This news report saddens me immensely. I’ve come to believe that the Reformation has run its course. When I read articles like this, I’m more than ever convinced that this is the case.
I wonder, do the theologians of the Reformation think they bear any responsibility for this turn of events? Don’t they see how rationalism and the loss of sacramentality caused this?
Along these lines, I’m even less confident that Roman Catholicism can pick up the slack. When I read the other day that Pope Francis canonized Pope John XXIII the only thing I could think of was that he rushed him in under the cloak of John Paul II’s cause. A “get-two-for-the-price-of-one” ruse; essentially trying to mollify the left wing of his church while hoping at the same time that the right wing won’t howl in protest. It’s too close to hucksterism for my tastes and has caused me to lose a lot of respect for Francis. Methinks he’s too much a Jesuit. It also brings back memories of discussions with disgruntled Catholics that I have had over the years.
Anyway, another nail in the coffin of Christendom. Sigh.
The question is will Orthodoxy pick up the slack or will the globalism of Constantinople cause them to throw in the towel as well? Reading the recent, limp response of Dn John Chryssavgis (a major thinker in the See of Constantinople) to the events in Ukraine, I am inclined to believe that the Phanar has more or less acceded to the materialist/consumerist Zeitgeist.
Time will tell. In the meantime, we should embrace the hostility of the world. It’s very clarifying and will do wonders for separating the wheat from the chaff. It’s certainly rubbed the scales off my eyes.
Britain is now a “post-Christian” country, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said.
Source: BBC News
Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, Lord Williams said Britain was not a nation of believers and that the era of widespread worship was over.
It comes after Prime Minister David Cameron said people in Britain should be confident of its status as “a Christian country”.
Deputy PM Nick Clegg said the Church and state should be separated.
Writing in the Church Times, Mr Cameron said Christians made a difference to people’s lives and should be more evangelical about it.
This prompted a group of 50 public figures to write a letter insisting that the UK was “a non-religious” and “plural” society and that to claim otherwise fostered “alienation and division”.
Lord Williams, who retired from being the leader of the Church of England in 2012, said: “If I say that this is a post-Christian nation, that doesn’t mean necessarily non-Christian.
“It means the cultural memory is still quite strongly Christian.”
He added: “But [Britain is] post-Christian in the sense that habitual practice for most of the population is not taken for granted.
“A Christian nation can sound like a nation of committed believers and we are not that. Equally, we are not a nation of dedicated secularists.
“It’s a matter of defining terms. A Christian country as a nation of believers? No.
“A Christian country in the sense of still being very much saturated by this vision of the world and shaped by it? Yes.”
The current Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, has supported Mr Cameron.
On his blog he wrote it was a “historical fact (perhaps unwelcome to some, but true)” that UK law, ethics and culture were based on its teachings and traditions.
Been reading some Khomiakov of late and what he said about the fate of the Western church is exactly what has happened, and this in 1850. What he says of the Latin church and its logical extension, the protestant church is exactly what you see in the current Roman church. Been to a Mass recently? Unbelievable. Went to a RC baptism a while back and when It was over my adult daughter leaned over and asked when the service was going to start.
The most recent Mass of Christian burial I went to, about 6 months ago, was informal, chatty, and undignified. The old Catholics there could only shrug their shoulders.
I met the girl who eventually became my wife in the Spring of 1964. She was Catholic. Because most of their elementary school kids went to parochial schools and we went to public schools, we didn’t start to meet a lot of Catholics until we were in high school.
I remember first going into Catholic homes back then. You knew you were in a Catholic house. There would be a crucifix in the entry way, and usually a picture of Jesus and one of Mary. One or the other or both had a sacred heart floating about, wrapped in thorns. It was very different, very impressive.
The Mass was still in Latin, this being only within a year or so of Vatican II. The formality of church, the genuflecting and kneeling, was all new to the Presbyterian lad.
If you were a Catholic, you identified yourself and people knew it. On Friday, it was “no meat, I’m Catholic”. There was a sort of constant statement being made that one was Catholic.
Gone with the wind.
That’s one reason I can’t abide the canonization of John XXIII. With Vatican II, he set in motion the destruction of beauty. In the war between Protestantism and Catholicism, Protestantism won.
Ah, George, and what if in that war Philip II had managed to land his whole Armada in England?
Or what if the Pope’s hit contract on Elizabeth I had been successfully executed by one of her Catholic subjects?
And what if that bigoted fool James II had managed to keep himself on the throne, and weather the Protestant Wind?
Good question. First of all, I am an Anglophile and I view Elizabeth’s reign as the Golden Age. Having said that, the historical record indicates that she was conceived in bastardy and given the fact that her father continued to view himself as a Catholic, then QED we can assume that she was born in bastardy as well. Hence her coronation was null and void.
As for the “hit” ordered by the pope, that was wrong, but we cannot forget that she murdered an anointed queen (Mary of Scotland) herself.
James II was as you say, “a bigoted fool” but isn’t that in the eye of the beholder?
I can’t say that I approve of the Protestant religiosity that outlasted James’s attempted restoration of Catholicism. There is much to admire in the religiosity of individual Englishmen and Scotsman (e.g. Wilberforce, Wycliffe, etc.) but an honest assessment indicates to me that the entire Anglican project is muddled at best. Say what you will about Continental Catholicism but it produced astounding cultural accomplishments.
I observe (I hope without prejudice), that you often show a legalistic outlook, George. This is surely true in Civil War matters, and we find it here with the statement that Elizabeth’s coronation was “null and void”. What does that mean in the real world?
We could note the very large numbers of Eastern Roman emperors that were without legitimacy, in several senses of the word, even within their own putative “dynasties” that both contemporaries and historians found to be fine emperors. It is rather more complex than you make it.
Elizabeth never wanted to have Mary killed, not least because of the precedent of executing royals. She only did it when she had no choice at all; Mary’s conspiracies caught up with her at last.
James II never attempted to restore Catholicism. He would have liked to do so, but the great men of the country put an end to that idea with great dispatch, and bloodlessly to boot. The “beholder’s eyes” there were the gentry and people of England.
I’m no adversary of Continental Catholicism, far from it. And far from England!
You’re quite right about bastardy that existed in the ranks of the Byzantine emperors. The only thing I would say in defense is that being Roman (by their lights) there was no dynastic principle. Being a basileus was different from being a king in some mystical way. A king embodies the land in his person and is a father to his people in ways that emperors never could be (nor were intended to be).
He was at the apex of all the familial relationships if you will. Anyway, your point is well taken.
As for Mary’s death, I think she could have been confined to prison for the rest of her life. The precedent of killing an anointed sovereign was a horrible one.
Umm . . . she WAS confined to prison for the rest of her life. However, she was caught constantly trying to plot her way out of prison and finally confronted with concrete (although it was tinkered with a bit) proof that she was conspiring with other people. Thus, Elizabeth I had no choice but to let authorities send her to certain death.
While I admire Mary Queen of Scots, her mistake was not knowing when to back off and not knowing how to conduct state craft. If the French king had not died prematurely and she had had children and thus not had to leave France, she would have been better off, with wiser advisors on the side.
Ah, yes. Reminds me of the professor of Tudor and Stewart England I had in college. He often said: “The smart and sensible thing to do would have been….., but BEING A STEWART, he/she did not do it.”
Elizabeth I did not have to kill Mary, she choose to for many reasons among which was primarily that Mary constituted a legitimate threat to Mary’s throne and Mary’s life as long as she was living. Elizabeth, being a Tudor, would not allow such a threat to live. She learned well from her father.
Do not forget that Elizabeth grew up under a constant threat of being killed as the daughter of Anne Boleyn and official ‘bastard’.
I think Mr. Bauman is right. Elizabeth put it off as long as she could, to some credit.
I was in Edinburgh about 4 years ago; the only time I’ve been there. Standing in Holyrood “palace” on a rainy day, I had a strong pang of sympathy for Mary Stuart. Raised almost from infancy at the court of France, then queen-consort of France, then…..this.
Elizabeth’s throne and Elizabeth’s life….sorry.
Read Keith Roberts’ classic novel, “Pavane” for answers to your hypothetical questions about a continuing Catholic England. Bear in mind that it’s ‘imaginative fiction’ not political claptrap.
In and of itself this is a vague pronouncement. The larger issue you pose about the Reformation is huge, though.
The decks of Presbyterianism had gone from fully awash to headed toward the bottom of the sea when I finally struck out across the water to the Orthodox ship just a few months ago. There are of course a lot of ex-Protestants here, but not perhaps so many who made the switch after 65 years of age! This is a subject I could write about forever.
Will the Orthodox “step up”? They have shown few signs of doing so. For example, my GOA parish has this sign on the outside of the building: “St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church”. Services are about 75% English. The degree of Greek usage inside the church is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned, since English substantially predominates. That is no real obstacle to someone coming to the church from any other Christian group. But the sign outside tells 999 out of a thousand people that this is a place for a small immigrant group called Greeks, of whom there are very, very few in these parts. This is the message even to the many thousands who know the church is there, because the local festival is one of the really big and successful ones every year.
Yet this is the only Orthodox church in a city of 200,000, old and well-established. (There is a small OCA church out in the exurbs, about a 25-minute drive away.) It should be “St. Nicholas Orthodox Church”. That’s what I call it, and what I tell my friends and interested people.
The Western Christian world now is full of folks who do not really want to be Protestants any more, but could never be Catholics. But “Greek” or “Russian” holds less than no appeal to them– not that the church may contain those elements and traditions, but that it is called and named that…..
Remove [Britain is] from the above; replace with [Russia is] or [Greece is]. All three iterations would be valid assessments. Let’s not pretend that Orthodox nations have remained true to the tradition, either, okay?
Matthew,
Yes, but in the case of Russia, the movement is in the direction of expanding popular practice, not receding. Even in Soviet times, about one third of the populace considered itself at least nominally Orthodox. Now it is over two-thirds. Churches being built rapidly, and monastaries, etc. It will take another generation or two for the change to sink in to the populace. Few adults change dramatically. The fact that they’ve started teaching Orthodoxy in the schools and that the church is having an influence on the younger generation is the key. The West is moving away from Christianity.
“Nominal” is the key word. Objectively speaking, Russians do not live according to the standards or norms of traditional Christianity. Search through Francis Frost’s postings on other threads. Start with the abortion statistics.
But “nominal’ does not mean unimportant to the faith. No doubt at most places and most times there have been large numbers of “nominal” Christian believers in the churches of all sects and denominations. But they often come and often give, and above all they hear Christ preached and their daily lives are bettered thereby.
“Nominal” Christians are usually followers of the moral code. I’d rather see lots of “nominals” in church now and then than just only the devout.
The problem for our country is not that it is no longer devoutly Christian, if it ever was. It is that it is no longer nominally Christian.
“The problem for our country is not that it is no longer devoutly Christian, if it ever was. It is that it is no longer nominally Christian.”
Amen.
Sin is everpresent. The question is, “what is the standard?” With good standards, the amount of strictness or leniency can be varied according to general behavior. Here in the West, our standards have changed and that is the heart of the matter. Without decent standards, a civilization is doomed.
Matthew,
I once took the trouble to go paragraph by paragraph through one of Francis’ silly diatribes and refute or dismiss pretty much everything in it.
Once.
He does not deserve anymore attention.
Also, as to nominal vs. devout, the vast majority of Orthodox here in America and in Orthodox countries are “nominal”. If the standard of devotion were the measure for Christian identity, there would be very few Christians on earth. Take a look at the results of the Patriarch Athenagoros Orthodox Institute survey from several years ago regarding the attitudes toward cultural issues of the Orthodox in the GOA and the AOCNA. It’s tragic. “Nominal” indeed. Perhaps not even nominal. Many people haven’t been excommunicated simply due to the laziness or sin of the episcopacy.
The United States is not “a Christian country.” We were founded by members from more than one religion, although the Christian cultural/beliefs mindset predominated for many years. Now, however, we have a sometimes secular, sometimes anti-religious (in the worst way) government, and a population comprising all possible belief systems.
To call a country “post-Christian” strikes me as selecting a label more for “shock value” than choosing a label intended (by the speaker) to trigger dismay. The minister (Rowan) openly cites the obvious — “an obvious” discernible for a long time by now.
To RMR: I hear you. A couple of weeks ago I attended a Protestant funeral. I thought that the sappy, Protestant “elevator music” songs were continuing as filler before the service would begin; however, my husband quietly informed me that the service was well underway.
Any time you quote Rowan you find the most carefully distilled gibberish available in English. It’s hard to imagine what desperation makes someone ordain a guy like him with so little understanding of people or Christianity. He is as incapable as many of our bishops, which is a form of ecumenical similarity that is remarkable but unintended.
Antonia,
before you make assertions our Christian American heritage, please read the following preamble to the first treaty executed between the United States of America and the Empire of Russia:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=008/llsl008.db&recNum=457
P.S. I know the following post has nothing to do with this topic but the Brendan Eich/Mozilla thing just took an interesting turn: it seems that Eich was forced out because he stood in the way of incorporating some new software into Firefox.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-brendan-eich-had-to-go.html
I suppose that is a theory, although I can’t help but again be amused that you don’t link to discussions about Eich and the Mozilla foundation prevalent in the tech press and forums (the first time you did it was from vdare, of all places), but rather a theory presented on a blog of a guy who got kicked out of the Science Fiction Writers of America for referring to a fellow writer as a “half-savage” because she was a black female and not a white male.
Hundreds of thousands of words spilt about Eich and Mozilla in any number of sites, forums, and outlets constitute the tech websphere and you go with that guy.
Why do so many of your opinions and insights appear to be shaped by white supremacists? This appears to be an ongoing phenomenon.
Simply because that’s an accident of history. The vast majority of the most consequential civilizations, inventions, and cultural achievements came from (or were refined in) Europe. That goes for all significant political theories as well.
Try as we might–with the exception of Confucius, Mencius, Sun-Tzu– we simply won’t find any information from other quarters.
Also, I should have mentioned that I got this from Instapundit.com. It’s a libertarian website.
but were there footnotes? That’s all I need to nkow.
Yes, all the way down. I believe #8 if memory serves.
Actually, Nate, it could be much worse. The argument is not of inherent genetic inferiority but of civilizational inferiority which it takes time to improve. I suppose one could infer . . .
“If one considers that it took my English and German ancestors more than one thousand years to become fully civilized after their first contact with advanced Greco-Roman civilization, it should be patently obvious that it is illogical to imagine, let alone insist, that Africans have somehow managed to do the same in less than half the time at a greater geographic distance. These things take time.”
The North-East corner of Africa was fully civilized at least two millenia before Greco-Roman society even approached civilization.
Doesn’t change the fact that non-Muslim Africa, for the most part, is still a hell hole.
It’s interesting, North Africa used to the be the backbone of Christendom.
Yes, victory and defeat in civilizational war have consequences.
North Africa was never ever “the backbone of Christendom.” What an idea! The Church of Carthage was for a time a powerful local Church, but could never be considered to be the backbone of anything at all by anyone at all except possibly by some super-patriotic Carthaginian with a screw loose. Today Carthage is a footnote in Church history, an episode. One wonders if the American episode will last any longer or ever be as productive?
Backbone of Christendom? Bosh. I’m with Bishop Tikhon on this one.
Depends on how important you find Latin Christanity, born in the Church of Carthage.
Ironically, it was also the birthplace of the first non-Roman Roman Emperor.
No, Isa, it does not depend on that at all. Latin Christianity was likewise never “the backbone of Christendom.” Get it? Charlemagne would have had a better claim to being the backbone of Christendom when the East was Iconoclast and the Faithful had to flee to lands controlled by Islam for safety. I’ve had it….see my next note.
I’ve been told by those who’ve been that Ethiopia is lovely.
Good point.
“The North-East corner of Africa was fully civilized at least two millenia before Greco-Roman society even approached civilization.”
This must be Egypt. True, except that Egypt was not Africa, a distinctly different place. It is a real anachronism to speak of Egypt as African.
As a matter of interest, when did the term “Africa” come to be used for the continent thereof?
As soon as Egypt stopped being counted separately: originally it referred to present day Tunisia, also in North Africa.
IOW it is a real anachronism to speak of Sub-Saharan Africa as African.
Christ is Risen !
Thank you, George, for the link, the document for which I shall read.
Over the years, I have read sufficient material from different types of source material that I have arrived at the defensible position which I shall continue to hold.
I’m also sick-and-tired of the right-wing, non-denominational crowd assuming that just because we homeschool, I axiomatically believe what they believe. The spam e-mail and spam telephone calls currently are increasing rapidly.
P.S. I did glance at the document’s beginning, and shall enjoy reading the entirety later, owing to an interest in Russian history. Although you and I shall not agree, I don’t extrapolate from the document’s initial invocation of the Holy Trinity to assert that our country (founded earlier than that date) was organized and governed (which are not always the same thing) by adherence to Trinitarian Christianity — and definitely not to claim that the U.S. currently is Christian in its nature in any manner.
Again, thanks!
Antonia, my experience with sociology is that cultures tend to start out virile and orthodox in their understanding of religion (whatever that religion is) and then gradually slide into liberalism. I would find it hard to believe that a Unitarian founding generation would evolve into a Trinitarian one in a matter of two generations. It’s usually the other way around.
I’m sure that there are exceptions. For example the post-Lincoln administrations tended to be more overtly Evangelical. It was during Grant’s administration that Christmas became a national holiday for example. And the Federal government sent Protestant missionaries to Alaska to convert the “heathen” when we bought Alaska from Russia. Still, it would be hard for me to fathom how we could have gone from the alleged Deism of 1776 to the Evangelicalism of 1876. The only way out of this thicket is to look critically at the predominant, modernist assumptions –our smelly little orthodoxies as Chesterton would say. The primary one being that America was a Deist enterprise from the get-go. It clearly was not.
This also extends of course to the fundamental premise of our modernist credo, that there was a “separation of Church and State,” embedded in our Constitution and in our national ethos. That phrase came only from a letter written by Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association. It was nowhere in the Constitution and even skeptics like Adams had views about religion that would make Red-state Republicans blush with envy. Not that this was a positive thing btw. The Evangelical impulse undergird a horrible persecution of the Mormons driving them from one place to another. This lasted into the early 20th century when the Senate held off accepting the first Senator from Utah for four solid years, conducting extensive hearings to find out if Mormons were Christians. Think of it: the Senate of the US holding hearings on a theological matter. This does not compute with a Deist Republic which supposedly believed in the separation of Church and State.
And of course we shouldn’t forget that the modern assumption of the separation of Church and State only came about in a 1942 Supreme Court decision, authored by Justice Harlan Black (a Klansman btw) which upended the entire traditional American understanding of the place of Christianity in our nation.
Now I know some will name Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine as being Unitarians (or in the case of Paine, probably an atheist). But that is an extremely small number. True, John Adams eventually gave up Trinitarianism but he was castigated by his son John Quincy Adams for doing so. The vast majority of the founding population in the United States was “little o” orthodox. The exceptions were in New England where a significant minority were Unitarian.
Of course I do not mean to conflate the Trinitarianism of the Old Republic with the robust Trinitarianism of Orthodox Christianity (smells and bells, asceticism, etc.) but the historical record speaks for itself.
“Emperor of All the Russias“, hmmmm, wonder which “Russias” those could be?
““Emperor of All the Russias“, hmmmm, wonder which “Russias” those could be?”
The ones His Majesty could get his hands on-the rulers of Moscow took the title before they got all of Russia, let alone beyond it.
Isa,
It was a rhetorical question. I know to precisely which “Russias” they were referring. In fact, in the Russian it would probably have literally translated: “Emperor of all Rus'” The Rus’ being “Great Russians”, “White Russians” (Belorussians) and “Little Russians” (Ukrainians).
Yes, the Kings of Poland claimed the same title, except they said “Grand Duke…”
Incidentally, do you know where Zbig’s family is from?
“Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1928. His family, members of the nobility (or “szlachta” in Polish), bore the Trąby coat of arms and hailed from Brzeżany in Galicia in the Tarnopol Voivodeship (administrative region) of then eastern Poland (now in Ukraine).” – Wiki, ZB
I just love that little tidbit. Ties up my whole point about the Ukrainian influence in the OCA (as evidenced by their leadership and their recent missive regarding events in Ukraine), anti-Russian-ness and the largely fictional character of the modern state known as Ukraine.
Not 100% in agreement with you about Ukraine. I’m both a Ukrainian moderate and monarchist; I’m not anti-Russian, I venerate the Royal Martyrs. Furthermore, if that unfortunate Drezhlo blasts Ukraine(and sings the praises of Lenin, Stalin, and the communists), that automatically puts Ukraine in a favorable light(in my opinion)..
The “Old Guard” of the OCA, that is the Carpatho-Rusyns and Galicians, who once made up the majority of the OCA’s faithful, were usually anti-Ukrainian. They would probably be a vanishing(if not vanished) breed today. I suspect that current support for Ukraine represents anti-Putin sentiment, not the least of which of which is because Putin and the Russians are seen as anti-gay.
You are right on the money about Brzezinski. The Poles have always regarded Ukraine and Belarus’ as lost territories. Like their Hungarian friends, many Poles wish to see their former empire restored. Perhaps, had Poland historically been more tolerant of Orthodoxy, Ukraine in the past might not have felt the need to turn to Russia. The Cossacks of Ukraine in times past would sometimes ally themselves with the Poles and other times even with the Turks. In the end, however, because of Orthodoxy, Ukraine turned to Russia. For the same reason, most modern Serbs and Greeks are pro-Russian.
More about the Poles and their traditional Hungarian allies(and I’m not bashing either nationality; I am descended from Poles who lived in Ukraine for centuries and I’ve been interested in Hungarians since my junior high years, when I discovered that they speak a non-Indo-European language right in the center of Europe!). I do find it odd that Poles seem to have no problem with the fact that Hungarians allied themselves with Nazi Germany during WW II to recover their “lost” territories. When some Russians did the same thing to fight against Stalin, who was every bit as bad as Hitler, that seems distressing!
Father Andrei,
Drezhlo’s a head case. Nuff said.
As to the Old Guard of the OCA, what you relate might explain their present anti-Russian stance but does not do so historically back to the breach with the Church Abroad. Moreover, the current missal was addressed to the Patriarch, hardly a homo-phile. If you have some documentation of them being “anti-Ukrainian” I would be interested in seeing it.
It seems to me that one thing they (i.e., the Metropolia) liked about the USSR was its establishment of a Ukrainian SSR, initial encouragement of Ukrainian language and culture, etc. And the Old Guard is still the Old Guard. I recently looked into this, just to make sure. Ukrainian, CarpathoRusyn, Galician, Polish (from when Poland owned parts of what happens to be categorized for the moment as the Ukraine).
It is true that Serbs tend to be pro-Russian. There is a mixed historical record between them and the Russians but on the whole it’s positive, especially since the war in the Balkans.
As to the Greeks, my sense is that just the opposite is true, I don’t think they are pro-Russian in general – often quite the opposite. This goes for their Patriarch right down to the average Greco-American on the street. Now the Greeks in Greece may be another matter. I’ve heard they are increasingly fond of Fr. Seraphim Rose and some of their bishops are quasi-traditionalists, of a sort.
“If you have some documentation of them being “anti-Ukrainian” I would be interested in seeing it.”
The Russophiles went into the Metropolia/OCA. The Ukrainians set up their own, and had to enlist the Arab Metropolitan Germanos (in America without permission of either Antioch or Russia) because Abp. Alexander would have nothing to do with it.
“It seems to me that one thing they (i.e., the Metropolia) liked about the USSR was its establishment of a Ukrainian SSR, initial encouragement of Ukrainian language and culture, etc.”
you have some documentation of THAT?
Still waiting on something anti-Ukrainian from the Metropolia. Here are a series of quotes that demonstrate that the Carpathorussian faction here was favorable early on to the USSR/MP early on and after WWII.
“The diocese was founded in 1938 when a group of 37 Carpatho-Russian Uniate parishes were received into the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, having the year before officially renounced the Unia with Rome, primarily in protest over Latinizations occurring in their church life, particularly a 1929 papal decree mandating that Eastern Rite clergy in the US were to be celibate.
This move marked the second group of Carpatho-Russian parishes to return to Orthodoxy, the first having been led by St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre into the jurisdiction of the Russian Metropolia in the 1890s. This second return to Orthodoxy by Carpatho-Russians in America, under the spiritual leadership of Fr. (later Metropolitan) Orestes Chornock, was directed toward Constantinople rather than to the Russian presence in America primarily because of concerns about Russification which had occurred with the previous move. As such, rather than being absorbed into the body of the Russian churches in America, the ACROD was permitted by Constantinople to keep its distinctive practices while removing Latinizations such as the Filioque from the recitation of the Nicene Creed.” – ACROD, Orthodoxwiki
“The beginnings of the OCA and the ROCOR as distinct from the Church of Russia are in the early 20th century Soviet takeover of the Russian state. When the monarchy in Russia fell and the Church of Russia began being persecuted, a group of Russian bishops fled from northern Russia, joining with some in the southern portion of the country and organizing themselves via meetings in Constantinople and Serbia. These came to be known as the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
Meanwhile, the Metropolia, the Russian diocese in America, which was becoming increasingly less Russian and more Carpatho-Russian (with the reception of many thousands of former Uniates under the leadership of St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre), began a winding path toward independence from the jurisdiction of Moscow. The increasingly Carpatho-Russian/ex-Uniate character of the Metropolia is seen in its choice to name itself in 1906 as the Russian Orthodox Greek-Catholic Church in North America under the Hierarchy of the Russian Church (emphasis added).” – ROCOR and the OCA, Orthodoxwiki
“In parallel with the NEP, the Bolsheviks took steps to appease, and at the same time to penetrate, the non-Russian nationalities. In 1923 a policy of “indigenization” was announced, including the promotion of native languages in education and publishing, at the workplace, and in government; the fostering of national cultures; and the recruitment of cadres from the indigenous populations. In Ukraine this program inaugurated a decade of rapid Ukrainization and cultural efflorescence. Within the CP(B)U itself, the proportion of Ukrainians in the rank-and-file membership exceeded 50 percent by the late 1920s. Enrollments in Ukrainian-language schools and the publication of Ukrainian books increased dramatically. Lively debates developed about the course of Ukrainian literature, in which the writer Mykola Khvylovy employed the slogan “Away from Moscow!” and urged a cultural orientation toward Europe. An important factor in the national revival, despite antireligious propaganda and harassment, was the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which had gained a wide following among the Ukrainian intelligentsia and peasantry since its formation in 1921.” – Britannica Online
“The Lemko Association deliberately avoided any affiliation with Ukrainian-Canadian organizations, emphasizing instead the distinctiveness of Carpatho-Rusyn culture and/or its supposed affiliation with Russian culture. In that context, the group frequently referred to itself as “Carpatho-Russian.” The Lemko Association was also leftist in orientation and sympathetic towards the Soviet Union, which was perceived as an egalitarian state of Russian workers. As a result of these views, the Lemko Association came under suspicion by the Canadian authorities during the early years of World War II. But after the Soviet Union joined the Allied war effort, the large Toronto branch of the Lemko Association, hoping to capitalize on the Canadian public’s new, positive attitude towards the Soviet war effort, changed its name to the Karpatorusske Obshchestvo Bor’by s Fashyzmom (Carpatho-Russian Society for the Struggle Against Fascism). After the war, it was called the Karpatorusske Obshchestvo Kanady (Carpatho-Russian Society of Canada).” – Multicultural Canada
“In 1935 Metr. Theophilus went to Sremsky Karlovits in Yugoslavia at the invitation of the Patriarch of Serbia Barnabas and under his chairmanship an agreement was worked out dividing the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad into four Metropolitan Districts: Eastern European with Metr. Anastassy as the ruling Hierarch, Western European with Metr. Evlogy as ruling Hierarch, North American with Metr. Theophilus as ruling Hierarch, and Far Eastern with Metr. Meletius (in Harbin) as ruling Hierarch… There has long been a debate as to whether Metr. Theophilus subordinated himself and the Metropolia to the Karlovits Synod by this agreement. On the principle that actions speak louder than words, note has to be taken of the fact that Bishops previously under the Exile Synod [in America] accepted the authority of Metr. Theophilus and by the same token Metr. Theophilus was very careful to follow the proper ecclesiastical protocol in asking permission of the Karlovits Synod to give the higher church awards to clergymen as well as in submitting regular reports on the life of the Church in America to Metr. Anastassy and finally in having representation up to World War II in the person of a Hierarch at the regular meetings of the Exile Synod. It is further a matter of fact that at no time did the Exile Synod see fit not to honour any of the requests of Metr. Theophilus (at the same time, in this period, there [was] no acid testing of the arrangement in terms of requesting permission for the consecration of a new bishop) (Surrency, p. 45).
Permission to consecrate a hierarch for the Metropolia was eventually requested from the Synod Abroad, however:
…in a letter to Metr. Anastassy dated the 22nd of December 1945, permission was asked to consecrate Archimandrite John (Zlobin) as the new Bishop of Alaska. Permission for the consecration was received and it took place on the 10th of March (Orthodoxy Sunday) and the new Bishop promised obedience both to the Metropolia and to the Synod of Bishops Abroad (ibid., pp. 54-44).
In 1946, a planned All-American Sobor of the Metropolia was planned to be held in Cleveland, and a month prior to its being held, a letter was published in the Russian-American Newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo in New York:
Popularly known as the Letter of the Five Professors, the document analyzed the position of the Metropolia and proposed a course of action. The authors recognized that the difficult position of the Metropolia was determined by two major facts. First, it had broken its ties with the Patriarchate of Moscow in 1933 and was viewed by the mother church as being in schism. Second, the Metropolia had subordinated itself to the Synod Abroad in 1937 (FitzGerald, 66).
The letter went on to encourage a break with the ROCOR, especially because it had allegedly “lost ties with the universal Church” when it moved its headquarters from Serbia to Germany in 1944 (ibid., 67). As such, the Metropolia should part ways with the ROCOR and woo Moscow. The letter goes to on address the question of the nature of the relationship of the Metropolia to the ROCOR:
Subordinating ourselves to this Synod, our Church (the Metropolia) in substance subordinates itself to a group of bishops who really have no jurisdiction themselves. Because of this, some people are inclined to speak only of our cooperation with the Synod. This term “cooperation,” however is not correct because the acts of 1936-1937 definitely subjected our Church under the Synod Abroad (quoted in FitzGerald, p. 67).
The letter turned out to be decisively influential in the coming sobor in Cleveland.
1946-1970: Open Hostility
In November of 1946, at the famous Cleveland Sobor (the “7th All-American”), after a call from Moscow for the Metropolia to renew its loyalty, a vote was held which resulted in the Metropolia’s separation from the ROCOR and which declared loyalty to the Patriarchate. The voters, comprised of clergy and laity, voted 187 to 61 to reunite with the Patriarchate in the USSR. The pro-ROCOR faction within the Metropolia was understandably furious, as they regarded the Patriarchate as still compromised by the Soviet power.” – ROCOR and OCA, Orthodoxwiki
“Still waiting on something anti-Ukrainian from the Metropolia.”
It was given to your: Abp. Alexander, the first primate elected by the OCA, refused to recognize the Ukrainians, going so far as going to the Cathedral in Winnipeg (where the Ukrainians were gathering for a Sobor) and denouncing Ukrainstvo from the pulpit. The OCA had no relations with the Ukrainians as a group thereafter, and never had a Ukrainian ethnic diocese.
“Meanwhile, the Metropolia, the Russian diocese in America, which was becoming increasingly less Russian and more Carpatho-Russian (with the reception of many thousands of former Uniates under the leadership of St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre), began a winding path toward independence from the jurisdiction of Moscow. The increasingly Carpatho-Russian/ex-Uniate character of the Metropolia is seen in its choice to name itself in 1906 as the Russian Orthodox Greek-Catholic Church in North America under the Hierarchy of the Russian Church (emphasis added).”
And misplaced.
In 1906 St. Tikhon, a Russian, would have been making the name choice, and it had more to do with the proliferation of legal suits for properties as the uniates returned to Orthodoxy, than any non-existent Ukrainstvo.
Notice “Carpatho-Russian.” Not “Carpatho-Ukrainian.”
It couldn’t become “increasingly less Russian and more Carpatho-Russian” because it was barely Russian at all besides the hierarchy, and St. Tikhon was succeeded by Russians until Met. Theophilos-who effected the rapprochement with ROCOR and attempted to with Moscow.
Thanks, Father Alexei! Your historical comments are right on the money, especially when you point out the antipathy and even hatred shown by the Metropolia establishment and base for the whole idea of “Ukrainian’. Most denied that there was any such entity as “Ukraine” at all insisting that the area now so called was inhabited by Little Russians. If you ask the OCA’s archivist, Alexei Liberovsky, i’m sure he could come up with some almanacs and yearbooks from long ago which (often crudely) satirized Ukrainians (then, the word was always put in quotation marks). Modern Ukrainian Americans unjustly blamedFr. John Meyendorff for his alleged mockery of Ukrainianism which led to the Metropolia ‘missing the opportunity” to incorporate the diaspora and led them to incorporate independently in both the U.S. and Canada. Many carpatho-Russians were indignant that anyone would insinuate they were not Russian, but “Ukrainian.’ That holds true even today. Then and now, those promoting the idea of Ukraine were labelled as lovers of Germany over Russia, or even cowards who were polishing Polish and Austrian apples.
Vladyka said:
” Many carpatho-Russians were indignant that anyone would insinuate they were not Russian, but “Ukrainian.’ That holds true even today. Then and now, those promoting the idea of Ukraine were labelled as lovers of Germany over Russia, or even cowards who were polishing Polish and Austrian apples.”
Many of us still feel the same way.