countries need the USA, especially a USA which imposes tariffs on their goods. They not only can, but now have to, trade with one another. Even Western Europe and Anglosphere Oceania will be thrown into the embrace of China and, in the case of suicidal and much-weakened Western Europe, ironically, also into the embrace of the Russia that it once hated. How?

The Anglosphere

The US appear to be abandoning Africa and Western Europe with its EU and NATO, which Trump hates, but it is laying claim to Latin America, together with Greenland and Canada. In the Americas it is very doubtful if the USA can lay hold of Latin America or anything outside Northern America, that is, outside Greenland and Canada. It could, if it wished, probably and logically lay hold of the whole of the rest of the Anglosphere, the UK, Ireland (once both are divorced from the EU) and also Oceania, though with new elites. As for the rest of Western Europe, the suicidal old Western European elite must also be replaced, once the people have grasped that elite’s defeat in the Ukraine. This will mean the appearance of a new political governing class, drawn from the people, one which will respect others because it respects the people. It will mean introducing a democratic system, for the first time and respecting others, including Russia, which answers our question as to how Western Europe can embrace Russia.

England Versus Britain

Norman-founded Britain caused nearly a thousand years of continual violence, invading 171 of the world’s 193 countries, mainly since the seventeenth century, at war all the time, like the USA since 1941. But the Norman regime’s first victims were always the English, followed by the other native peoples of these Isles. Despite them and despite perceptions, parts of England still survive among the people, in the countryside, market towns and hidden places. True, films exist comparing the best of other countries with the worst of British England. This is as absurd as comparing the worst of others with the best of English England. True, the worst does exist. In Britain political instability has become the norm, with one minority authoritarian government after another, there is mass illegal immigration, caused by the Globalist elite, money is given to corrupt Kiev, parts of the health service are in a disastrous state, while potholed roads and litter-strewn pavements make parts of the country look rundown and third world.

Pessimism and Optimism

Thus, there are indeed good reasons for pessimism. And yet, England has been under threat since 1066, but we the English ‘plebs’ are still here, still alive, as are the Irish, the Scottish and the Welsh. The day of liberation of all of us and of our lands from the oppression of the British Norman elite is at last dawning. We all await liberation and the overthrow of British oppressors. A new political elite in the UK will also mean the end of pedophilia, which pollutes its politicians, economists, media like the BBC, the bishops and clergy of its strange Establishment Religion, founded by the sadistic maniac and thief, Henry VIII, and for centuries its queer German Royal Family. The fall of that perverted elite will be the end of the Norman Empire, whose first pervert was William Rufus. And he was only the first, which culminated in Victorian times, with Victoria’s children, and the stream of twentieth-century royal perverts, from the Duke of Kent, who died while crashing a plane in 1942, to the rotted Battenbergs.

Part Three: The Church

The Decentralisation of the Church and Communion with the Church

In May 1983, I asked Fr, now St, Sophrony (Sakharov) why heresy and schism are dangerous. He replied that danger comes from them because they are based on a lack of love. I learned from this that if you see a bishop consciously, self-justifyingly, and publicly falling into schism, and even condemning other Orthodox peoples in order to justify schism, you must leave him as soon as possible, unless you want to take part in his spiritual suicide, caused by his hatred of others and their views. In 2021 our alarm bells rang, when schism, falling out of communion after we had worked so hard and for so many decades to regain it, was implemented. We could not take part in it. So we all left. We do not regret obeying our conscience, indeed, we thank God that we escaped from that sin of hatred of others, which even the blood of martyrs cannot wash away. To fall into schism and so to fall out of communion with the Church is to be dreaded. Communion is the sign that we belong to the Church. And we do.

Communion and Decentralisation: Unity in Diversity

Schism is caused by excommunicating yourself from the Church because you are trying to enforce a politically-inspired, Papist centralisation. This can be seen very clearly in the present shameful schism between two of the most important Local Orthodox Churches, Moscow and Constantinople, which is a purely political combat about centralising power and gaining money. In the Church, unlike in the secular world in recent centuries, we have not Excommunion and Centralisation, but Communion and Decentralisation. If we have in our hearts and minds, as we should as Orthodox Christians, the Holy Trinity, Three in One, Unity in Diversity, there is no contradiction between Communion and Decentralisation. Like the Holy Trinity, Three in One, Communion and Decentralisation describe relations of Love. It is time for Moscow and Constantinople to respect other nationalities and other lands, decentralising without losing Communion, the sign that we belong to the Church. And we do.

Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

Chisinau, Moldova.

Feast of the Archangel Gabriel, 26 March/8 April 2025

 

 

 

 

 

Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the Future of the Orthodox Church in Western Europe after the Western Defeat in the Ukraine

The colonial era is widely accepted to have started in the 15th century…, but in fact colonialism started in the 11th century.

Fadi Lama, Why the West Can’t Win, Clarity Press, 2023

Introduction

Europe

The 10 million square kilometres of what has for several centuries been called Europe is divided into two almost equal halves. The Eastern half is populated very largely by East Slavs and consists of only three countries. It stretches from the Urals in the Russian Federation to the borders of Belarus and the future Ukraine (when the borders of the Ukrainian people have at last been self-determined). It has a population of some 185 million, if we include the smaller numbers who live beyond the Urals, as far as the Pacific coast. The vast majority of them are baptised Orthodox Christians.

The Western half stretches westwards from those borders to the Atlantic coasts of Iceland, Ireland and Portugal. Unlike the Eastern half of Europe, the Western half is divided into forty-one countries and is populated by different races, with some 555 million people, three times more than in the Eastern half. Most of the countries in the far West have since the eleventh century colonised much of the world. By background these are mainly the new Roman Catholics or Protestants, but there are also 55 million of the much older, original Orthodox Christian population, mostly living in the smaller and poorer countries.

Part One

The Eastern Half of Europe After the Conflict in the Ukraine

The future of Russia was already clear to Tsar Nicholas II (+ 1918), who wanted to restore Russia to the era of Tsardom before the Western-minded imperialist, Peter I (+ 1725). Tsar Nicholas II was prevented by aristocratic traitors from this restoration, as he rejected their feudal system of serfdom of the Russian Empire (1721-1917). In his turn, President Putin has today rejected the anti-Russian system of atheism of the Soviet Empire (1917-1991) and the Western system of capitalism of the corrupt oligarchy of the three countries of East Slavdom (1992-2022). This 300-year period and its illusions ended, ironically, thanks to Western sanctions, illegally and suicidally applied to the Russian Federation, after the conflict in the eastern Ukraine became large-scale.

In other words, after a 300-year interruption, Russia and all the East Slavs are about to return to the period of Pre-Imperial Tsardom. This means economic sovereignty and independence, not subservience to the Western Powers and their Globalist ideology. Unlike the Feudal-Capitalist period of the past 300 years (1721-2022), which was chiefly concerned with money-making, as loved by pseudo-White, that is anti-Tsar, Russian emigres, and then by Westernised oligarchs, Tsardom also means social justice. The Revolution came about precisely because of the lack of injustice. Like all Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Russians are socially conservative, but also value social justice, the sources of stable family life and stable national life. Here is the future.

The Western Half of Europe After its Defeat in the Ukraine

The first and second parts of the Great European War, known as World War One and World War Two, were caused by imperialist rivalries in Western Europe, notably the British elite Round Table’s and the German Kaiser’s ambition to exercise global hegemony, controlling the whole world. Through its failed aggression, in 1916 that British ruling class ended up having to begin to cede its dreamed-of global hegemony to the US elite. Failing to manipulate the US for its own purposes, later even the arch-manipulator, the half-American Churchill, was to see his beloved British Empire dismantled by the US. The present conflict in the Ukraine, which is as close to World War Three as we can get, was caused by the similar ambition of the US elite. It tried to reproduce the dream of the British ruling class, to exercise global hegemony, killing ‘to the last Ukrainian’.

That conflict has already lasted for over three years, for ‘as long as it takes’ (= for as long as it takes for the Ukraine to collapse). The EU and UK still refuse to admit the defeat of their Ukrainian proxy. They are too proud to lose face and admit defeat and so continue to justify themselves and talk about making war and not peace (strangely these warmongers want to take part in peace talks!). This refusal to accept reality is so deranged that it is delusional. Thus, the coming end of the Nazi Ukraine will also be the end of the Nazi EU fantasy. In reality, Europe does not exist, there are only the at present forty-one countries of Western Europe. After the eventual collapse of the EU and the UK, the approximately 555 million people of the forty-one nations of Western Europe may perhaps divide into four Regional Confederations of Sovereign Nations.

Part Two

Four Regional Confederations in Western Europe

In the Southern half of 280 million, the two Regional Confederations could be that of the at present eight largely Latin countries of South-Western Europe (France, Monaco, Italy, San Marino, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Andorra, numbering some 185 million), and that of the sixteen countries of South-Eastern Europe (Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus, numbering some 95 million). This smaller group, with its large Orthodox presence would naturally be close to Russian-oriented Eastern Europe.

In the Northern half of 275 million, the two Regional Confederations could be that of the at present ten largely Germanic countries of Northern Europe (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland and the British Isles, numbering some 110 million), and that of the at present seven largely Germanic countries of Western and Central Europe: the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Poland, numbering some 160 million). These two Northern Confederations have much in common, as do the two Southern Confederations. Perhaps they would combine?

Old and New Countries

However, new countries, forced apart into separate countries for purely political reasons, and those artificially constructed from regions of their neighbours, could reform and reunite. Thus, on the one hand, the now politically divided Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and perhaps Bosnia-Herzegovina, could reunite into one. On the other hand, the territory of Belgium could be returned to its three component countries, the Netherlands, France and Germany, of which it was artificially composed. And although we presume that Italy and Germany will remain united, this is not certain. Notably, there are great differences between eastern and western Germany and northern and southern Italy.

On the other hand, centralised Spain could at last cede independence to Catalonia and the artificial union of the UK, a failed state, could dissolve back into England, Scotland and Wales. These could finally reclaim their freedom and independence from Britain, and with the long overdue reuniting of Ireland. Thus, that ruthless band of colonial Vikings, raiders and traders (much the same thing), who formed and imposed the British Establishment in their Crusade in 1066, began their worldwide aggression. Their wicked legacy is continued by the British State and its propaganda mouthpieces over nearly a millennium, may at last disappear. Such possible changes would still leave a Western Europe of forty-one countries.

Part Three

The Russian Rejection of a Western European Orthodox Church

In this new reality of Western Europe (effectively, Non-Russian Europe) and Eastern Europe (effectively, Russian Europe), what is the future of Orthodox Christianity in this Western half of Europe? In the last four years, the Russian Church has refused to tackle its own internal schism there, caused by the sociopathic hatred among its converts and their breach of internal communion. If, as it seems, Russian nationalism has taken hold and indifference to Non-Russians is now the norm, the Russian Church will indeed lose everything outside the Russian Federation, where it has already rejected its age-old, best friends. It seems to have turned its back on the West, rejecting the legacy of the old Russian emigration and the hopes of Patriarch Alexis II, who had himself been an emigre. For now the Russian Church is looking to Africa and Asia.

Some prophesy that since 1991 Russia has been condemned to wander in the wilderness for forty years, but that it will be led out to the Promised Land by its Moses-like Saints and only then, in about 2030, will a Tsar come. Only then will come renewed interest and the awaited Great Cleansing of the Church. Indeed, over the last thirty-five years the Vatican-style homosexualisation of the Moscow episcopate has been accompanied by pseudo-intellectualism, ecumenism and financial corruption a la Alfeev. The abandonment of the Western world by Moscow and its reduction to ghetto nationalism has left a vacuum in its discipline. This is being filled in part by the CIA takeover of the New York branch of the Russian Church, with its sectarian doctrine of the rebaptism not only of Catholics and Protestants, but also of other Orthodox Christians.

The Greek Rejection of a Western European Orthodox Church

This new self-imposed irrelevance of all parts of the Russian Church to the foundation of a new Local Church of Western Europe repeats the same self-imposed irrelevance of the Greek Church of Constantinople. The latter also turned its back on a Western European Local Church, though several decades ago, as a result of Greek nationalism. We remember many, many incidents of such nationalism over the last sixty years, with Western Europeans being told by Greek archbishops and priests to ‘go away’ (in fact, much less politely than that) or being told to ‘join the Anglicans’ or ‘become a Catholic’. One well-known Cypriot ‘spiritual father’, who possessed a doctorate, informing us that Orthodoxy only exists because of Plato and Aristotle, ‘who are virtually saints’, as without those pagan Greeks ‘there would never have been any Christianity’!

Over the last sixty years the Vatican-style homosexualisation of the episcopate of Constantinople has gone hand in hand with the same pseudo-intellectualism, ecumenism and financial corruption, this time, a la Zisioulas. It is curious to see how these four phenomena are always interconnected in both Churches. The recent revelation, long-rumoured, that the CIA paid the Phanar $15 million (in fact $20 million, but the corrupt Kiev regime filched $5 million for its own slush fund) to found their fake gangster Church in the Ukraine is symbolic of the spiritual decadence. After all, the CIA escorted under threat of death Patriarch Maximos V to Switzerland in 1948, since when the City has indeed been lost, captive to politicking. Only a new Patriarch can ‘retire’ all the homosexual bishops and cleanse the Phanar, in effect refounding the Patriarchate.

Conclusion: The Input of the Romanian Orthodox Church

With both the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox worlds fallen to political nationalism in the last few years, and without hope, for now, of restoring the old multinational catholicity of Russian Orthodoxy, now out of communion with many other Orthodox, who can we local Orthodox look to? Abandoned by Greeks and Russians alike, the responsibility for the possible foundation of a future Western European Orthodox Church falls for now to the second largest Local Orthodox Church, the Romanian, if only because of its size.

The Romanian language is not only a Latin language which uses the Latin alphabet, but the Romanian Orthodox Church is also in communion with all the Local Churches, unlike the Greeks and the Russians. The Romanian Church is also by far the largest in Western Europe, with 5 million baptised, 1,153 churches and 10 bishops. However, a future new Local Church must encompass all Orthodox, inclusively, non-politically and non-nationalistically. This can only come in an alliance of Churches, in the spirit of catholicity of the whole Church.

 

 

What Will Happen to the Orthodox Church After the Fall of Washington?

The powers of this world have throughout history tried to abuse religious belief by making it into their own nationalist and ritualist institutions. This has been to camouflage and justify their nationalism, that is, their attachment to this world, their worldliness. Chinese, Indians, Jews, Greeks, Japanese, Copts, Syrians, Armenians, Arabs, Latins, Germans, Greeks, Spanish, Russians, French, British, Americans, they have all done it. These are just facts from Church history. How do Christians remain outside and resist an ideology which puts national and worldly issues above Christ, all for the sake of amassing more power and money? There are only two ways of resisting:

Either you are a Confessor, or else you are a Martyr. Thus, St Stephen the First Martyr was stoned to death by the Jews because he upset their nationalism. He was only following the prophets and St John the Baptist, who had told the nationalist King Herod the truth, and Christ Himself, Whom they crucified. Then came such Confessors as St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom. And in the twentieth-century there were the hundreds of thousands of Martyrs all over Eastern Europe, as well as Confessors like St Nectarios of Aegina, St Luke of the Crimea, St John of Shanghai or St Paisios the Athonite. There is nothing new under the sun. The saints are always the best witnesses.

In recent centuries the Church in the Middle East and the Balkans was oppressed by Ottomans, Poles and Austro-Hungarians. Meanwhile the Russian Church was oppressed by Westernising rulers, even more so after 1917. In the nineteenth century and even before, the main Patriarchate outside Russia, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, was used as a plaything by the British and French ambassadors. The Western Powers also appointed German kinglets to rule the newly-liberated Balkan countries in their name.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has in the same way become the plaything of US ambassadors there. Meanwhile the Patriarchate of Moscow was being used as a plaything by the Soviet State. Neither the US State of the Soviet State was Christian. Both were, whatever the theory, in practice atheist. This situation has continued by centuries of inertia even after the end of the first so-called Cold War in 1991, but in ways even more terrible than before.

Thus, in Moscow, Stalinist centralisation has continued, repelling all Non-Russians from the Church, as Metropolitan Vladimir of Moldova openly described in his recent letter to Patriarch Kyrill. For fifty years we too were treated as second-class citizens by the same Russian Church. None of this is because this mentality has been forced on the Church by the State, but because it has become a bad reflex inside the Church. It is nothing to do with the State. For example, a fragment of Moscow, the New York ROCOR has done this too, completely discrediting itself, mistreating Non-Russians. (As one of its bishops said to me recently, ROCOR is ‘a train wreck’).  The mentality to repel all, including many Russians, has been imposed internally. The only real slavery comes from ourselves, not from others.

We can see the same mentality also in the uncanonical, US-orchestrated actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Ukraine and elsewhere since 2018. Sadly, Constantinople fell to Greek racist hatred and jealousy of Russians.  It could simply have refused to do any of its horrors. But the $25 million bribe was irresistible to the weak. Since then a second Cold War has begun, with US proxy forces trying to weaken and destroy Russia from the Ukraine. It means that the heavy burden of steering the ship of the Church has fallen to those less politicised, more free, to the now 14 other Local Churches. Their role has been dependent on the political freedom which they have.

Thus, under Communism in Eastern Europe and under the US control of the Greek Churches, the Serbian Church stood out as a beacon of relative freedom and theology. Today, in this respect the Albanian Church seems to have taken the lead as the voice of freedom, though the long-overdue visit of Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America to the persecuted Ukrainian Church is also a miracle. The remaining 14 Local Churches are not all united because they do not enjoy the same measure of freedom. They are only relatively free compared to Constantinople and Moscow. For instance, the actions of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople have brought some of the other Local Churches into a state of internal schism.

Specifically, the Cypriot and Bulgarian Churches are now in a state of internal schism as a direct result of the US interference in Constantinople, both direct and indirect. Equally, the US-controlled Patriarchate of Alexandria and Moscow are in schism because of the latter’s interference in Africa. Other Local Churches, like the Romanian and the Georgian, which have a strong national identity, take an independent line, ignoring uncanonical Greek and uncanonical Russian alike. This is despite the attempts by the local US ambassadors, who behave like the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, to interfere in the choice of Patriarchs and policies. This independence is the only way to go. It is freedom.

However, our question is what will happen after the US stops interfering in internal Church affairs. It is our hope that, once political pressure eases, the Greek Churches in particular can take the lead and get out of political distortions and contortions, abandoning imperialist fantasies, recognising new autocephalies, notably that of the Macedonian Orthodox Church and its Diaspora. However, the Russian Church also has to give up its Soviet-style centralisation, which is its imperialist fantasy. It has to grant autocephaly to parts of the Church in now independent countries.

The shadow of the old Imperialism, Russian or Soviet, just like Greek and Latin imperialism, has cast a long shadow on Church life. Its time is up. For the Church does not consist of one Local Church ruling imperially over all the others, but of their entirety, their catholicity – all the Local Churches together. Once political meddling is over, all the Local Churches must hold a Council together. A free and canonically ordered Council, not the 2016 robber-Council farce in Crete. Then the very many long-outstanding issues between the Local Churches can at last be resolved. In freedom. May God’s Will be done!

 

 

The Orthodox World: The Third Way Holds the Centre Ground

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

 

Introduction: Secularist Greeks Versus Secularist Russians

So wrote the Irish poet Yeats in 1919 after the first catastrophic tribal European War of 1914-1918 was over. Since that time over a hundred years of ‘mere anarchy’ and ‘the blood-dimmed tide’ have been loosed. Still today some wonder how much longer ‘the rough beast’ will take to ‘slouch to Bethlehem to be born’, as Yeats wrote further in his same poem The Second Coming. In the affairs of the Non-Orthodox world, Protestantism seems to have lost all its faith and is now closing down, selling off its churches, as it is ‘lacking all conviction’. As for Papalism, it is led by an old and sick man who faces scandal after scandal and all is ‘falling apart’. What about the situation of the Orthodox Church?

Secularists, who only look at externals and fail to know the inner life of the Church, see Orthodoxy as divided between Russians and Greeks. They always have done so and always will ignore the vast majority of the Local Orthodox Churches. However, inside the Church we have a far different understanding from them, reaching much beyond the superficial nationalist politics of Greek and Russian elites. What amateur CIA writers call ‘The Clash of Patriarchs’ (1) is nonsense. The Church is not about personalities, politics or ethnicities, it is far deeper and broader than mere skin-deep secular racial identities, Russian, Greek or any other, for in Christ there is ‘neither Jew nor Greek’. Outside the Church there is only that.

The Centre Ground

Our place is in the centre ground of the other fourteen Local Orthodox Churches, which is also the ground held by churched Russians and Greeks, though not by Russian and Greek nationalists, who are merely ‘cultural Orthodox’, nostalgic and delusional for long since disappeared empires. The Centre is opposed to the divisive nationalism of unchurched Greeks and Russians. That nationalism is rejected by Non-Greeks and Russians, that is, by the majorities of the other fourteen Local Churches, which form ‘Carpathian Orthodoxy’, covering Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania and Moldova, with Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria standing ready nearby.

The Hellenism of the Greek world, which ended in 1453, is rejected by Non-Greeks. In the second largest Local Church, the Romanian, we ignore both Greeks and Russians. In Western Europe we are far larger, soon with twelve bishops, nearly a thousand parishes and five million faithful. At present the Romanian Church is also reclaiming Romanian Orthodox in the southern Ukraine, Moldova and Western Europe from both Greeks and Russians. Serbs, Macedonians, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Romanians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Syrians, Poles and Albanians also reject Greek interference. And Russian nationalism is becoming irrelevant even in the former USSR as Orthodox assimilate, as we can see below.

The Tragedy of Russian Politicisation

It seems strange that Orthodox in countries as diverse as the Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia and Kazakhstan are still formally under the Russian Church. Already in Estonia for thirty years and for a few months in Lithuania, the Russian Church has had no monopoly of jurisdiction. As for the Ukraine, the Church jurisdictional situation there is chaotic, with Moscow losing everything. though not yet as chaotic as among Orthodox in Western Europe, the Americas and Australia, where many Local Churches are represented and people are free to choose their church. And governments there are also free to allow any Local Church to operate on its territory – or not, with the Russian Church already banned in Latvia.

The sad fact is that Russian Church life has been highly politicised; much is ideology, rigidity, negativity and coldness. The old Russian emigration anecdote goes that once a Russian was discovered by a ship living on a desert island, where he had built three churches. When asked by the captain of the ship that rescued him why he had built three churches, he replied: ‘So that there are two where I must not go’. The fact is that the Russian emigration has been marked by hatred, not love, by bishops who hate their clergy and people, ‘drowning the ceremony of innocence’, who try to steal the people’s churches, sadistically punish and generally have no idea of how to be pastors and love their clergy and people (2).

The Ukraine

What of the Ukraine? What will happen there after the forthcoming Russian victory? Probably, this will at long last create a real Ukraine, divested of its very large minorities, almost a majority, over half of the old Soviet-created Ukraine. The far south-west corner, former Habsburg territory, will surely return to Hungary after its theft in 1945. In the south, North Bukovina, which was also stolen by Stalin, will return to Romania. And surely at least two of the mainly Uniat provinces in the far west may return to Poland. The rest, the real Ukraine, minus the huge Novorossija in the south and east which is largely Russian, will remain as the real Ukraine, with its centre in historic Kiev and be Ukrainian-speaking.

Clearly, the time will then be up for the so-called ‘OCU’, Constantinople’s fake Church, that absurd State-run jurisdiction of gangsters and homosexuals with 1,500 now empty churches, stolen by State-aided violence from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, led by the heroic Metr Onufry of Kiev. On the other hand, after military victory, Moscow, which is now at the head of a Russian National Church, will have to win the peace. It will be obliged to decentralise and at last grant the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly (33 years late…). No Ukrainian wants to attend ‘alien’, Russian-controlled, churches. Ukrainians want their own Church. This will be the seventeenth Local Orthodox Church.

Moldova

Then there is Moldova. The main Church there, which depends on Metropolitan Vladimir who is under Moscow for the moment, will soon have twelve bishops. It works in competition with the smaller Metropolia of Bessarabia, which also claims historic jurisdiction in Moldova and is part of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Vladimir has recently made a tour of the very large Moldovan Diaspora. It is possible that with so many bishops he may after the fall of the US-run Ukraine want to declare autocephaly (independence) from Moscow, with the full backing of the Moldovan government and the US ambassador (which is much the same thing). However, such a move will have complex implications.

For Moscow would not recognise such a self-declared autocephaly. At that point Metropolitan Vladimir of Moldova should logically, if he wished, negotiate with the Romanian Church to have his autocephaly confirmed by it. This would be on condition that he create unity with the Bessarabian Metropolia and withdrew all the absurd ‘defrockings’ of clergy who have already transferred from him to it, both inside and outside Moldova. Only if the Romanian Church granted him autocephaly, would the rest of the Orthodox world recognise it, leaving Moscow even more isolated and lacking a part of its former Diaspora in Western Europe. A Moldovan Church would be the eighteenth Local Church.

The Baltics and Beyond

Beyond this, Moscow would also have to deal with Church affairs in the three independent Baltic republics. If it does not give them autocephaly, they will be further racked by schism and destroyed and undermined by their Russophobic State authorities. Moscow’s long refusal to grant autocephaly has already led to divisions in Estonia and Lithuania. However, since the total number of bishops in the three countries is, I believe, only eight, and numbers of the faithful are fewer than half a million, it would make sense to set up a Baltic Orthodox Church, covering all three territories. Indeed, it could be argued that Finland should become a fourth part of this Baltic Orthodox Church. This would be the nineteenth Local Church.

Beyond this there is the Russian Church in the Diaspora. Here there is schism in Western Europe because of the schism of the very aggressive American Synod of Russian bishops, with its ghetto churches in backrooms and garden sheds, with a dozen or so ‘onetrue church’ converts in each one and clergy who have no theological training or qualifications, ‘making it up as they go along’. They have no idea of mass Orthodoxy. The people and priests turn away from homosexual, bisexual and schismatic psychopathic bishop-pharisees, shouting in jealousy, threatening, intimidating, punishing, trying to steal property and screaming: ‘Give me the keys!’ Their refusal to co-operate with other Orthodox is based on their ideological and racial hatred.

Africa

The Russian Church has Exarchates in Belarus (see below), and two missionary exarchates, in South-East Asia and in Africa. This latter is highly controversial, as the Patriarchate of Alexandria in Egypt has for nearly a century claimed Africa as its territory, though until the late 1920s it had claimed only Egypt and Libya. Although here it has made several hundred thousand Black African converts, its missions have been weak and control of the Church is 100% in Greek hands and Greek embassies. The Russian mission appears to have opened in revenge for the 2018 Greek setting up a ‘Church’ with US finance in the Ukraine, Russia’s canonical territory. Does the Russian missionary Exarchate in Africa have a future then?

On paper the Russian Exarchate appears to be as uncanonical as the Greek ‘Church’ in the Ukraine. However, in the Ukraine the people do not attend the top-down Greek Church, which recently adopted the ‘new’ calendar against all tradition and many of whose clergy are not even ordained. On the other hand, the Russian mission has attracted grassroots interest, with over 100 African priests and their communities joining it. Collective baptisms are taking place. If the Russian mission goes native and has black African bishops, then it will have a future. But first it has to prove that it is not a political, Russian embassy set-up. Only if it goes native, will it get canonical recognition as a fait accompli and become the twentieth Local Church.

Conclusion: The Revelation Is At Hand

There are other former Soviet, but now independent republics, such as Belarus and the five stans of Central Asia, especially Kazakhstan, where there are several million Russians. At present none of these countries has asked for its own autocephalous Church, but that time will almost certainly come. As for the Moscow Diaspora in Western Europe and the Americas, it has largely become a ghetto, as the Russian Church is seen as politically compromised and has painted itself into a nationalist corner. However, the Greek Diaspora is also politically compromised, it is largely elderly, to the point of dying out, and its episcopate suffers from severe homosexualisation, with all the usual accompanying financial and moral scandals.

The Russian Church is already facing financial difficulties inside Russia. Fewer and fewer are attending churches there, as they appear to be subordinate to politics and not to the Gospels and spirituality, which the people seek. In that respect it is like the Protestant Church of England, which is also seen as hopelessly in political thrall to the State. In general, the age when the Church can be held hostage to Greek and Russian nationalism is over. The vital forces of the Church are elsewhere. The Orthodox world is not Greeks and Russians – they are only two of the already sixteen Local Churches, perhaps to become twenty. The others, what we have called ‘Carpathian Orthodoxy’, provide the Third Way. This means that the Centre can hold.

Notes:

  1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/05/russia-ukraine-orthodox-christian-church-bartholomew-kirill/677837/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-atlantic-am&utm_term=The
  2. See the portrait of the dried-up pharisee-monk Fr Ferapont, full of hatred and jealousy for the saintly Elder Zosima in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, or the portrait of the very unpleasant émigré bishop in the 1957 novel Father Vikenty by Paul Chavchavadze. We know who the model for that crust-dry bishop was, obviously a repressed homosexual or pedophile.