Foreword
I sometimes feel as though I have lived four lives. The first was childhood and youth. The second was over fifty years ago with the old Russian emigration in England and France. Already old then, those ‘antediluvian’ emigres died out in the last century. I knew them all – the Zernovs, Golitsyns, Andronikovs, Tieshenhausens, Lopukhins, Kovalevskys, Rosenschilds, Meyendorffs, Schememanns, Ossorgins, Kedrovs, Rehbinders, Nelidovs, Struves, Obolenskys, Evetzes, Sollogubs, Losskys, Rodziankos, Bloom, Sakharov, all the old ones. They are all gone now. My third life was from 1997 on, in England, helping to create unity with the freed Russian Church among the vestiges of that emigration.
My fourth life, though becoming apparent already in the 2000s, has been since 2022 in the new and young generation of energy and faith. They know nothing of that old world, with its extreme snobbery and racial exclusivism. Today all parts of the Orthodox Church here, especially Romanians and Greeks, not only accept English people into the Church, but even encourage us and adopt our local saints. Gone are the tiny and poor ghetto chapels of between 10 and 30 ‘holy huddlers’. Today we have mass Orthodoxy, with 200-400 at every service. It was long ago time for the old ghetto-dwellers to adapt and accept the post-Communist mainstream Church, or else close down, as they are doing.
My Background
My writings can be found from the 1980s onwards in several journals and in six published books on the Orthodox Church and Faith in Russia, Western Europe and England and on English history. Many of these have been translated into other languages. Since 2000 I have written on the Orthodox England website and blog and since 2012 I have written in Russian for the Russian website RNL. In 2022 I temporarily wrote for the website of The Saker and in 2023 for the Global South website, when I had to use the pseudonym of Batiushka, ‘for fear of the Jews’. Now I still write on the Orthodox England blog. My writings concern three main themes: authenticity, acculturation and new Local Churches.
My first theme has been faithfulness to the authentic Orthodox Christian Tradition. This means avoiding the deviations to the left-hand side of Westernisation, due to some inferiority complex vis a vis the West, that is, liberalism, modernism and globalism, as especially in the last century, and, on the other hand, avoiding the deviations to the right-hand side of nationalism, due to insecurity, that is, sectarianism, phariseeism and ghettoism, as especially over the last two generations. My second theme has been the acculturation of Orthodox Christianity into Western societies, based on Western unity and communion with the Orthodox Church in the first millennium and on our saints.
This was before the process of spiritual decomposition began in Western Europe, slowly from the reign of the barbarian Charlemagne ‘Father of Europe’, at end of the eighth century on, but far more rapidly and very noticeably, during the eleventh century and after. This brings me to my third theme, the foundation of new Local Churches in the Diaspora. For only through acculturation, based on spiritual and historical fact and without deviations, can authentic new Local Churches be founded, avoiding, for example, the errors of certain in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), the gallant but failed attempt to found a Local Church in North America, now over fifty years ago.
In the distant past I grew up spiritually in the Russian emigration both in England and in France, among people who had been adults or at least children in Russia before 1917, or, in the cases of the second emigration, adults there before 1945, before they died out. I also lived in the 1970s in Soviet Russia, worked in Greece and studied at the Russian émigré seminary of St Sergius in Paris. I was influenced by seven people. Firstly, there was the Romanian monk, Fr Raphael, son of the famous philosopher and poet Constantin Noica and who is still alive. Secondly, there was Elder Seraphim of Belgorod, a living saint, whose blessing I received through Fr Lev Lebedev in Kursk, whom I met in Russia in 1976.
Then there was Elder Ephraim of Arizona, whom I met on Mt Athos in 1978, Fr Alexei Knyazev, the brilliant rector of the Russian seminary in Paris, fifthly, Archbishop George Tarasov in Paris, who had been a Russian pilot on the Western Front in World War I, then Fr Alexander Trubnikov, the rector of the ROCOR parish outside Paris, where I served for many years, and finally the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony (Bartoshevich) of Western Europe and successor of my ‘spiritual grandfather’, St John of Shanghai. I have been an Orthodox clergyman for over 40 years, serving in France, Portugal and England, and today I serve in England as an archpriest of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese.
The Life and Death of the Russian Émigré Church
The tragedy of the Russian emigre Church is that after the Revolution it split into three warring parts. This split lasted until 2007 and, for some fanatics, still exists. These splits were purely political in nature. By far the smallest émigré group until 1991, loyal to the captive ‘Red’ Church inside the USSR, at times put Soviet patriotism above all else. Some of them, intensely nationalistic, defended the Soviet State and the compromises made by its hostage-bishops inside the USSR, such as denying that the Church there was persecuted. After 1991, become through emigration by far the largest of the three groups, most of its members became patriots of the Russian Federation, sometimes also nationalistically.
The second group was largely composed of Saint Petersburg aristocrats and intellectuals, often with German Baltic surnames, based in Paris. These aristocrats, already Westernised long before 1917 and emigration, were often strongly opposed to the Tsar and advocated a compromised Orthodoxy. They were known for their political liberalism and support of the February 1917 overthrow of the Tsar, their ideal being a Constitutional Monarchy or a French-style Republic. They even left the Russian Church and joined the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople. Over 40% of the small group chose to remain there, though now, over 100 years on, their links with Russia are very tenuous.
By far the largest group, over 80%, was called ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia). This was composed of White Russians. Vigorously anti-Communist, some were not so much Orthodox Christians as people who wanted the downfall of the USSR and the return of their properties and wealth inside Russia. Politically very much on the right, this wing of ROCOR practised a culture, rather than a Faith. They generally had great cultural nostalgia for a vanished State. After World War II, their leading bishops left Europe for the USA. Here the best continued to have an inspiring witness, being, until 1991, the voice of the free Russian Church and faithful to its Tradition, martyrs and confessors.
However, the long-term results were disastrous, as, losing its historical roots in Russia and Europe, the Westernised descendants of the old emigres were co-opted into the CIA. Like others, I used to belong to the non-political, spiritual wing of this Russian émigré Church, most of which with many others I helped reunite with the Russian Church in Moscow in our victory of unity against sectarianism in 2007. However, within a decade, many of its members had reneged on this, refusing to integrate into closer unity. Finally degenerating into a tiny, alien sectarian group, influenced by anti-Russian US politics, it gave way to ‘Orthobros’, incels with Amish-style Calvinism, Lutheranism and Puritanism.
Those of us who know the historic Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian language, history, classical literature and, above all, real Russian people, knew that ROCOR had become an American fake, a ghetto-fantasy degenerated from Russian Orthodoxy, and become irrelevant to mainstream Orthodoxy. It would never contribute to building Local Churches, in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Essentially, it had become psychopathological control freakery, a Disneyfied version of Russian Orthodoxy, and so marginalised itself. In reality, the survival of the Russian emigration is in witness to the Orthodox Faith, in new Local Churches, giving up exclusivism and working closely with other Orthodox.
The Two Problems of the Contemporary Orthodox Church
Today, two major issues face the mainstream of the 200-million strong Orthodox Church, which is made up of 16 Local Churches, on the model of the Holy Trinity of unity in diversity. These issues are the purely political division between the Russian Church, 70% of the whole, and the once prestigious Greek Churches, 7% of the whole. These are now out of communion with one another as a result of the US bribing of the nationalist Hellenist Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople and nationalist ideological pressures on the Russian Patriarchate of Moscow. Secondly, there is the uncanonical situation of the Orthodox Diasporas in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania, which have no Local Churches.
This Diaspora issue can only be solved once the primary issue between Russian and Greek politicians is solved, for both of these have to agree as pastors with all other Orthodox on setting up new Local Churches for the multinational Orthodox in the Diaspora. Being in communion is the sign of belonging to the Church. And that issue can only be solved by decentralisation, as the conflict between Russians and Greeks was caused precisely by nationalist centralisation, the refusal to decentralise, to let go of power and money and devolve to pastoral work. For this to happen, three Centres, Moscow, Constantinople and Alexandria, need to make concessions. Solutions to this issue could be:
In Moscow
To help distance itself from politically-inspired nationalist influences and to let go, the Patriarchate of Moscow and All Rus could be renamed the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus, moving its administrative centre to the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow. It could refrock all Russian Orthodox clergy who were uncanonically ‘defrocked’, for purely political reasons, after 24 February 2022, in Russia, Lithuania, Western Europe and elsewhere. Then it could devolve and decentralise itself, initially establishing four new Local Churches in once Soviet countries, which have for over 30 years been independent republics outside the Russian Federation:
The Kievan Rus Orthodox Church (Kievan Rus being the historic Ukraine, that is, in all probability after the conflict there is over, the 12 provinces of the North-Western and Central Soviet Ukraine), to be led by Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and his Synod.
The Baltic Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, to be led by a new Metropolitan of Riga and his Synod.
The Carpatho-Rus and Hungarian Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox in the Zakarpattia province of the old Soviet Ukraine, which will probably be returned to Hungary, and for Orthodox in Hungary.
In conjunction with the Patriarch of Bucharest and his Synod, the Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod could jointly grant autocephaly to all Orthodox, bishops and people, under their joint jurisdictions on the territory of the independent Republic of Moldova. This would at last form a single Moldovan Orthodox Church, centred in Chisinau. Moldovan Church unity could at last become real. At the same time the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem could refrock all Orthodox clergy, whom it uncanonically ‘defrocked’ for purely political reasons for joining the former Metropolia of Bessarabia of the Romanian Church, the present Romanian Metropolia centred in Moldova.
In Istanbul
In response to these decentralising concessions by Moscow, a new Patriarch of Constantinople could move the headquarters of that Patriarchate from Istanbul, where fewer than 500 Orthodox actually live, to Thessaloniki in Greece. It would absorb the Greek Orthodox Church, uncanonically set up in Athens by the British 200 years ago, though keeping Turkiye as part of its historic, canonical territory. This would at last free the Church from political interference by the Turkish government. It could recognise the five new Local Churches created by Moscow (and one together with Bucharest) above, instructing its small groups there to join the new Local Churches, and to recognise the situation in Africa, as below.
In Alexandria
The colonial administration of the Greek Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and his Synod could cede jurisdiction of Africa to found an authentically African Orthodox Church, headed by a single African Patriarch, with the title ‘of Alexandria and All Africa’ and a Synod of mainly African and some Greek and Russian bishops, centred in Kampala. Greek, Cypriot and Russian bishops at present in Africa could either join the new Patriarchate of Alexandria under its African Patriarch, or else return to Greece, Cyprus or Russia. All clergy ‘defrocked’ by the Patriarchate of Alexandra for political reasons since 2019 could be refrocked. Thus, there would be 20 Local Orthodox Churches.
Afterword
These are the first of my hopes for the future of the Orthodox Church. If communion, which is the sign of Orthodox Christianity, can be restored between the three above Local Churches under new Patriarch-shepherds, the path will be open to holding a Council of the whole Church. There can only be one question on the agenda – the situation of the Orthodox Diasporas. There are other questions, but they are all pastoral and can be dealt with by Synods of Local Churches. The Diasporas need new Local Churches, with autocephaly granted by all the Churches together. This would create four new Local Churches; for Western Europe, Northern America; Latin America and the Caribbean; Oceania.