Australasia, Orthodox Church in

JOHN CHRYSSAVGIS

While Australia counts among the most expansive countries in the world, comprising the fifth continent and being only slightly smaller in geographical terri­tory than the USA, it is nonetheless sparsely populated, mostly barren desert (albeit extraordinarily attractive red-sand wilder­ness), and settled primarily in the few state capitals scattered on the coastline. The largest Christian denomination is the Roman Catholic Church, with the Anglican Church being the most dominant in the early years, the Uniting Church constituting the principal Protestant group, and Ortho­dox Christians forming a significant fraction of the overall population of 20 million (with numbers ranging from just over half to three-quarters of a million, predominantly Greeks).

While there were probably no Orthodox Christians among the penal colonies or even the crew and passengers of the First Fleet, the earliest mention of Greeks dates to around 1818, probably referring to immigrants transported from Greece for misdemeanors related to piracy during the period of British hegemony. Earliest records indicate that the Russian wife of a British military officer arrived in Australia in 1810, possibly the first Orthodox resident in the country’s history; however, there are no explicit indications of her religious back­ground. Around 1820 a Russian Antarctic expedition from St. Petersburg to Alaska landed in Sydney, where a Hieromonk Dionisii celebrated liturgy at Kirribilli Point (to this day called “Russian Point”) only days after Orthodox Easter, possibly on the Saturday of Thomas. Documents attest to another Russian naval vessel, whose chap­lain was a Fr. Jerome, landing in Melbourne in 1862. By 1868 a certain Fr. Christophoros Arsenios had reportedly settled in Queens­land, though no records survive of any litur­gical services conducted.

By the middle of the 19th century, Greek immigrants began arriving in Australia and the first regular celebration of liturgical services occurred around 1895. Although precise details remain unclear or unknown, the first resident Orthodox priest was a Greek named Archimandrite Dorotheos Bakaliaros, who served communities in both Melbourne and Sydney. The founda­tions of the first Greek Orthodox parish were laid on May 29, 1898, for the Church of the Holy Trinity in Surry Hills, Sydney, and, two years later, in 1900, for the Church of the Annunciation in East Melbourne.

Like elsewhere in the diaspora, the canon­ical jurisdiction over the early communities is not entirely clear. What is abundantly clear, however, is that the communities were originally “mixed” – comprised of Greeks, Syrians, and Slavs – and so it is not surprising that clergy themselves were initially imported from the multi-ethnic patriarchate of Jerusalem. Such polyglot community leaders included the first duly assigned priest in Sydney, Fr. Seraphim Phokas, and the first priest specifically appointed for Melbourne, Fr. Athanasios Kantopoulos. Later Greek clergy knew no Arabic, and so the Syrians – arriving as immigrants in the 1880s – soon broke away to form their own communities in Melbourne and Sydney, the latter with Fr. Nicholas Shehadie, sent to Australia as official exarch of the patriarchate of Antioch in 1913. Brief jurisdiction of the Greeks in diaspora was initially transferred by the ecumenical patriarchate to the Church of Greece in 1908, but afterwards soon revoked with the formal issue of the Patriarchal Tomes establishing the metropolis of America in 1922 and the metropolis of Australia and New Zealand in 1924, under Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios IV. Thus, the Greek Orthodox metropolis of Australia and New Zealand was established “for the better organization of the Orthodox Church” in Australasia.

The first Serb priest, Fr. Svetozar Seculic, arrived in Sydney in 1948; the first Serb church was erected in Flemington, New South Wales, in 1953. From that period, the Serbian community – the largest after the Greeks – was administered by the patriarchate of Serbia until 1963, when two separate dioceses were created, cur­rently functioning in parallel since 1992. A number of Russians migrated to Australia from Manchuria, and the first Russian parish was created in Brisbane as early as 1925. Under the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the first bishop of Australia and New Zealand was Theodor, appointed in 1948. More recently, the Russian diocese was involved in the act, signed in 2007, of reentering canonical communion with the patriarchate of Moscow. The first Antiochian parish was established in Sydney in 1920, while the Antiochian Australasian diocese was formed in 1970, with Bishop Gibran as its first hierarch, and elevated to archdiocesan status in 1999. The first Romanian parish was established in Sydney in 1972, while the Romanian Orthodox episcopate of Australia and New Zealand was created in 2008. The first Bulgarian parish was created in 1950, with the few existing parishes administered by the ruling hierarch for the United States, Canada, and Australia.

The first Greek Orthodox metropo­litan was Christophoros (1871–1959), fluent in English after graduate studies in St. Andrew’s (Scotland) and Oxford (England). Christophoros served only until 1929 and was succeeded by Metropolitan Timotheos (1880–1949), elected in 1931 and serving until 1947. In 1949 Timotheos was elected archbishop of America to replace Athenagoras, but died before assuming that position. Metropolitan Theophylaktos (1891–1958), an Athonite monk, was elected and ordained in 1947; his tenure tragically ended with a car accident. Bishop Ezekiel (1913–87), formerly serving in the United States (as priest and, thereafter, as bishop and sub-dean at Holy Cross Seminary), was elected metropolitan in 1959, promoted that same year to archbishop with the eleva­tion of the metropolis to archdiocese. His tenure proved turbulent, leading to the appointment of a patriarchal exarch in Met­ropolitan Iakovos from 1969 until 1970, when Archbishop Ezekiel returned until 1974. While Metropolitan Theophylaktos and Archbishop Ezekiel were in office, the Greek community grew rapidly, the result of unprecedented waves of emigration from wartorn Greece and Europe. In 1970 the ecu­menical patriarchate separated New Zealand, creating a distinct metropolis, which later assumed responsibility for missions in South­east Asia. The present Archbishop Stylianos (b. 1935) was elected in 1975 after serving as abbot of the Patriarchal Monastery of Vlatadon in Thessaloniki, where he also taught as university lecturer of systematic theology.

While the early years of Orthodox presence in Australia are characterized by a rudimentary sense of practical coopera­tion and unity, and whereas the original Tome of the Ecumenical Patriarchate specif­ically stated that it was intended to cover all Orthodox in Australia, it was not long before the various ethnic groups pursued their individual directions. A significant move toward greater cooperation occurred in September 1979, at the initiative of Arch­bishop Stylianos, with the formation of the Standing Council of Canonical Orthodox Churches in Australia (SCCOCA) in accor­dance with the SCOBA model in the United States. Archbishop Stylianos was appoin­ted permanent chairman, while founding members included the Greek, Antiochian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Serbian patriar­chal groups, as well as the Russian Church Abroad, since almost all Russian Orthodox in Australasia belonged to this group. SCCOCA has been fraught with internal tensions and is yet to reach its full potential of expressing a common mind or pan-Orthodox consensus, beyond liturgical and doctrinal unity.

Similar discord gradually colored some of these constituent Orthodox groups inter­nally, particularly the Greeks and the Serbs. The Greeks, for example, were first divided by more political and regional loyalties, later by overseas allegiances of Venizelists and Royalists, and then by patriarchal adherence and “community” opposition. The last of these divisions – originating under Christophoros and critically inflamed under Ezekiel – persists to this day, although its intensity has substantially dwindled.

Most Orthodox jurisdictions have some form of educational and welfare system, including retirement homes. However, as the largest and most efficiently organized among Orthodox jurisdictions, the Greek archdiocese possesses over one hundred parishes as well as a number of bilingual day-schools (from elementary through high school) in the major cities and a variety of impressive philanthropic institutions for the elderly (St. Basil’s Homes) and disabled (Estia Foundation). Established in 1969, St. Basil’s Homes has progressed exponentially to provide residential and daycare community-based services for the aged throughout Australia. Moreover, most jurisdictions also boast traditional monastic communities, whether larger or smaller, both male and female.

Several Orthodox clergy contributed to the scholarly world through the years. Fr. Seraphim Phokas published the first Orthodox book in Australia, the translation in 1905 of a religious novel. Metropolitan Christophoros had a thesis published in an English journal. The first local church magazine appeared under Metropolitan Timotheos. Metropolitan Iakovos authored a book entitled Australia 1969. With the tenure of Metropolitan Ezekiel, the church in Australia was organized more efficiently along the lines of the Greek Orthodox archdiocese in America. Thus, Archbishop Ezekiel introduced the Clergy-Laity. Con­ferences (held in 1961, 1965, and 1972). Moreover, it came as no surprise that, as former professor and administrator at Holy Cross Seminary, Archbishop Ezekiel planned from the outset, as articulated in the archdiocesan Yearbooks, to establish a theological school. Under the present archbishop, who holds a doctoral degree from Germany and has published widely on theological as well as literary subjects, Clergy-Laity Conferences are held with greater regularity every four years. Indeed, following a resolution at the Fourth Clergy- Laity Conference in Sydney in 1981, the dream of a theological school materiali­zed and, in 1984, Archbishop Stylianos appointed an exploratory committee to determine the possibility of opening such an institution. Thus, in February 1986, St. Andrew’s Theological College officially opened its doors as a fully accredited institute of the Sydney College of Divinity, through which students are today also able to pursue graduate degrees. The opening was attended by Metropolitan Maximos of Stavroupolis, dean of Halki, while the present Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew paid a visit to the college during the first official patriarchal journey to Australasia in 1996. The college publishes an annual entitled Phronema. It will take some time before the church in Australia begins to reap the benefits of a locally educated clergy; nevertheless, the bold step to create a theological school is already manifesting results inasmuch as its first graduates now staff administrative and teaching positions.

Of course, the bloodline of the church lies in its parishioners, clergy and laity, namely the hard-working pioneers, men and women, who constructed temples and donated halls, who developed the vision and supported the programs. Indeed, one of the peculiar features of the development of the Orthodox Church in Australia has been that lay people often preceded the clergy in movements of immigration and con­struction of communities. While (much like appointments in America) the ecumen­ical patriarchate has blessed Australia with uniquely enlightened hierarchs since the establishment of the church, the minis­try of most metropolitans or archbishops in Australia (unlike the situation in America) has proved more conservative and less prophetic. In many ways this has reflected the different development of the communities in the two continents, where integration of the Orthodox Church into the local culture is less apparent than in the United States and more comparable to the migrant Orthodox communities in Canada.

Nevertheless, church history is often written on the marginal, less institutional levels, such as in the unassuming creativ­ity of individual parish priests. Many of the early priests were well educated and bilingual, some emigrating from Asia Minor, and many introducing English-language celebrations of the divine liturgy from the 1910s, when they also contributed religious articles in publications such as To Vema (now owned by the Greek Orthodox archdiocese); later clergy created the first bilingual day-schools (with seeds planted as early as the 1950s and full-fledged schools established in the 1970s), held broadcasts on radio and television as early as the 1950s, produced the first English-speaking journals, such as the Australian Hellenic Youth Association in the 1940s or Enquiry in the 1970s, or else established government- sponsored welfare centers in the 1970s. Such enterprising ministry undoubtedly provided the sound basis for later expressions in the form of university chap­laincies in the mid-1970s or prison chap­laincies in the 1980s, as well as the Archdiocesan Translation Committee for the translation of liturgical services in the 1990s. The question remains whether the newly established St. Andrew’s Press will some day include publications at the cut­ting edge of visionary and critical theolog­ical thought. Certainly, however, what was once considered to be a Church of the Antipodes is today hailed as a vibrant and promising community.

SEE ALSO: Constantinople, Patriarchate of; Greece, Orthodox Church of

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Gilchrist, H. (1992–7) Australians and Greeks, 3 vols. Rushcutters Bay, NSW: Halstead Press. Simmons, H. L. N. (1986) Orthodoxy in Australia. Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press.