Western Europe, Orthodoxy in
JOHN A. MCGUCKIN
Orthodoxy in Western Europe remains a small, but significant, church minority and presence. Though there were earlier Orthodox visitors, the establishment of a permanent and noticeable Orthodox presence in Western Europe (chiefly France, Britain, and Germany) really came about as a result of two specific waves of Orthodox immigration in the early and the late 20th century. In both cases the Orthodox presence was in the form of “diaspora” communities. The diaspora consists of the Orthodox faithful of the patriarchal, autocephalous, or autonomous Orthodox Churches (often referred to as “the jurisdictions”) who have moved elsewhere in the world and are, in their new countries, looked after by bishops appointed by the home synods of their originating churches. Only in America has there been any move to establish an indigenous Orthodox Church out of a diaspora community (the Orthodox Church of America). Throughout Western Europe the Orthodox institutional presence entirely relates back to missionary communities of the older churches. All Greeks (including Cypriots) living in the diaspora (a large number indeed) now fall under the jurisdictional care of the patriarchate of Constantinople, which has exarchates and missions in most western countries, given that the modern Greeks (like their ancient forebears) traveled far and wide. The Russian Orthodox also had a large diaspora population, especially after the great political upheavals caused by the Russian Revolution. Its diaspora institutions have also been profoundly complicated by those political troubles. The other larger churches that had a considerable number of faithful living abroad either set up pastoral missions for them, or knew that they could be pastorally cared for by the existing Greek and Russian ecclesiastical provisions.
In more recent times, following on the collapse of totalitarian communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and also on the lifting of border restrictions within the parameters of the European Union, there has been considerable mobility in Western Europe among younger Romanians and naturally an extension of the pastoral provision for Romanian Orthodox in Europe and America has followed. It has been organized by the Patriarchal Synod of Romania, with specific reference to the pastoral needs of the Romanians in the diaspora, with an archbishop in Western and Central Europe, respectively, and also one in America. All of them are members of the Patriarchal Synod.
“Diaspora church” in this sense means an outlying “mission” of the original church. Problems arise, of course, as to how long a church mission can be established in a land without becoming indigenized. It is invidious, to the Orthodox, to establish churches where the church has historically already been established under the protection of an ancient patriarchate (the West falling under the aegis of the Roman patriarchate). The overlaying of a separate eccle- sial structure (indigenous dioceses and synods, for example) is regarded by the Orthodox as proselytism, not true missionary activity, and is taken as a sign of a profoundly defective ecclesiology when it is forced upon the Orthodox in their own countries by so-called Western Christian “missionaries” who are really proselytizers. This situation holds in reverse, even after the long-established secession ofthe Roman patriarchate from the Orthodox pentarchy of leading sees. Diaspora churches, therefore, which are in the traditional territories of the Roman patriarchate (which covers all Western Europe) are in a very different situation from those in the “New World” (Asia, Australasia, the Americas), a situation which was envisaged canonically by the fathers of Chalcedon in 451, who laid responsibility for authentically “new” missions (to the “barbarians”) with the patriarchate of Constantinople. The patriarchate of Constantinople regularly refers to the Chalcedonian canon in the sense that it ought to have supervision of all Orthodox communities all over the world who are outside the geographical territories of historically established Orthodox Churches. However, its radical interpretation of this conciliar decision is challenged by several other churches (especially Russia), and also by the facts of history, for it has never been as simple as this in “real life.” The establishment of Orthodox mission churches has always followed the natural process of the establishment of trade with new countries, that immediately required the setting up of missions to care for the pastoral need of the traders from their different national churches. This particularly had reference to the Russians, who had an expanding empire of great proportions while the rest of the Orthodox world was politically in bondage under the Turkish yoke; but in more recent times it has also applied equally to a wide variety of ethnic Orthodox groups who moved to the West either for trade purposes or to escape persecution. Indigenous Orthodox hierarchies will not, then, be declared in the traditional regions of the Western (Catholic) Church but can, and perhaps ought to, be declared in the “new lands” that are neither part of Western Christianity nor Eastern Christianity. This whole, troubled, question of diasporas and jurisdictions is scheduled to be high on the agenda for the forthcoming Great Pan Orthodox Council which (it is hoped) may be convened before the new century grows old.
The Greek churches of the diaspora in Western Europe are the simplest to account for. All of them are under the immediate jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Constantinople. The largest grouping is the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. There are a few communities in Ireland and Scotland which are part of the Thyateiran jurisdiction. Thyateira, named from an extinct see in Asia Minor and led by an archbishop with several assistant bishops, enjoys a large measure of autonomous government but is, canonically speaking, simply an extension of the Church of Constantinople in foreign parts. Its archbishop is a member of the Constan- tinopolitan Synod. It was founded earlier but grew in stature after a large wave of Cypriot immigration to England in the middle part of the 20th century, and the large majority of its clergy and people are of Cypriot ancestry, though today there are increasing problems as many of the children of the third generation are losing their grip on Greek language and customs. The church has attracted a small number of English converts, chiefly from Anglicanism (more have gone to the Russian parishes in England, which had a more developed sense of liturgical accommodation to English), and there are several parishes now that offer the divine liturgy with regular amounts of English in the service. A small minority (such as the mainly English community in Chester with an English priest) or the joint Russian-Greek parish in Oxford where Metropolitan Kallistos serves, offer the divine services more or less entirely in English.
The other largest Orthodox group comprising the Western European diaspora is the Russian Orthodox outside of Russia. This diverse and extended community of Orthodox faithful has been heavily disrupted both socially and ecclesiastically by the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. Resulting from this time of persecution, and the considerable refugee problem resulting from it, the Russian Orthodox community abroad fragmented into several divisions. One of these groups is composed of those dioceses outside Russia that remained loyal to the allegiance of the Moscow patriarch. There are a number of such parishes, in Britain, France, and Germany. Well known is the British Russian Archdiocese ofSourozh, formerly led by the renowned Metropolitan Antony Bloom. Throughout his life he retained full relations with the Moscow patriarchate. After his death small parts of the Sourozh diocese preferred to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the Russian Archdiocese of Western Europe under the Omophorion of the patriarch of Constantinople.
The second division was composed of the group of churches organized after the
Karlovtzy Synod (1921). St. Tikhon, the last patriarch of Russia before the communist yoke was imposed with a vengeance, disseminated an encyclical in 1920 that laid down emergency plans if communication between the Russians abroad and the patriarchate at home should become problematized. In 1921 the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church outside the borders of Russia who were free to act, met at the invitation of the patriarch of Serbia to discuss how to organize themselves in those difficult times. It was decided that the final authority over this “Russian Church Outside Russia” (ROCOR) would be vested in the holy synod of the free bishops, who should meet every year at Karlovtz (Sremsky Karlovtzy) in Yugoslavia. After World War II and the fall ofYugoslavia to communist control, it moved its headquarters to Munich, and after 1949 to buildings on the Upper East Side of New York City. Archbishop Antony Khrapovitsky, the former metropolitan of Kiev who had been exiled by the Bolsheviks, was elected as the synodical president. They had the allegiance and good will of many of the Russian exiles abroad, but by no means all of them, and not all were willing to recognize their authority when they constituted themselves, more and more, as an “alternative” to the Russian hierarchy in Russia. In 1921 a statement they issued declaring themselves for the restoration of the monarchy made their identification as “reactionaries” easy for Bolshevik propaganda at home, and caused much unease among the wider Russian Church, which did not universally have rosy memories of life under the tsars.
After the Bolshevik arrest (and suspected torture) of Tikhon (1922–3), he issued a statement expressing dissatisfaction with the way the Karlovtzy synod had arranged matters and appointed one of the leading Russian hierarchs, Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievski) of Paris, to work out a new plan for the governance of the ROCOR. This, too, was adopted by the synod outside Russia, but received no official endorsement from Tikhon. Tikhon established Evlogy as his personal representative for Western Europe, and Bishop Platon (Rojdestvensky) for North America. At first the ROCOR synod was very anxious to keep Evlogy and Platon closely bound to its decisions, but the tension was soon to prove too much. After Tikhon’s death in 1925 (thought by many to be another of Stalin’s clandestine assassinations) the succession to the newly reestablished patriarchate was somewhat irregular, and Sergius of Moscow was widely seen in Western Europe as a communist puppet. In 1927 the ROCOR synod issued a condemnation of Evlogy and Platon. In the following year it flatly refused any ecclesiastical obedience to Patriarch Sergius following on his demand that all exiled Russian bishops should cease from political activities of any kind, and it was, in turn, condemned by the patriarch and the Russian synod. Evlogy was reconfirmed in his role as representative of the Russian Church in Western Europe by Sergius, but in 1930 he was relieved of his duties in a blatantly political move. From the death of Tikhon onwards the ROCOR synod was immensely suspicious of the Russian hierarchs, regarding them as tools of the state. In their turn they have been denounced and pilloried. In the decades following the fall of communism in Russia, however, there were strong moves for reconciliation. In autumn of 2006 the hierarchs declared their decision for the restoration of full canonical union with the patriarchate, though retaining the autonomous administration of their parishes and clergy. The reunion finally took place in 2007, and as a result the ROCOR parishes in America, France, Britain, and Germany were restored to full communion with the Moscow patriarchate. Some few
ROCOR parishes, in Britain and America, refused to accept the union.
Metropolitan Evlogy of Paris continued to lead the major group of the Russian Orthodox diaspora in France. After 1926 he ceased to attend any meetings of the ROCOR synod. Separating from them, he had intended to keep lines of communication open with Patriarch Sergius in Moscow, but in 1927 he was denounced by the ROCOR synod for vacillation, and in 1930 he was personally disowned by Sergius for having had the audacity to pray in public for “persecuted Christians in Russia” when there was “no such thing.” By 1931, therefore, Evlogy realized that his hope of keeping formal lines of connection open under such bizarre circumstances was not realistic, and he placed himself and his parishes under the jurisdictional care of the patriarch of Constantinople, despite the loud protests of both Moscow and the ROCOR synod. Evlogy was never happy with this arrangement, however, and at the end of his life was personally reconciled with the Moscow patriarchate, but the parishes of his jurisdiction had no desire to follow his example, seeing the communist powers in Russia gaining more and more of a stranglehold over their church and homeland. The ecclesiastical arrangement of Constantinopolitan supervision of the Russian parishes abroad was suspended in 1965 (one presumes after protests by Moscow), but even at that stage many Russian parishes in Western Europe harbored deep suspicions of the intentions of the Moscow patriarchate, and refused to return to its allegiance, continuing their independent existence. In 1971 the patriarchate of Constantinople once more assumed a supervisory position. It was the French group of Russian Orthodox who had a massively important role in raising the consciousness of the Western Churches in regard to Orthodoxy after World War II.
The White Russians in Paris were among the first to bring to the attention of most Europeans (especially French Catholics and British Anglicans) the beauties of the Orthodox liturgy, and the strengths of Orthodox theology. Many theologians were among the group of exiles: Bulgakov, Florovsky, Frank, Lossky, Zernov, and Evdokimov chief among them; and their works gained a large and sympathetic attention in Europe.
One of their number, Sergius Bulgakov, was instrumental in founding the Society of Sts. Alban and Sergius which did so much to open up friendly relations between the Anglican Church and the Russian Orthodox in exile. Bulgakov was a brilliant teacher and writer, a protege of Evlogy of Paris, who appointed him as a professor in the Theological Institute of St. Sergius which he had founded in 1925, and which remains as the most prestigious Orthodox theological academy in Western Europe. Bulgakov’s trial and condemnation for heretical teaching by the Karlovtzy Synod hierarchs was a cause celebre at this period, and further complicated relations among the Russians in exile.
Today, the older disposition of Orthodoxy in Western Europe as a balance between Russians and Greeks is now triangulated as a result of the large, young, and relatively vigorous Romanian presence around the Mediterranean and in Germany. There are also smaller Orthodox communities of Bulgarians, Ukrainians, and Serbs in Germany, France, and Britain. Western European Orthodoxy has not seen any real rapprochement between the various ethnic jurisdictions, although a recent initiative in England has seen the establishment of a second theological institute (after St. Serge) based at Cambridge, and designed as a pan-Orthodox establishment to serve both clergy and laity (and function as an indigenous seminary course for Thyateiran ordinands). In France there is the well- known monastery of Bussy-en-Othe in Burgundy, and the largest in England is the Stavropegial foundation of St. John in Essex. In recent years a small Lavra of the Romanians has been established in England and a larger coenobitic hesychasterion in Nuremberg. The Orthodox presence in England owes a great deal to the generosity and warm hospitality of the Anglican Church, who welcomed and helped it considerably in its early stages of growth.
SEE ALSO: Bulgaria, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; Constantinople, Patriarchate of; Cyprus, Autocephalous Orthodox Church of; Romania, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; Serbia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; Ukraine, Orthodoxy in the
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
McGuckin, J. A. (2008) The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Its History, Theology and Spiritual Culture. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.