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5 years ago  ::  Apr 27, 2008 - 2:15PM #1
James613
Posts: 614
I know that there is an Orthodox Chruch for every country that it is in, so why isn't there an American Orthodox Chruch, and if there is why is there the Greek Orthodox Church in America and the Russian Orthodox Chruch outside of Russia?

I've also heard of some Western Rite Orthodox Churchs, services bassed on The Book of Common Prayer. Would this kind of service, instead of the Byzantine Rite, be the one in which an "American Orthodox Chruch" perform their services?

Thanks for any responses!
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5 years ago  ::  Apr 28, 2008 - 2:35PM #2
Seraphim
Posts: 504
There is:
The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) it is a daughter church of the Russian Orthodox.

The jurisdictional situation in the US and Canada with regard to Orthodox Jurisdictions is unfortunate and not canonical and we are working to fix it. In the interim most Orthodox Jurisdictions in North America are members of SCOBA: Standing Council of Orthodox Bishops in America...many of our mission and outreach programs operate through or in cooperation with SCOBA.

The current situation is an accident of history. The canonical way is to give "dibs" to the first Church who establishes Orthodox missions in a given region. In this case the Russian Church had numerous missionary bishops and priests in the Alaskan Territory and along the Pacific northwest Coast in the late 1700s. It was their presence pushing south that stimulated the Catholic communion to press so far north in California...we bumped into each other roughly in what is now San Francisco. When Alaska became US territory the Russian Metropolitanate relocated to SF to be more centrally located within the US to carry on its work. By the mid 1800s immigrant communities of Greeks, Serbs, Ukrainians, Arab Orthodox, etc were starting to appear all over the US. These communities were pastorally served under the governance of the Russian Synod who assigned or approved for them indigenous bishops and priests. And this was the way things continued until roughly 1924.

Until that point there was only one Orthodox Jurisdiction in the US and Canada and it was the outreach of the Russian Church. But with the advent of communism the Russian Church began to suffer greatly. 10s of thousands of its bishops, priests, and monastics were martyred. Right before the roof fell in the Patriarch told overseas daughter Churches that they would have to look to their own affairs for the time being as things were becoming very difficult back home. By this time support from Russia was gone and the Metropolitanate was in disarray fiscally and politically. Soviets had killed the last Patriarch and put their own man on the throne of Moscow and tried to use US courts to strip Russian Churches of their properties in the name of the Patriarchate. The Russian Orthodox were busy just trying adjust and to survive. This means the other ethnic communities formerly under their governance were let drift and they turned back to their home countries and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate for help. Thus were born the other various ethnic Orthodox bodies in the US and Canada. Same faith but different administrations now.

In late 30s and early 40s another crisis emerged in the Russian Church there were some who maintained loyalty to the Patriarch of Moscow though they knew his situation tenuous and compromised. Others believed the Patriarchate was beyond compromised and had become little more than religious shell under KGB control, and hence heretical...so until the Patriarchate was free again they were for complete separation. This tension resulted in two Russian bodies, one called Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and the other called the Russian Metropolitanate, which in 1970 or so was given a tomos of autonomy by the Patriarch and became thereafter the Orthodox Church in America.

Last year ROCOR and Moscow ended their estrangement though there have been some small disaffections like Russian Orthodox Church in Exile (ROCE) who do not think the Patriarch's repentance has been of sufficient fullness to justify reunification as of yet.

A number of the Orthodox jurisdictions are consciously moving towards reunification via SCOBA (at present). The Antiochian (Arabic) Jurisdiction was given a tomos of autonomy by his Beatitude Ignatius IV about 2 years ago, and they and the OCA are both very close to each other and are working towards a mechanism/means of reunification. In most of our mutual dioceses we act as if we were already one in terms of interparish activities. The Greeks and the EP are the most stand offish and the least interested in the establishment of an independent North American Orthodox Church...but it will come.

ROCOR and some of the other harder core Traditionalist Jurisdictions are a little standoffish at the present time as well, but for different reasons...mostly associated with the Old/New Calendar disputes and its implicit ecumenicalist zeitgeist. Many US Orthodox tend to side with ROCOR's principles and would like to see their presence as an anchor and a counterweight against modernizing tendencies (pews, lack of headcoverings for women, beardless clergy, new calendar, lack of rigor in keeping various traditional pieties, etc.).

Anyway...that is sort of where things stand at the moment. The Antiochians and the OCA followed by ROCOR are the most active in their outreach and growth within the US and Canada (and now Mexico). Though still on the small side here we are growing fairly rapidly, at least in these three jurisdictions.

Western rite Orthodox go back to bodies of Anglican converts who came into the Russian Church back before the communists. They use an Orthodox corrected version of the Book of Common Prayer and use an Orthodox corrected traditional Anglican rite called the Rite of St. Tikhon. The Antiochians have also brought in a number of former Episcopal and Anglican congregations who wished to retain something of their historical roots and some of them use a western/anglican based rite approved by their Patriarch...I don't know the details. There is also a western rite promulgated by the Synod of Milan, a traditionalist Western Orthodox Jurisdiction with a complicated and sketchy history...it is on the margins of what most other Orthodox jurisdictions consider within canonical bounds...though to be sure relations have improved significantly over the past 10 years or so.

The rite used by the OCA and AOC are both English versions of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom with occasional sprinklings of Russian or Arabic as appropriate respectively.

Most Orthodox, though not all, feel the Western Rites, are a failed or failing experiment, a kind of well meant but to large extent unworkable liturgical archeology. At best it was an interim bridging strategy, but it is probably better to encourage convert congregations to use the Liturgy of St. John, as do all other Orthodox Churches. Then over time in the American context it will develop its own special "American" flavor just as the Liturgy of St. John has in other Orthodox cultures...the variations of practice which today distinguish how Greeks or Russians, or Serbs, or Arab Christians, etc. celebrate the Divine Liturgy. There will likely be a fusion of small customs as we are already seeing emerge. For example many American converts like the Serbian custom of the Slava and have adopted it with regard to their own patron saints. We are also seeing our monasteries developing their gifts of spiritual hospitality in especial ways (since we have so few of them).

Well that's it is a rather large nutshell, hope it helps.
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5 years ago  ::  Apr 28, 2008 - 3:01PM #3
malanga
Posts: 626
That was most informative Seraphim, thank you!
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