Category Archives: Pastoral Matters

Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition Available Again

This anthology of 100 essays, first published in 1995 and now with a new foreword, is at last available again from:

frandrew_anglorus@yahoo.co.uk. 3rd Edition A5 495 pp.

Price: £15.00 + £2.80 p & p in the UK. Unfortunately, Air Mail to the USA is now £12.85 (surface post, which can take up to two months, is £8.00). Please make payments by Paypal button from the website: www.orthodoxengland.org.uk

From the Back Cover

Today many search for an Undivided Christendom and the traditional teachings of the Early Church, which go beyond the latter-day divisions and disputes of Roman-Catholic, Anglican and Protestant. And amid the chaos of recent years many have discovered the Orthodox Church and Her Faith, drawn from the first millennium of Christianity. In this book the author, an English Orthodox priest, looks at the authentic Orthodox Faith, beyond the historical and cultural vicissitudes surrounding it, and pinpoints its relevance to us. He writes: Orthodox Christianity is the Faith revealed to the repentant in their quest for the Holy Spirit. Should we accept it, we would thus accept the struggle for the Holy Spirit; and in so doing we would accept the struggle to build Jerusalem here, ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’.

Foreword to the Third Edition

For we hope that the Lord will deliver Russia and the Russian people from the dread years of evil which have now lasted for 70 years. Russia can be reborn only through the repentance of the Russian people, through faith in God, through living the Divine commandments. Therefore the rebirth of the Russian people – the rebirth of personal, social and national life – must be founded on the Holy Orthodox Faith and their life must be built on this. And then once more, as of old, Russia will be Holy Rus, the House of the Most Holy Mother of God.

Prophecy of the Ever-Memorable Archbishop (later Metropolitan) Laurus (1987)

All my life I have been haunted by the European world that was lost by the consequences of the tragic events and sacrifices of August 1914, now exactly 100 years ago. Growing up with nineteenth-century grandparents and great-uncles who had fought in the First European War and with tragic maiden great-aunts, I knew that all of us had to live with those consequences. There has been no peace in the world since then, since the profound injustice of the victory so cruelly and ironically snatched from the Russian Empire in 1917 by Allied treachery and then the German treachery that made the slaying of the Russian Royal Family inevitable. And that, in turn, made the destruction of Germany in the Second European War inevitable, with Russian troops taking Vienna and Berlin. And that, in its turn, made the Cold War inevitable.

That War dragged on until 1991. Then the Slav, Romanian, Georgian and Albanian Churches all lived beneath the yoke of atheism and had virtually no free voices. As for the smaller and weaker Greek Churches, they were compromised by US control. Thus, the impoverished Patriarchate of Constantinople, at one time financed by Anglicanism, had come under US control in 1948, when Patriarch Maximos was deposed by the CIA with threats to his life and despatched into a generation of exile in Switzerland, uttering as he went the words, ‘The City is lost’.

Those were dark days of the betrayal of the Church and, virtually alone, the Church Outside Russia spoke on behalf of us all. For during the Cold War proud anti-Incarnational modernism and ecumenism (heresies, like sects and cults which are created by heresies, are always based on pride), in either their crass, pseudo-intellectual, humanist Protestant/Catholic form, as often in the US, or in their subtle, pseudo-spiritual, personalist Buddhist/Hindu form, as often in Europe, were everywhere. ‘Orthodox’ academic theology was then dominated by that spiritual decadence which may be called ‘captivity theology’. In its intellectualism that ‘theology’, ignorant of the Lives of the Saints, utterly failed to see that Orthodoxy is a striving for holiness, which is simply a life lived with prayer in conformity with the Tradition

This was the academic theology of ‘Orthodox’ intellectuals, who had studied either in Protestant centres (Oxford, Cambridge, Strasbourg, centres in Germany etc) or else in Roman Catholic centres (especially the Gregorian University in Rome, but also Paris, Louvain, Jesuit Fordham etc). The academics infected naturally reflected the proud cultural prejudices of those establishments where they had studied, resulting not in an Orthodox, but a ‘Halfodox’ vision of the world. An associated mixture of ecumenists, liberals and modernists, those intellectuals wished to reduce the Church to a mere religion, a theory and an institution, just like the Western denominations. This was, consciously or unconsciously, spiritual treachery.

Their ‘theology’, in fact philosophy, reflected the humanistic personalism and spiritually empty symbolism of that age. Most of those intellectuals have now died, if not, they are very elderly. The generation of disciple-imitators that succeeded them has even less conviction or talent. It is hardly surprising – modernism is incredibly old-fashioned in a post-modern world. With the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia, that age of decadence seems increasingly distant. I remember at that time, and I mean nearly 40 years ago, being told by an ‘Orthodox’ academic at one of those above-mentioned universities that if I was not satisfied with their food that did not satisfy my soul, I should ‘go and live in Russia’. During the Cold War that was not possible; therefore I took the next best option, to frequent the last emigres of the first generation of the White emigration in Paris and the Church Outside Russia.

This anthology of essays was written between 1974 and 1995, precisely at that time when the Church Outside Russia was isolated, indeed virtually besieged, under attack from all sides and from inside, by the extremes of modernism and ‘traditionalism’ alike. Indeed, as I came to realize, the Church Outside Russia was then one of the few points of freedom anywhere in the Orthodox Church. Figures in it expressed words of truth similar only to those of the lone Serbian theologian St Justin of Chelije, canonized in 2010, and other figures on the Holy Mountain and in the monasteries of the Carpathians.

Rejoicing in the canonization of the New Martyrs and Confessors in New York in 1981, when the Orthodoxy hierarchy was still paralysed in the homelands, at that time we also tried to reclaim for the Church the ancient holiness of Western Europe. We knew that all holiness can only come from the Church, as we daily confess in the Creed. Our task was to help gather together the remaining living spiritual and cultural forces of the dying West and to call it back to its roots in its ancient holiness that it had for the most part renounced. This desire is very much reflected in this book. Sadly, since that time we have seen the final death-throes of once Christian-based Western civilization, witnessing the disappearance of the old culture.

For after 1991, and with great speed, the demons that had operated in the atheist Soviet Union migrated to the atheist European Union, whose spiritual deadweight has been reinforced by the atheism of North America. Only a few years ago President Putin of the Russian Federation, made wise by the failure and defeat of atheism, warned the then Prime Minister Blair that demon-inspired atheism was literally a dead end; naturally, he was ignored, for deluded arrogance never listens to wisdom. Indeed, ever since 1988 the Church that President Putin belongs to, the multicultural and multilingual Russian Orthodox Church, 75% of the whole Church of God, has been reviving, re-opening or building three churches every day somewhere on the planet.

Together with it there is reviving the social, political and economic life of the Russian Federation, the Russian Lands (Rus) and even other parts of the Orthosphere. In 2007 in Moscow we witnessed the reconciliation of the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church and the re-establishment of canonical communion, a long-awaited miracle of our times. Our great hope of 20-40 years ago for the messianic restoration of Holy Rus, so great that it was a belief, has been coming true through repentance. We have no illusions that we may not see our hopes for the full restoration of the Sovereignty of the Tsar realized, or, much less likely, Europe liberated from its self-imposed ideological yoke, but at least we know that we are on the way. There is much to do, very far to go, but the direction is the right one.

Nearly twenty years on now since the first edition, this book is here reprinted, a few typographical errors corrected, spelling updated, long paragraphs divided and a few minor precisions and corrections made. May this third edition of these essays be a help to all those who seek. May it guide them to the spiritual awareness of the Church and Civilization of Holy Rus and that Orthodoxy is Christianity and that all else, whatever its legacy from ancient Orthodox times, is ultimately but an ism, a distortion and a compromise. ‘For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith’ (1 Jn. 5, 4).

Glory to Thee, O God, Glory to Thee!

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

August 2014
St John’s Orthodox Church
Colchester, Essex, England

On the Spiritual Purity of Holy Orthodoxy

Introduction

The living beliefs of St John of Shanghai swim against the tide of the world and are remarkable examples to all of us for the three following reasons. First of all, although he lived outside Russia he expressed faithfulness to Holy Rus, which for him, as shown in his sermon on the 950th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus, is a living reality, not a dream or myth, as it is for unbelieving modernists a la Schmemann. This faithfulness to Holy Rus, even though it was enslaved beneath the Soviet atheist yoke, entailed his constant prayers for the Patriarch of the Russian Church (shown by his words to the then Fr Vladimir Rodzianko) despite the Patriarch’s political enslavement and so separation from free Russians. It also entailed St John’s opposition to those who fought against Russia, under the tragic and misguided illusion that that they were fighting against the Soviet Union.

Secondly, St John was faithful to the Tsar, already in the 1930s enjoining his canonization against those of both left and right who opposed it. Thirdly, he believed in the Russian Church not as a national ghetto, but as an organism with the worldwide calling to convert to Orthodoxy, as he clearly expressed at the Second All-Diaspora Council in 1938. These three virtues, faithfulness to Holy Rus, faithfulness to the Orthodox Monarchy and faithfulness to the Russian Church’s calling to preach to the heterodox and unbaptized world, are matched by three opposing temptations. These can be found among the still unChurched (and this includes clergy and laity), among those on the fringes of the Church and those outside the Church. These three temptations of spiritual impurity are liberalism instead of faithfulness, conservatism instead of faithfulness and heterodoxy instead of faithfulness.

Liberalism instead of Faithfulness to Holy Rus

This is the temptation from the left, with its renovationism, modernism, new calendarism, liberalism, ecumenism and freemasonry. We have met its spirit in ‘Orthodox’ freemasons in Paris, in cultish, Hindu-style gurus with a name-worship mantra or psychic hypnosis and even occultism, inspired by Blavatsky and Steiner, in those who cannot stop speaking of ‘hypostasis’ and ‘theosis’, rather than living the commandments of the Gospel, in ‘cowboy’ copies of liberal Protestantism and liberal Catholicism camouflaged by long Greek ‘theological’ words, in the elderly or now dead renovationism of the old KGB-selected Moscow Patriarchal representatives from before the fall of atheism, in well-read converts who reject new immigrants from Eastern Europe because they are not liberal intellectuals like themselves, and in ideologies driven by personalities, not by spiritual realities.

Conservatism instead of Faithfulness to the Orthodox Monarchy

This is the temptation from the right, with its phyletism, nationalism, naïve idealization, old calendarism, right-wing emigres and converts who support and accept money from the CIA or MI5, the cultivation of the museum ethos. We have met its spirit in Greeks who tell Non-Greeks to go away, in those who ban the use of languages other than their own, in nationalist Ukrainians who have nothing to do with the Church because they are driven by politics, not by Christ, in those who fall into schism on account of minor errors rather than the general correctness in the Church, in those who schismatically divide the Church, falling into the temptation of the Church’s enemies who want to divide and so rule Her, in converts from conservative heterodox who bring prejudices into the Church, in those who self-justifyingly confuse psychology with theology, serving self and not the general good of the Church.

Heterodoxy instead of Faithfulness to Missionary Work

Authentic missionary work is about conforming the world to the Church, and not as some compromised people have suggested, supporting the errors of those outside the Church through their own syncretism (‘all religions are the same’), founded on indifference. Also, if heterodox are prematurely received into the Church, they may bring spiritual impurities, either in the form of agendas for ‘reform’ or else of reactions to their heterodox past. Thus, there may be ex-Anglicans still with their Protestant mentality who want a ‘refomed’ Orthodoxy in their own image, since they, received prematurely and not yet ready for the Orthodox Church, are unable to cast off their own personal, cultural and spiritual prejudices. Either such will mature, or else they will lapse. Unable to cast off their Establishment class views, whether of left or right, they will never become Orthodox, however well-read.

Conclusion

The title of this essay is formed by the words of the ever-memorable Metropolitan Laurus (+ 2008), said to me in May 2006, on the need to conserve the integrity of the Holy Orthodox Faith. However, his words were in the same line as those of three generations of Russian bishops of the Diaspora before him, of Archbishop Antony of Geneva (+ 1994), of St John of Shanghai (+ 1966) and of Metropolitan Antony of Kiev (+ 1936), the first First Hierarch of the Church Outside Russia. They all agree, in words as in deeds, that any immixture of spiritual impurity in the Faith is a dead end precisely because it is unspiritual and what is unspiritual by definition brings death. It is for us to follow with care their words, deeds and lives, so that we do nor err from the Tradition of the Church through impure influences from outside Her. And this we can do through faithfulness.

Answers to Questions from Letters

Below are some answers to questions in recent correspondence.

Q: In your recent article ‘Truth and Mercy’, were you expressing prophecy or just wishful thinking?

A: As usual, I wanted to make people think outside the restrictive box that the secular media offer and also to comfort the weaker from the despair that is offered by those media. In both these respects from feedback it is clear that the article was successful. That article describes a possible and spiritual outcome of present world events.

Obviously, I am not a prophet, but it is clear that what is being played out in the world today, in Gaza, with massacres by US-armed Zionists, in Iraq and Syria, with massacres of Christians by Qatari-financed terrorists, and in the Ukraine, with massacres of Ukrainians by CIA-organized terrorists and mercenaries (all these events are very closely interconnected) is of vital importance. This year we are reaching another huge turning point in history, as great as that of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.

However, there is a prophetic element. That article, ‘Truth and Mercy’, was based on prophecies of several holy people, of St John of Shanghai, Schemamonk Aristocleus, Blessed Pelagia of Ryazan, Fr Paisios the Athonite, Elder Jonah of Odessa and others. However, we must remember that all prophecies, theirs too, are conditional on repentance – and repentance is not certain. What I am saying is that if we do not go in the direction of ‘Truth and Mercy’, then we will go in the direction of the end of the world. There is no middle way, no compromise, as people of fantastical Anglican culture always imagine that there is. Today, we are going either towards repentance, or else, to Sodom and Gomorrah and unspeakable catastrophes before Antichrist. I want to give people hope. Catastrophe is not inevitable.

Those who think with worldly criteria do not understand that article, they find it fantasy. This is because they think in secularist, political terms only, which by definition exclude Providence, the Divine and the miraculous, from their thought processes. This is because their thought processes are not Orthodox, not Christian, they are deceived, for processes in the real world are not directed by secular forces. In reality, human affairs are directed by spiritual forces, either Divine or else, as we can see around us and throughout the history of the last 100 years, Satanic. The Divine is possible, but the Satanic, what in the Old Testament is called ‘the wrath of God’, is also possible. It is our choice. Such is human freewill.

Q: You mentioned St John of Shanghai. Why does he stand out as THE saint of the emigration?

A: Firstly, because he was a saint. That in itself is exceptional, especially with all the pseudo-saints and pseudo-elders of the Russian emigration, with false claims and personality cults, developed by themselves and then, much worse, by their disciples after their deaths. Secondly, because he was universal. He affected all Continents and spoke to all nationalities, Eastern (Chinese, Japanese and Filippino) and Western (European and American). And thirdly, because he was a monarchist, a ‘Tsarist’ to the core.

Q: Why is that significant?

A: Because that is the litmus test for the understanding of Orthodoxy today. The restoration of the monarchy in Russia for the benefit of the whole Orthodox world and indeed for the benefit of the whole world is the only direction in which we can go. Those who have not understood this have not really become Orthodox. They are disincarnate, semi-Protestant, they do not understand that Orthodoxy is the religion of the Incarnation, of the last two fingers when we make the sign of the cross. They think that Orthodoxy, and religion in general, is just a private matter, a personal theory, without any practical and public ramifications. That is a heresy. I wonder if they know how to make the sign of the cross properly. They may be full of doctorates, but I am sure they do not hold the last two fingers, representing the Divine and human natures of Christ, together. They would do well to learn from the last illiterate village greybeard in Moldova, or for that matter in Galilee.

St John is the guide to this as he possessed the purity of Holy Orthodoxy. So many converts treat Orthodoxy as ‘comfort Orthodoxy’, a kind of part-time hobby or ego-trip. Christ, that is, Orthodoxy, is not that. A hobby or ego-trip is starters, comfort eating; what we have to do is to get to the main course, the meat dish, which is in the arena. Only when we have been in the arena with the wild beasts that attack us, as they do because they are our main course – can we get to the sweet, dessert, which is paradise. As they say, you cannot get to paradise in a Rolls-Royce.

Q: What is the situation among new Orthodox (those who have been baptized in the last 20 years or so) in the Church inside Russia? Have they come to what you have called ‘the arena’, ‘the main course’?

A: That is an interesting question and the answer varies. I can remember how in the 1990s, many newly-baptized in Russia (and they numbered tens of millions) read books by Metr Anthony of Sourozh and other Russian purely intellectual and theoretical writers who wrote for Non-Orthodox in the West. In other words, they read what was appropriate for outsiders and beginners, introductions. Fortunately, a great many in Russia now, especially because of the influence of authentic monasticism (that is so sorely and disastrously lacking in the West) have got past that stage. They are no longer outsiders, converts, but insiders, Orthodox. Now they read the lives of the saints and of elders like Fr Paisios, Fr John Krestiankin and Fr Nikolai Guryanov. In other words, they have indeed got to the main course. This is encouraging.

Q: A historical question regarding the Tsarism of St John: Why did the White Counter-movement fail after the Revolution?

A: It failed precisely because it was not White. It had no single and unitive leader (that could only have been a Romanov) and it was not even firmly monarchist behind Tsar Nicholas. Even individual Whites like Wrangel and Kolchak were compromised by people around them, who were not white. Few had a pure motivation and so the White movement failed. Archbishop Averky writes very clearly about this, as several other Church writers too.

Q: Some say that St John would have been against the Church inside Russia. What would you reply?

A: The Slavonic service book that I have always used is that published under Metr Anastasy, the second First Hierarch of ROCOR. According to it, in the great litany we pray for ‘all the Orthodox Patriarchs’ before we pray for our own ROCOR bishops. This was the real Church’s position before sectarianism started creeping in through US old calendarism in the 1960s (I strongly suspect that that old calendarism was financed by the CIA), which tried to surround, abduct and divert spiritually the noble and venerable Metr Philaret, before being partly rejected by Metr Vitaly (who was then surrounded, abducted and diverted literally by it), and then rejected completely by Metr Laurus.

This traditional ecclesiological position was also the position of St John. One whom I knew, Fr Vladimir Rodzianko (later Bishop Basil), recorded St John’s words: ‘Every day I pray for Patriarch Alexis at the proskomidia. He is the Patriarch. And our prayer is still the same. By force of circumstance we have been cut off from one another, but we are still one liturgically. The Russian Church, like the whole Orthodox Church, is united in the eucharist, we are with Her and in Her. Administratively, for the sake of our flock and well-known principles, we have to take the way that we have taken, but this in no way breaks the sacramental unity of the whole Church’.

You see pre-2007 ROCOR had two parts – the main patriotic part (those who loved Russia because she is called to be Orthodox and to save the world) and a smaller, but powerful political/ideological part (nationalists who always put their personal advantage and interests, financial or political) above the Church. Remember how it was that political wing that actually put St John of Shanghai on trial in San Francisco in the early 60s.

As a result of the actions of this political, ideological wing, many left ROCOR in England, for example, in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The sectarians tried to take over in London and elsewhere. We lost at least four priests at that time as a result of them – and that was just in one small diocese. The older generation were squeezed out; the situation by the mid-1980s was dire.

Q: Were you affected by that situation in England personally?

A: Very much so. We emigrated as a result of it. I came to ROCOR not through the situation in England, but through Archbishop Antony of Geneva, who had nothing to do with the old calendarist nonsense that had come over from America. He had remained faithful to the Tradition, to the ecclesiology of St John, who had preceded him in Western Europe. Like St John, he received by chrismation. Vladyka Anthony said that we must belong to a ROCOR that did not concelebrate with Moscow, but only as long as the Church inside Russia was not free. But he and his clergy concelebrated with everyone else, with all other Local Churches. Before he died 20 years ago, I know that one priest from inside Russia had already concelebrated with him, while remaining in the Patriarchate. Vladyka Antony, like St John, was a disciple of Metr Antony of Kiev, whom both had known in Belgrade. They are my spiritual lineage, my spiritual ancestry, that of Universal, and not sectarian, Orthodoxy. Metr Laurus belonged to the same spiritual family.

Such were the views too of hierarchs like Bp Alexander (Mileant) and Bishop Mitrofan (Znosko-Borovsky) of the generation before, whom I met. They were ardent patriots, not of Russia, but of Orthodox Russia. And that was the reason why we could not be under what was then called the Moscow Patriarchate, which outside Russia was dominated by individuals who displayed Soviet patriotism, which came from fear, and so was alien to us. All of us thought like Dostoyevsky – that a Russian who is not Orthodox is not a Russian. So there was no indiscriminate nationalism for us.

Q: What happened to the political wing?

A: It left the Church over a period of 20 years, from 1986 on, mainly leaving for various sects, including various old calendarist sects. I would remind all that both St John and Archbishop Antony had parishes under them on the new calendar (for the fixed feasts). In St John’s case, they were Western rite parishes.

Q: What about St John and the Western rite? Surely his support of Western rite means that we too should support Western rite today?

A: People who say such things have completely forgotten the historical context. St John’s Western rite worked with former Catholics (not with Anglicans and other Protestants) and he did this before the revolution of the Second Vatican Council, before, in other words, before the Protestantization or rather Americanization of Catholicism. At that time, in the 1950s, there still was a Western rite. That is the fundamental difference between then and now. St John was striying to save those who were at the end of a culture and bring them to Orthodoxy. Today that culture is all but dead – it only exists among a few upper class people or the very elderly and dying. There is no future to it, which is why the Western rite is also elderly and dying, where it is not actually dead.

For fifty years there has not been a living Western rite and you cannot renew and then modify a rite that is no more. This is why all Western rite experiments, though motivated by pastoral concerns, the best of intentions, have ended in failure. There is only one living rite today and that is the Orthodox rite. I know. I have seen the Western rite failure in France.

Q: How and why does the Russian Orthodox view of Catholics and Protestants inside Russia differ from that in the Church Outside Russia?

A: There is not a great deal of difference, but there is a difference. I would say that the view inside Russia is more pro-Catholic, but more anti-Protestant (indeed Protestants there are called ‘sectarians’). The reasons for this are as follows.

The Russian (not Ukrainian) experience of Catholicism is that of a pre-Vatican II, Eastern European confession which has a hierarchy, monastic life and sacraments, clergy who dress as clergy, believes in the Mother of God and the saints and even venerates icons. It therefore sees in Catholicism an admittedly provincialized and primitivized but still potentially Orthodox Church. It has no experience of the reality of the protestantized and infantilized Catholicism of the post-Vatican II world, as it is in Western Europe. When it discovers that, it is in a state of culture shock.

On the other hand, the Russian experience of Protestantism is that of sects which are rabidly anti-Orthodox and can hardly be recognized as Christian at all. This experience was much reinforced by aggressive American evangelical preachers who came to Russia in the 1990s and tried to bribe Orthodox into joining them. Clearly, the experience was entirely negative and hence in Russia Protestants are called sectarians.

Q: So who is right?

A: The Church inside Russia is right in Eastern Europe. The Church Outside Russia is right in its domain, in Western countries, among Western people. Catholicism and Protestantism are so variable, they are not monolithic; we have to look at the local realities of both before we decide on our attitude and the use of economy or akrivia.

Q: In various Local Churches you can find heterodox customs. How can we tolerate them?

A: We can tolerate them because we are not sectarian, but tolerant! However, that does not mean that we observe such provincial customs ourselves. We do not cultivate the fringes, but the broad mainstream of the Church. For example, I remember an ex-Anglican Antiochian priest (in England they are all ex-Anglicans, virtually without training), wanting to introduce little girls to serve in the altar because he had seen a bishop in Syria doing this! I told him that just because others had adopted Uniat customs out of pan-Arab nationalism, that did not mean that we have to. The same goes for so many customs, from certain Carpatho-Russian chants preserved in their emigration in the US and which are pure old-fashioned Catholic chants (which the Catholics have now lost), or Bulgarian icons, which are not iconography, but folk art, or beardless Ukrainian clergy as in the OCA (another Uniat hangover) etc. In other words, we do not prolong decadence, but let it die out by itself.

The lack of discrimination is typically Anglican. It is the inability to distinguish between the essential Tradition and eccentric local customs which may have nothing at all to do with Orthodoxy. Thus, in one community of the Rue Daru group in England an ex-Charismatic, ex-Anglican priest, also untrained, has his converts calling out names for commemoration during the service! It would be better if he joined the Pentecostals, especially since he maintains that he is better off without a bishop (who is in distant Paris), so that ‘I can do whatever I want’.

In general, Rue Daru claims to be of the ‘Russian Tradition’, but that was thrown out of the window there 26 years ago in 1988. If you are of the Russian Tradition, then you must be part of the Russian Church, observe the Orthodox calendar, have confession before communion, wear Russian vestments, have women wear headscarves, keep the canons and traditions of the Russian Church. As one correspondent in France wrote to me, the Russian Tradition never stayed a single night in the vast majority of the tiny convert Rue Daru communities, which Russians simply boycott because there is no Orthodox Tradition there. Once you have seen and above all experienced the real thing, you know what is false as soon as you see it.

On the Spiritual Disease of Guruism

The title of this article was suggested by a priest in Moscow who, when asked what he thought about the followers of a certain pseudo-monastic movement, replied: ‘They are all spiritually ill and with the same spiritual illness’. Here he referred to the fact that the archimandrite who had founded and then led the group had fallen into spiritual delusion (prelest/plani/illusio) and his weak-minded adepts had simply followed in the footsteps of their guru, conforming themselves to his illness of disincarnate ‘spiritualism’.

For any ism is by definition a spiritual disease and guruism is no different (nor, for that matter, is anti-intellectualism). Guruism in the Church context is spiritually dangerous because it replaces the repentant heart with the blinded head (whereas anti-intellectualism gives complete priority to irrational emotions). What are the signs of the spiritual disease of guruism? They come in three stages and affect the fallen mind (and imagination), the fallen body and the fallen spirit, that is, all fallen human nature or ‘the flesh’. These stages are:

1. Blind certainty that the guru and therefore the adepts are right. This results in a blinkered attitude towards others, as well as an imagined superiority, pretentiousness and pompousness, producing an army of identical clones devoid of individual personalities, who are full of themselves in self-righteous priggishness. This entails contempt, condemnation and slander of others, with profound anger and hatred towards those who disagree with the ideology of their cult. This may take the form of racism or a number of other isms.

2. The lack of any spontaneous, heartfelt feeling because of the cold guruism which results from the lack of love, the love produced by a warm heart. This is itself the result of the confusion caused when the indoctrination of the head with the teachings of the guru replaces the cleansing of the heart as the focus of Christian life. This is in direct disobedience to St Silvanus the Athonite’s dictum that we are ‘to keep our minds in hell’, and so not to focus on our minds and our imaginations (fantasies), which produce so many delusions.

3. Depression which is the inevitable result of the realization of the disincarnate disconnect between the diseased conviction of rightness (in fact, of the escapist fantasy or daydreaming imagination) and the real world (fallen reality). This is accompanied by fanaticism, as can be seen in strangeness of dress (in fact a uniform) and demeanour, rigidity of pose and walk, and the refusal to be sociable or mix, including eating and drinking, with others who are not part of the clique and the refusal because of pride to talk to them about everyday life.

As can be seen, the overwhelming trait here is pride – absence of humility and simple humanity. It seems that the Epistle to the Colossians has been forgotten: ‘Let no-one beguile you of your reward, insisting on self-abasement and worshipping of angels, taking his stand on those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind…These things have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting rigour of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body, but they are of no value in satisfying the flesh’ (Col 2, 18 and 23).

His Holiness Kyrill, Patriarch of all the Russias, now calls on the fullness of our Church, to all the peoples of historic Rus, to pray

O Lord Jesus Christ our God, look down with Thy merciful eye on the sorrow and great pain of lamentation of Thy children in the Ukrainian land. Deliver Thy people from civil strife, make to cease the bloodshed, turn away impending misfortunes. Bring the homeless home, feed those that thirst, console those that weep, join together those that are divided. Let not Thy flock that are embittered towards their kin be diminished, but grant them swift reconciliation, for Thou art compassionate. Soften the hearts of those that have grown violent and bring them to know Thee. Give peace to Thy Church and her faithful children, that with one heart and one mouth we may glorify Thee, our Lord and Saviour, unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Дорогие братья и сестры, обращаюсь ныне ко всей Полноте нашей Церкви, ко всем народам исторической Руси

Господи Иисусе Христе Боже наш, призри милостивным Твоим оком на скорбь и многоболезненный вопль чад Твоих, в земле украинстей сущих. Избави люди Твоя от междоусобныя брани, утоли кровопролития, отврати належащия беды. Лишенныя крова введи в домы, алчущия напитай, плачущия утеши, разделенныя совокупи. Не остави стадо Свое, от сродник своих во озлоблении сущих, умалитися, но скорое примирение яко щедр даруй. Ожесточенных сердца умягчи и к Твоему познанию обрати. Мир Церкви Твоей и верным чадам ея подаждь, да единем сердцем и едиными усты прославим Тя, Господа и Спасителя нашего во веки веков. Аминь.

Corruption and Construction

Introduction: Corruption

The cynical say that ‘every man has his price’, that it is possible to corrupt anyone. Indeed, it is said that secret services and police forces use human weaknesses to corrupt any as they wish. Thus, one person’s weakness is money, another’s fame, a third’s alcohol and so on; thus all can be corrupted. Famously, when the powers of this world encountered St Basil the Great in the fourth century and met with his refusal to compromise, those powers said that no-one had ever spoken to them in that way before. To this St Basil replied, ‘Perhaps you have never yet had to deal with a bishop’.

Behind human cynicism and hatred for humanity there stands the devil; he always attacks by the weakest points. This technique is used by the devil not only against individuals, but also against nations and institutions. Thus, Roman Catholicism has been attacked by its weakest points, desire for power, attachment to Non-Christian culture, and recently homosexual and pedophile clergy, to which it exposes itself by its insistence on clerical celibacy. And Protestantism has been attacked by its weakest points, attachment to Non-Christian culture and secularism, to which it stands very close because it gave birth to it.

Nationalism/Worldliness

As for the Orthodox Church, it is also attacked by the attachment to this world, in the form of nationalism. Thus, nationalism has infected every ancient Orthodox Patriarchate, including the Georgian, and every Balkan Church, in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and especially in Serbia, which faces Communist-inspired schism in Macedonia and EU-inspired schism in Montenegro. Of all the Local Orthodox Churches only the Russian Orthodox Church remains in principle (though there are always bad examples here too) multinational and faithful, present by its missions in 62 nations, translating the services into a host of languages.

However, it is now the turn of Russian Orthodox to face US- and EU-inspired nationalism in the Ukraine, in an attempt to divide and rule there, just as Nazi Germany had tried before. But how can the Church resist nationalism? It is only by putting the Kingdom of Heaven above all national affairs, only by not becoming institutionalized, reduced to a mere national institution, by not becoming a mere religion – by remaining a Faith. For religions are for those who have only some vague belief in some unknown force, who do not know God, whereas Faith is for those who have real spiritual experience and know God.

Spiritual Decay

The decline from Life to Death, Faith to Religion, from the Holy Spirit to Institutionalization, from seeing God (possible only for the pure in heart, according to the Gospels) to spiritual blindness, passes through two phases. The first is spiritual decay and the second is moral decay. Spiritual decay begins by the loss of Faith. This means the loss of spiritual life and so spiritual awareness. It is the loss of spiritual awareness that leads to spiritual decay and decadence. This in turn leads to any number of isms which, like all isms, reflect conformism to this world, that is, secularism.

Such secularism degenerates by historical phase into Catholicism (secularist because it wishes to have control over the world), Protestantism (secularist because it rejects the Incarnation and hands over public life to secular authorities), liberalism, modernism, syncretism, ecumenism (all secularist because they conform to the world, that is, they swim with the secular tide) and, in its final stage, atheism, the Religion of Godlessness, which is the ultimate form of lack of spiritual awareness, indeed spiritual blindness, since atheism denotes the refusal to know God, which is spiritual Death.

Moral

Since moral life is entirely dependent on spiritual life, spiritual decay leads directly to moral decay or decadence. In Church life moral decay firstly means simony. For centuries simony was common, almost the norm, in Local Churches under the Turkish Yoke. Today, in one Balkan Church, it is still particularly common, although cases can be found in every Local Church without exception. The other stage of moral decay is homosexualisation of the episcopate and indeed the two often go together (1). Homosexualisation comes about when bishops are no longer chosen for their monastic virtues, but for career reasons.

Sadly, such cases can even be identified by appearance. Unfortunately, such individuals tend to ordain homosexuals as priests or at least give those with that weakness positions of responsibility. This vice is often accompanied by a dislike for normal married clergy, who suffer much from such bishops, as also a dislike for women and children. We have known over a dozen examples of this in the Diaspora, where monastic life is weak or non-existent, in France, England and especially the USA, where the new calendar Churches suffer in particular. It is a form of corruption which rots Church life.

Conclusion: Construction

In such a frank essay, we would like to conclude by emphasizing that we must keep all this in proportion. Firstly, we are talking about a minority of exceptional cases overall (even though there can be pockets, where this does not seem to be the case, as in the USA). Secondly, there are solutions. The first solution is that there must be normal monasteries (not ‘sketes’), where numbers of monks live in coenobia, according to the Typicon. The second solution is that future bishops must be taken from those with experience of monastic life, including if they are widowed priests.

The time of career clergy, young, with degrees and doctorates from Protestant and more often Catholic educational institutions, is over. It is time to escape the decadence of the past fifty years especially and time to return to the healthy monastic traditions of the Church. Those who ignore monastic tradition, or worse still, despise it, as is so common in certain anti-traditional parts of the Russian Greek Diasporas, do so at their peril. Healthy life will be restored throughout the Church only when monastic life, which puts the Kingdom of Heaven first, is restored.

Note:

1. Cases of pedophilia, very common in Catholicism, are far rarer in the Local Churches; we have only known three such cases, one in Soviet Russia, one in the Ukraine and one in France, though we have heard of several other cases in old calendarist sects.

Can the Church Survive in the USA?

Introduction: DeChristianization

My fourth visit to the United States only confirms what I knew already – that the American people are an extraordinarily generous, open and friendly people; however, they are also a people whose goodwill and often naivety are much abused by Europe and successive US governments. The ruling American elite with its global machinations, arrogance, bankruptcy and taxes is one thing; ordinary Americans are quite another. What has struck me on this visit is the retreat and defeat of what I would call Traditional America. A great country is now ruled by a New America, which is increasingly and systematically anti-Christian: this is the America of abortion, corruption, drugs, churches for sale, Atheist-TV and bullying support for anti-Christianity imposed by its elite on its people and on the rest of the world. New America is choosing not a ‘wonderful life’, but the nightmarish alternative proposed in that classic film.

In other words, the fragments of America’s Christian Tradition are disappearing very rapidly and I can say – with enormous sadness – that much that I still saw here on my last visit in 2008 has already been lost. A country that until recently was famed for its Church-going and Christian values is becoming like even sad, decadent, transvestite Europe – and perhaps even worse, because in Europe there are at least the reminders of historic, physical, architectural remnants of the old Christian culture. There now seems to be little to choose between America and Europe. The admirable America of deep, homespun Bible tradition and wisdom and anti-federal libertarianism is dying – and it is tragic. In this context we can see the two great challenges, if Christianity, especially in its integral Orthodox Church form, is to survive in the USA. These challenges are the two struggles against Conformism and Consumerism.

Conformism

American history has been marked by intolerance, which clearly has its origin in Puritanism. All must swim with the tide; otherwise you are ‘un-American’. All have heard of the Salem witch-trials. All have heard of slavery, racism, civil war and blind Puritan phariseeism. But what happens to Puritanism in a post-Puritan and atheist society? The intolerant reflex does not disappear – it becomes the witch-hunt of those who consider, for example, that homosexual marriage or abortion are sins, that LGBT is an illness, or indeed, that any sin is sin and vice is vice. It becomes the witch-hunt of those who consider that drugs are just a new form of slavery and destroy the freedom of the individual. The New America says: Anything goes – if it ‘feels good’ and is ‘fun’, then ‘let it all hang out’. In other words, Puritanism has, by reaction to the restrictive rigidity and frigidity of the past, been turned upside down; now all is permitted, except the denial that all should be permitted.

Intolerance abounds in New America against whatever is deemed to be against the peculiar fashion of political correctness, a set of moral prejudices which is quite striking in its utter inanity and illogic. Anti-Christian political correctness is the new Puritanism, the new intolerance. The conformism and intolerance of a rapidly developing post-Protestant and militantly atheist society are frightening. The first temptation for Orthodoxy in such a society is then the temptation to conform, to cease being itself for fear of being different, to demote itself. For decades now, we have seen how many Orthodox here, ‘for fear of the Jews’, have wanted to give up their identity and become clean-cut ‘All-Americans’. Thus, the first things to be jettisoned (if they still exist) are monasticism and the Orthodox calendar – in favour of the Catholic/Protestant/secularist calendar. But that is only the start.

Thus, they say, make the priests shave their beards, cut their hair short and put on clerical collars; let there be pews and organs and robed choirs in the churches; let candles no longer be used and icons be taken out; let the churches resemble Methodist and Baptist tabernacles; let fasting be abolished and confession be reduced to a yearly comfort-talk by a psychologist (‘you must not feel guilty about anything you may have done wrong; it is not your fault’); let communion be compulsory; let churches be made into social clubs as with the Episcopalians, Presbyterians and all the others, where (paid) entertainment, ‘show-time’, is provided, business can be conducted and the main thing is how many ‘activities’ you have. Repentance, prayer, liturgical life and asceticism as the reasons for the existence the Church are forgotten. Conformity to civil society, and not to the Law of God, is the norm.

As regards liturgical language, there are two tendencies. The first is compulsory all English by intolerant order and any mention of Russian, Greek etc must be forbidden. In the OCA ’Russian’ was physically removed from signboards, utterly failing to understand that ‘Russian’ does not mean ethnic Russian. Often English is accompanied by Protestantization and Church life becomes salt that has lost its savour. Alternatively, you can use your language to reinforce the community as a Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian etc ethnic club with food and folklore. That is quite acceptable – just so long as it is not a Church, that it has no spiritual identity or life, but only a cultural and sociological one – just like Protestant churches or, for that matter, Polish/Hispanic/German Catholic ones. Here the deciding factor is class, and in the USA class is decided by how much money you ‘make’.

Consumerism

The USA is the land of the dollar, of materialism, of mammon. The lower class here is the poor, the upper class is the rich. Nothing is defined, as in Europe, by your name, family, good taste, manners or culture. The new ‘nobility’ is defined by money, in other words, by how you consume and how much you consume – and the corresponding clothes, body shape (created in the clinic or the gym) and cult of youth. Unfortunately, this also conditions Christianity. Christianity here is generally a cafeteria Christianity, a ‘pick and mix’, ‘go as you please’, selective Christianity. You don’t like the priest because he tells you to stand at church and fast and does not look like an ‘American’? He’s not ‘fun’, not ‘cool’ – sack him – that’s what consumer shareholders do to those who are not fun and not cool. Otherwise, go to another store – denomination or jurisdiction – and change brands – that is, ‘change churches’.

Consumerism is born not of hierarchy, but of ‘democracy’, of the rule of the crowd, and so is always defined by the lowest common denominator. In other words, it is reductionist. And this means, for example, that Orthodox churches become Sunday only churches and services become very short – they are reduced both in quantity and quality. Forget vigil services; think of bingo. The danger here is that Orthodoxy – and there is in fact only one sort of Orthodoxy, albeit in different languages – begins to develop into a novel and secondary form of Orthodoxy. Instead of the Orthodox Tradition, there has developed in the USA a liberal Orthodoxy, a ‘new Orthodoxy’, an ‘American’ Orthodoxy, an anti-ascetic Orthodoxy, a comfort religion, one that is fit not for those who want to pray, but for those who want to pay, for ‘consumers’. To combine God and Mammon is what they want.

Those who have ‘invested’ in inventing such an Orthodoxy are not interested in quality, but rather in quantity. How many are there here? The numbers game is what it is all about. ‘Reach out and get the customers through the doors’. Thus, ‘outreach’ televangelism is crowd-pleasing marketing. Churchgoers are customers, with credit cards in their pockets, and can be pulled in especially by personalities. In this way Christ is forgotten and replaced by personality cults. Brought out of Russia by secular-minded intellectuals, personality cults have spread through the European and American diasporas, merely reflecting the secular cult of celebrities. Secular society lives, as in ancient times, on bread and circuses, on fast food and fun, on MacDonalds and Disney. The same crowd-pleasing tendencies are present outside the Church but also in some Orthodox churches in the diaspora.

The consumerist cult of fun is particularly visible in secular American society and from there it is spreading around the world, including into Church life. Now, ‘fun’ is a euphemism for the pleasing of everything that is not the soul. Its sign is infantilism and infantilism is the main characteristic of modern Protestant and Catholic ‘worship’. The crowd or audience, because that is what the people are, are treated as children, with guitar music, clapping, dancing, sentimentalism and manipulation. Such ‘churches’ and ‘services’ in no way resemble anything known to Christian history. The saints, who replace celebrities in the Church, did not know of ‘fun’ and were not infantile. Infantilism and fun are manipulative novelties invented for an anti-ascetic, post-Christian and indeed anti-Christian world to make Church services into entertainment shows. ‘Fun’ kills the sacred.

Conclusion: The Tradition

What is the solution? Clearly conformism, which is only the sociological, not the theological, must be avoided. Orthodox have a clear-cut identity, we are very different from Protestants – as well as from Catholics in America, who are almost entirely Protestantized. We have a different faith and worship the unfilioquized God. True, there is only one God, but not all worship God, many worship manmade substitutes. True, there is the other extreme to conformism, which is usually expressed by Protestant-minded converts, who want to be different just for the sake of being different. They cultivate the exotic, the foreign, the ethnic, old calendarism, and any extreme of dress or outward practice. Here there is only the psychological, not the theological. But we follow neither the sociological nor the psychological, we follow the spiritual, expressed in the Tradition of the Holy Spirit.

In so doing we do not cultivate differences just for the sake of them. Our differences are primarily internal, not primarily external. Thus, when we need to begin the inevitable transition to English – and to proper, grammatical, liturgical English, not to street Immigrantese, for we do not repeat the errors of Catholicism 50 years ago – we just do it. Thus, we do not lose the sense of the sacred, the atmosphere of prayer, respect and devotion which characterize Orthodoxy. Languages are only vowels and consonants in different orders: a change of language is not the problem, a loss of authentic piety is the problem. In all things our task is neither to seek to conform, nor to be different for the sake of it, but simply to be faithful to the Tradition of the Holy Spirit, which is above liberalism and conservatism. The Church does not conform to the world – the world conforms to the Church.

The Mid-West, May 2014

On the Failure of Anglican Converts to Produce an Orthodox Culture

Introduction

It is now fifty years since Anglicans began to convert to the Orthodox Church in this country. In that time most have failed to incarnate themselves into Orthodox culture and then transmit that culture to succeeding generations, children and grandchildren, instead forming only small, short-term, ex-Anglican ghettos. Now hybrid Anglican Orthodoxy is dying out and disappearing. What went wrong? We believe that we can see four reasons for this failure, two of which are sociological, two of which are theological. What are they?

a) Sociological Reasons

1. Numbers

First of all, it must be said that only a relatively small number of Anglicans have entered the Orthodox Church in the last fifty years. I remember that at the Effingham Conference in 1975 I was told by one in authority at Ennismore Gardens (the jurisdiction of the late Metr Antony Bloom, who formed a self-justifying ‘mini-diocese’ out of ex-Anglicans) that 1,000 English people had been received by that date, the vast majority from an educated Anglican background. Since then, in the 1980s, a number of Anglicans were received by a dissident archbishop into the local diocese of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and, in the 1990s, some 300 were received into the Western European diocese of the Patriarchate of Antioch. But even so, it is unlikely that numbers of converts ever reached even 3,000, probably fewer at any one time. And this figure does not take into account numbers lapsing through being received prematurely, back into Anglicanism, into nothing, or else into Greek sects, or else dying of old age.

There have been several reasons for these small numbers. First, there has been the problem of language – most Orthodox use their native languages (i.e. not English) in Church services. This tends to create immigrant ghettos and does not reach down into English society, attracting only the well-educated and well-travelled. For example, some Greek parish priests, and in fairness representatives of all jurisdictions have done this, have shown hostility and sometimes downright rudeness to English people interested in the Orthodox Faith. Unedifying anecdotes abound. There is also the fact that after over some 900 years of being cast out of this country, the Orthodox Church has had to start here again from scratch as a poor immigrant Church, without funding, without church buildings, without infrastructure. This lack of infrastructure has discouraged many Anglicans because of the mentality described below

2. The Establishment Mentality

Anglicans generally suffer from an Establishment mentality. As an inherent and wealthy part of the Establishment, they usually expect everything to be done for them by their State authorities. As a State Church, they often suffer from the syndrome that expects everything to be provided. The problem of Anglican and Anglo-Catholic clericalism (‘the clergy will do it’) only makes the problem worse. This is utterly different from the Orthodox Church, where the impoverished faithful (priests and laity) have to do everything for themselves and can expect no financial or practical support from their impoverished bishops. This Anglican Establishment mentality, often public school and very patronising to ‘poor Eastern European peasants’, also leads to a class-based exclusiveness. This is basically racist and hypocritically but deliberately snubs those who do not belong to it, not only Non-English people, but also English people but who are not of Anglican and Establishment background.

b) Theological Reasons

1. A Weak Dogmatic Consciousness

One of the main characteristics of Protestantism (and clearly this includes Anglicanism despite its outward pretence of catholicity, as invented in the 19th century) is its weak dogmatic consciousness – in other words, its lack of faith and so lack of spiritual depth. Thus, it has a concept of God, but only the dimmest concept of the Holy Trinity and is not even aware that it confesses the papal filioque (as well as the papal calendar). Thus, it has a concept of ‘Jesus’ (the human nature of Christ), but not of the Son of God, not of the God-man, and therefore not of the Incarnation. In addition it utterly confuses the Holy Spirit with psychic self-exaltation (a confusion that underpins the ‘charismatic’ movement). Indeed, it is difficult to know if modern Protestantism, dependent on Western States and secular cultures, without the dogmas contained in the sign of the cross, believes in anything.

Thus, it is said that 40% of Anglican clergy do not believe in God, let alone in the Holy Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, the Holy Spirit, Providence, the Resurrection, the Ever-Virgin Mother of God, the Saints, the Sacraments and prayer-deepening fasting. Certainly, especially at Easter time, we are accustomed to State-appointed Anglican bishops, let alone the laity, regularly saying that they do not believe in the Resurrection. Thus, for many Anglicans and sadly, ex-Anglicans, the Orthodox Faith appears only to be an intellectual hobby, a piece of snobbish exotica for outward mimicking and ritualism, an upper middle-class debating issue, at best a personal and private theory, at worst pure fantasy. And this problem of a lack of commitment has only been reinforced by another difficulty.

2. Personality Cults

Sadly, the Orthodox Diaspora has been dominated and divided by a series of mainly Russian personality cults. Alpha egos, all claiming some unique revelation or access to Divinity, shrouded in absurd foreign jargon, have split relatively small groups of immigrants and even smaller groups of converts. Each personality, preaching some pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-mystical and pseudo-esoteric cult and claiming holiness, has attracted the inexperienced and, frankly, the ignorant. With most of the real Orthodox world inaccessible because of Communist persecution and most of the Church paralysed because of Communist captivity, and so no checks and balances, such personalities were able to dominate small groups of naïve and inexperienced converts and even hoodwink them, almost hypnotically. This was especially the case in insular Britain, geographically cut off from a sense of catholicity, the wider Orthodox Church world and an overview of the civilizational and cultural reality of the Orthosphere.

Conclusion

Although the above description of the past is pessimistic, we are optimistic about the future. In recent decades atheist regimes collapsed and Churches were freed from their feudal shackles; the old personality cultists with their absurd claims are dead and their books gather dust; masses of immigrants from Orthodox Europe have renewed Church life and the Faith; finally, today’s converts are coming from the vast mass of English people who are not Anglican. They have no cultural prejudices, no baggage, and are therefore receptive to and can commit to genuine Orthodox culture, without simply mimicking it, just as Anglo-Catholics have always mimicked Catholicism. Today, with the services translated and more churches, the Orthodox Church can reach further into English society, far beyond the spiritually superficial and elitist Anglican Establishment, than ever before. In this way, and in this way alone, can an authentic local Orthodox culture be produced in this country, by becoming incarnate in the roots of the land. Reality is taking over from fantasy.

Towards New Local Churches in the Diaspora

Introduction: God’s Will

There will never be any new Local Churches in the Diaspora, if it is not God’s will. What is manmade, therefore in some way essentially denying God and replacing Him with a human institution, crumbles and becomes a Church in name only, calling itself after some human-being or nationality, for example: Papism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Wesleyanism etc. Man proposes, but God disposes. Therefore the questions that must be answered are what we can avoid from the past and how we can prepare for God’s will to be done amongst us in the future?

Anti-Missionary Principles

The development of new Local Churches in the Diaspora has been prevented in the past by nationalism and its squabbles – by anti-missionary principles. This can be seen particularly clearly in North America, where, until soon after the Russian Revolution, all Orthodox were in one Church. This Church was the Russian Church which contained autonomous ethnic dioceses and deaneries under a Russian-appointed Bishop. Why under the Russian Church? Because it was the first present there, the biggest, had the best infrastructure and the most multinational mentality. However, it is true that since 1917 this has by no means always been the case. Today’s Russian Church, suffering in both its parts from the consequences of the Western-planned and provoked 1917 Revolution, still, even 25 years after the collapse of the direct results of that Revolution, often has infrastructure and a multinational mentality which are severely compromised.

Deviations from the Past

There have been other anti-missionary principles at work in the past of the Diaspora. Firstly, there has been the problem of simony. Certain bishops of certain nationalities have been willing to ordain unworthy candidates for money – in 1991, for example, $20,000 was the going rate in one ancient Patriarchate to become a bishop. Secondly, there has been the problem of ego trips – front room Orthodoxy, garden folly Orthodox, the one man show, the big fish in the little pond – the individual who gets himself ordained by one means or another not in order to serve other Orthodox, but to serve himself. Thirdly, there has been the problem of convert ghetto Orthodoxy, in this country ex-Anglican ghettos, ‘Anglican vicar beard competition Orthodoxy’, often with as few as 5-10 individuals with a private club mentality or in inaccessible premises. None of these deviations from the past, examples of which are scattered throughout the Western world, have been of any help to genuine Orthodox missionary work and service to the Orthodox people.

Missionary Principles

Any new Local Church to be built in the Diaspora must be built on the fullness of the Tradition, on the maximum. Nothing can be built on compromises. New Local Churches are built on monastic life and holy life – examples are Sts Cyril and Methodius, St Herman of Alaska and St Nicholas of Tokyo. Any new Local Church in the Diaspora must therefore be built on the Orthodox (and not Papal/Protestant) calendar, on vigil services, in a word on the Tradition, and not on compromises. It must be clearly understood that there are not two traditions in the Orthodox Church – there is only the One Universal Orthodox Tradition. Anything else, with modernistic practices of doing away with confession before communion, the Orthodox calendar, the iconostasis, correct priestly dress, traditional liturgical language etc, is not at all part of the Tradition, of Orthodoxy, but merely part of decadence and compromise, of Halfodoxy.

Directions for the Future

To expand Church presence, we need to observe some basic Orthodox principles. Firstly, any new church must be based on the Gospel ‘where two or three are gathered together in My Name…’. In other words, there must be no ego trips and moreover at least one of these two or three must be able to sing prayerfully and form a choir – again in order to avoid ego-tripping. Premises used must be public access and located in a central city or town so that the church there can become a Regional or at least County Church centre. Premises must also be such that they can be converted for Orthodox use, so that an Orthodox atmosphere can be established in them. Little missions should not be set up from them for many, many years, otherwise this will merely disperses efforts and energies. One should be able to process around these premises, which should have facilities, toilets, and ideally a children’s room with baby changing, parking, a hall and a kitchen. These premises (owned or, if need be initially, rented) must be one’s own – they must not be shared with, for example, an Anglican church.

Conclusion: What is a Local Church?

An ethnic church is one that aims to gather together only one nationality and in a racist way has no time for those of other nationalities – a situation that is clearly against the spirit of the Gospels. An ideological church is one that aims to gather together only in the name of a narrow ideology, often personality cultish or sectarian, and not in the name of Christ – a situation that is clearly against the spirit of the Gospels. An authentic Local Church, however, is one that is made up of many local churches that gather together all local Orthodox, regardless of nationality and background, on the basis of the uncompromised Tradition, on the basis of Orthodoxy, not on the basis of Halfodoxy.

An End to Pan-Orthodox Assemblies: Now it is Time to Start Seriously

Post 200:

The news that the Patriarchate of Antioch has withdrawn its participation in the so-called ‘Pan-Orthodox Episcopal Assemblies’ (to be translated into our plain English as ‘Inter-Orthodox Bishops’ Meetings’) is not surprising. Fed up with heavy-handed Greek Imperialism, it has quit. It is ironic since certain Antiochian converts, quite unrealistically, saw them three or four years ago as panaceas (admittedly, to largely non-existent illnesses). This event was all too predictable given the way in which the Patriarchate of Constantinople took over everything in the so-called ‘assemblies’, ‘presiding’ and issuing decrees, even giving the meetings the name ‘Pan-Orthodox’ – ancient, and not so ancient, code for ‘All-Greek’. Perhaps the only surprise is that it was Antioch that went first.

The withdrawal is hardly surprising, since the other five groups – Bulgarians, Russians (both parts) and Serbs (and probably the Romanians and the Georgians) felt much the same. As one commentator in the USA put it, in its recent polite letter to the North and Central American group the Russian Church (ROCOR) took a fly swatter to the problem of Constantinople’s philetism, whereas Antioch took a hammer. Probably all (except Constantinople) are now relieved, as the abscess has been pierced. However, this does not mean that the process is over. All it means is that the primitive and crude attempt of US-backed Hellenist Imperialism to take over the Orthodox Diaspora is over. Now that that is out of the way, we can make a serious attempt to organise the Diaspora on an Orthodox, and not a papist, basis.

What have we learned? Firstly, we have learned that no Local Church should attempt to take over the Diaspora. Imperialism, however much it may be dressed up in pseudo-theological, in fact philosophical, terms is not part of the Church. That may seem obvious – but to some it appears to be an astounding revelation. Secondly, we would suggest that all Inter-Orthodox meetings be presided by a different Church in turn. Thirdly, we would suggest that the bishops and committees meet only once a year – otherwise they risk turning into mere talking shops and empty photo-opportunities.

Finally, we would suggest that the bishops should encourage the grassroots to work together; Church unity will not be founded top-down but bottom up, as the very word ‘found’ suggests. This, like the rest of what we have said, is nothing more than the obvious, obvious to even the least of our parishioners. Unfortunately, ideology never takes into account the least of our parishioners or the obvious. Therefore, we suggest that all ideologies be thrown out of the window and we start again, with Inter-Orthodox Bishops’ Meetings, and forget the highfalutin ‘Episcopal Assemblies’ of the past and all their philosophical jargon on ‘being and communion’ and talk instead about the life in Christ.