The situation of the Orthodox Churches in the UK has been transformed in the last 25 years, almost as to be unrecognisable.
- Two Large Groups
There are two large Orthodox immigrant groups in the UK today, the Romanian-speaking and the Greek-speaking.
Romanians and Moldovans
As a result of immigration since the Year 2000, though mostly since Romania joined the EU in 2007, Romanians and Moldovans now number nearly 2% of the UK population of 70 million. Indeed, some parts of London seem to speak as much Romanian as English. However, having Romanian nationality does not mean being a practising Romanian Orthodox, just as being ‘British’ does not mean being a practising Protestant – only about 1% are, as is witnessed to by the thousands of closed or nearly empty Protestant church buildings.
At most, only about 5% of Romanians practise their Faith every Sunday, though the proportion of practising Orthodox Moldovans, of whom there are over 100,000, is about 10%. (In other Orthodox countries, like Russia and Greece, the proportion of practising Orthodox is as low as 1% or 2%). The rest are only nominal Orthodox, that is, cultural Orthodox, for whom Orthodox Christianity is a national symbol like the national flag, but little more. Certainly, spiritual and moral interests among them are very weak.
Thus, the Romanian presence is very new in the UK and Romanians have only recently obtained a bishop, their young and dynamic Moldovan archbishop, though there is also another young Romanian bishop in Ireland. The Romanian Archdiocese has only recently been organising itself, buying and frescoing or renting empty churches for several hundred parishioners every Sunday. However, it has been speeding ahead in the last two years and encourages the use of English, though so far only four clergy out of 133 are native.
However, the number of clergy seems to be doubling every three years and all Romanian clergy, nearly all under the age of 45, are trained, many have doctorates and master’s degrees, and most speak excellent English. The Archdiocese operates efficiently on a Deanery system, but there are plenty of candidates to be bishops and four small monasteries. Given the huge energy and potential here, there is no reason to think that there will not be 300 to 400 priests and two or three bishops within a few years.
Greeks and Cypriots
The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, in fact mainly Cypriot, is much older than the Romanian, as for the most part it dates back to immigration from the 1920s and then from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Although with some 250,000 faithful on paper, but only 5% practising at most, it is far better organised than the Romanian. Its episcopate has been here much longer, over a century. Its parishes, though not its property-poor Archdiocese, own outright hundreds of properties and it has five bishops and some 200 clergy. However, numerically it is far smaller than the Romanians and Moldovans, and most of its people and clergy, immigrants from over 50 years ago, are elderly and dying out.
Young people and children who frequent its parishes are virtually all Romanians, who do not have a Romanian church any closer. Can the Greek Archdiocese survive? After decades of telling interested English people literally to go away (thus, founding a largely English Greek Old Calendarist group, which formed in protest at their racist rejection by the Greek Archdiocese – see below), it has at last very recently started receiving Non-Greeks into the Church.
This is probably much too little and much too late, but all is still possible. This is still the second force in Orthodoxy in the UK and some of its clergy are excellent and impressive. Some London parishes get hundreds of people every Sunday. It also has the only large monastery and convent, under a Greek abbot, with some 30-40 monks and nuns, in the country, though most of the nuns are Romanian. The Greek and Romanian Archdioceses generally work well together and see eye to eye on many, though not all, things.
- Three Small National Groups
Both the above groups have well over 100 priests each and many large parishes with hundreds of faithful in attendance every Sunday. Now we turn to far smaller groups, with only about 20 priests in each and much smaller parishes, often between only 20 to 50 people. Their dioceses number well under 5,000 in all.
Serbian
This group now has a local bishop and does have several larger parishes. However, it remains nationalistic and rather closed to Non-Serbs.
Antiochian
Although its kindly bishop is Arab, this very new diocese consists almost wholly of ex-Anglicans, other ex-Protestants and of highly Anglicised immigrants. This is a small group with about 20 clergy and without Orthodox seminary education and small parishes, perhaps with 2,000 faithful in all. However, it is very active and zealous in proselytising among Anglicans and Protestants, ambitiously hoping to grow and seeing itself as a future ‘British Orthodox Church’, which would cater exclusively for those who see themselves as ex-Protestant British. (Most do not). Starting from virtually nothing some thirty years ago and growing very slowly, it is difficult to see how it will arrive at such ambitions when it is so tiny, but it is very persistent.
Russian
Once a small, but active group, even though this diocese has a Russian bishop, it is now ageing and clearly dying out, except for its large Russian London and smaller English Oxford churches. Its inactivity has been reinforced by the conflict in the Ukraine, which has made the Russian Church very unpopular and closed for the present. Moreover, the current political schism between the Russian Church and the Greek Church has made it very isolated. The impression is that political circumstances and isolation have made this Russian group into something of a ghetto. On the other hand, it also has two national Moldovan parishes in England and several more Moldovan parishes in Ireland, so all is not yet lost, unless the Moldovans decide to join the Romanian Church, as others already have done.
- Four Micro-Groups
We now move to four even smaller groups with between one and four active small parishes, so small that most are without a local bishop and have very little property of their own.
Paris Archdiocese
Officially part of the Russian Church, this tiny group, probably numbering fewer than two hundred faithful, hardly any of whom are Russian, does now have a bishop in Scotland, appointed from Moscow. This is because of Moscow’s dissatisfaction with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia’s failure to lead the way in Orthodox missionary work and instead become the Russian Old Calendarist Church (see below), losing fifteen clergy and many of its parishes on account of its sectarianism. It is difficult to see how the Paris Archdiocese presence here can grow in view of competition from Antioch and elsewhere, but who knows.
Ukrainian
The canonical Church in the Ukraine, under Metropolitan Onufry in Kiev, has recently opened two small national parishes in England, using rented premises. (There are some other largely political Ukrainian ultra-nationalist groups, but none is in communion with the Orthodox Church. With them the Ukrainian flag seems to be more important than the cross).
Bulgarian
This very small group is centred in premises belonging to the Bulgarian Embassy in London.
Georgian
This very small national group caters for Georgians living in London. It seems to have little to do with any other Orthodox.
- Two Non-Canonical Sects: Greek and Russian
There are also two small non-canonical Orthodox sects, one ‘Greek’ Old Calendarist (very few of them are actually Greek) and the other ‘Russian’ Old Calendarist (only about half of the people and no clergy are actually Russian). The Greek group of half a dozen clergymen, a small monastery in Surrey, a died-out convent and no bishop, is called the ‘Diocese of Richmond’. It is issued from what has become the ‘Russian’ Old Calendarist group from the USA, whose present American bishop does actually live in Richmond, in south-west London. He grandiosely claims to be ‘Bishop of Western Europe’, where he also has a dozen mostly very small parishes, mainly run by Non-Russians.
Both groups rebaptise Non-Orthodox (and some Orthodox) and refuse to collaborate with the Orthodox Church, though officially the Russian group is supposed to be linked to the Russian Church in Moscow. This self-imposed isolation is because both consider themselves to be ‘the One True Church’. Together they could make a single group numbering about 15 priests and some 600 laypeople. The trouble is that they attack everyone else and each other, like old-fashioned Protestant sects (like their American bishop, many are ex-Protestants), both claiming exclusivity. This is why they attract very conservative and sectarian ex-Protestants, who are looking for some sort of certainty in the woke world.