Erich Lippman
Two Competing Concepts of “National” Churches
Kristina Stoeckl’s suggestion that Orthodox communities in emigration might be moving in a transnational direction reflects perhaps the perspective of some Orthodox intellectuals in Western Europe, but is far from the lived reality of most Orthodox believers living in countries where Orthodoxy is not the national faith. Rather than suggest that Orthodoxy is splitting between the “diaspora” model and the “transnational” model, I would suggest that we have two competing concepts of “national” churches.
Certainly, the diaspora model can represent a sort of nationalism, linking Orthodox churches with the national identity of their jurisdictions. However, when John Meyendorff wrote of moving beyond the “national divisions” of the Orthodox Church in America and moving toward “unification,” he was not, as Stoeckl implies, arguing for a movement toward transnationalism, but rather toward the creation of a new national church—an American Orthodox church. This is not to suggest that Meyendorff was advocating an American nationalism as opposed to the Russian or Greek versions, but rather that many Orthodox thinkers (Meyendorff included) see as scandalous and uncanonical a situation in which multiple, overlapping national jurisdictions exist within the same country. They should rather be tied together under the umbrella of an Orthodox church of that country, as has been the case historically. So perhaps rather than introduce a category like transnationalism, it would be best to differentiate between indigenous and nationalist diasporas.
The Rivalry between Moscow and Constantinople
History is actually a significant part of the problem of Stoeckl’s analysis—specifically the long rivalry between the second and third Romes. Moscow and Constantinople (Istanbul) have long been at odds over which should hold the rightful place of primacy in the Orthodox world. The relationships of these national centers to their religious peripheries often say much more about the complexities of that competition than can be reduced to easy dichotomies. Stoeckl claims that the Ecumenical Patriarchate is more amenable to transnational Orthodoxy, selectively citing the examples of the Archdiocese of Great Britain and the Metropolis of France, while the Russian Orthodox Church is the primary opponent because “a severance of ties between the Church and its émigré believers could eventually lead to the decline of the political influence of the Russian Orthodox Church both in the home country and in its external relations.” However, it was precisely that same Moscow Patriarchate that, in 1973, granted autocephaly (self-leadership) to its jurisdiction in the United States, allowing it to become the Orthodox Church of America, with its leader in Washington and its services in English.
On the other hand, if an Orthodox Christian were to travel to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, that person would have no choice but to experience the Divine Liturgy in Greek because the only Orthodox parish there belongs to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Indeed, it has long been the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese that has doggedly supported the nationalist model, offering its services in Greek and offering Greek classes alongside Sunday school. When the Greek Archbishop Iakovos supported the proclamations of the Ligonier Meeting in 1994, which produced consensus documents opposing the diaspora model in the US, he quickly lost his job. After all, the severance of ties may represent a loss of political capital for Moscow, but it would represent a much greater loss of financial capital for Constantinople.
The American picture is quite complex, and an observer’s experience is likely to differ radically from one parish to the next, often regardless of jurisdiction. One can find Greek churches that use as much English as possible in their liturgies as easily as one can find OCA churches in the OCA heartland of western Pennsylvania that still sprinkle Church Slavonic throughout their liturgies, despite being a hundred years removed from the Slavic immigrants who formed those churches.
The Orthodox Schism in Great Britain
I would also contend that the 2006 Sourozh schism was a much more complicated affair than Stoeckl presents and leaves little, if any, clarity that “the Russian Orthodox Church is [or was at that time] seeking to increase its control over Russian Orthodox communities in the West.” Rather, the Sourozh tragedy reflected the growing pains of a slowly recovering Russian Orthodox Church trying to reconnect with a diocese it had long left to its own devices. One nuance Stoeckl leaves out in the sweep of her generalization is that Patriarch Aleksei II and Patriarch Kirill have not followed the same path. Kirill’s articulation of a doctrine of “russkii mir,” cited by Stoeckl, is indeed problematic and signals a return to imperial pretensions and a cozy “symphonia” with Putin’s government on the part of the Moscow Patriarchate. However, this direction is new and has much more to do with Kirill and the idea’s chief architect—Hilarion Alfeyev (who not coincidentally played a significant role in the Orthodox schism in Great Britain)—than it does with long-standing patriarchal politics. It would be too simplistic to see Aleksei’s handling of the Sourozh problem through that lens.
Competing Notions of the Role of the Local Church
There is little doubt to any astute observer of Orthodoxy that in countries where Orthodoxy is not the majority or official religion, tension between the center (mother Church) and periphery (local church) exists. However, the tension is not between a diaspora mentality and transnationalism, but between competing notions of the role of the local church. Is it a haven for the often increasing numbers of Orthodox believers from the mother country? Or is it a “light unto the Gentiles” of whatever country it inhabits (in other words, a church culturally appropriate to that nation)? It seemingly cannot be both, although both mentalities have strong claims on the constituencies of those churches. To look beyond this tension to see Orthodoxy in emigration moving toward a Catholic or even Protestant-style transnationalism would be to ignore too much of the history, identity, and theology of the Orthodox Church over the last thousand years. After all, Orthodox believers already have a strong sense of being part of something that transcends nations, but is always grounded in a particular culture. The question for émigré churches is: In which culture should they be grounded?
Erich Lippman is assistant professor of history at St. Mary’s University, Winona, Minnesota.