ORTHODOX UNITY OR IMPERIAL COERCION? A RESPONSE TO THE UNION OF ORTHODOX JOURNALISTS AND THE ATTEMPTED ERASURE OF THE WESTERN CHURCH

A Photo of the Primus of the Anglican Province of America, Abp. Chandler Holder Jones, and a Newly Made Deacon (Used in the Mocking Article Refuted Below)

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

INTRODUCTION

On August 7, 2025, the so-called Union of Orthodox Journalists (UOJ) published an anonymously written, mocking piece titled "Schismatic Anglican Bishop Schisms from Schismatic Anglican Sect." This article, cloaked in ecclesiastical superiority, was not analysis but polemic, targeting Bishop Todd Giffin, formerly of the Anglican Province of America (APA). It exploited internal fractures within the Continuing Anglican movement (specifically the APA’s potential absorption into the Anglican Catholic Church) to humiliate conservative Anglicans and advance the ideological and geopolitical aims of the Moscow Patriarchate and its aligned Orthodox Church of Ukraine (UOC). This screed is part of a dangerous pattern: the weaponization of Orthodox ecclesiology, not to serve the Kingdom of God, but to further the imperial ambitions of the heretical "Russkiy Mir." This must be confronted with Apostolic courage, not milquetoast ecumenism and self-effacement.

THE WEAPONZATION OF ORTHODOXY AS SOFT POWER

The UOJ’s derision of Anglicanism, particularly its most faithful and Orthodox-aligned expressions, is the spiritual colonialism of triumphalist ecclesial imperialists. Rather than engaging with the Continuing Anglican movement, comprising bodies like the APA, ACA, and Diocese of the Holy Cross, as serious interlocutors or potential brothers, these propagandists dismiss the English Patrimony as heretical, graceless, and non-Christian. This is not Orthodoxy but Pharisaism, clinging to a narrow legalism that ignores the spirit of the Fathers and the canonical precedents and authority of the Ancient Church. As St. Paul writes, "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life" (2 Corinthians 3:6).

Historically, the East did not erase the cultures it received, such as the Slavs, but baptized and elevated their language, music, and traditions. The ancient Western Church was never anathematized, even though it was culturally foreign to the East and had its own culture and modality. Yet, in today’s climate of geopolitical paranoia and spiritual confusion, Orthodox jurisdictions demand the obliteration of the English Christian mind and assimilation into a consensus that is the result of medieval accretion, rather than fidelity to the ancient Apostolic Deposit. They are not interested in reconciling Apostolic traditions through a careful study of history, but in conquest, exploiting moments of Anglican disunity to drive clergy and laity into their fold, stripped of their orders, liturgy, language, and canonical dignity. This is not recognition within the One, Holy, Apostolic and Catholic Church, but ritual humiliation for the subjugation and castration of a historical patrimony and the formation of an ecclesiastical tax base for old world patriarchates.

THE POLITICAL CONTEXT: MOSCOW’S PROXY MOUTHPIECE

The UOJ is not a mere religious media outlet but a propaganda organ of the Moscow Patriarchate, promoting the heretical ethno-theological ideology of Russkiy Mir (the so-called "Russian World" which is also sounds identical to "Holy Russia" in Old Church Slavonic), which claims Moscow as the "Third Rome," demanding submission from all Orthodox, and even all Christians around the world for salvific grace. It is the worst of Rome's medieval abuses, with none of its introspection and repentance. Condemned by Orthodox hierarchs worldwide, this ideology drives an ecclesiology rooted not in the Fathers but in the Kremlin's worldwide ambitions. The UOJ’s attack on Bishop Giffin, who resisted the APA’s absorption into the ACC’s rigid Anglo-Catholic structure, was a calculated intrusion from afar, unrelated to any direct engagement with the UOC. It aims to convince disaffected Anglicans that their sacraments and ministries are invalid, urging assimilation into a foreign rite and culture to bolster Orthodox superiority. It is a pattern that holds true, every time the Anglicans have a political upset, attempting to pick off the weak from the herd and feast upon those who fall prey to the propaganda.

This tactic mirrors a tragic pattern: Western Christians, fearing moral collapse, are lured by promises of safety, only to face conscription into foreign conflicts or cultural erasure. Consider the American father who moved his family to Russia, only to be drafted and sent to die in Ukraine, as canon fodder for regimes masquerading as the Kingdom of God. The UOJ does not care about Anglicanism’s internal struggles; it seeks to claim souls, not for Christ, but for the latest iteration of the Byzantine empire.

HISTORICAL RESPECT FOR CONSERVATIVE ANGLICANISM

The Orthodox East once held a charitable view of Anglicanism, recognizing its Apostolic roots:

1) 1892 Concordat: The Patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem acknowledged the seriousness of Anglican orders, even commending limited joint prayer and sacramental fellowship. Russian and Greek Orthodox Bishops issued recommendations for their laity to receive sacraments in Anglican Churches if their own were not available. 

2) 1923 Pan-Orthodox Conference in Constantinople: Convened by Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios IV, it declared the Anglican Communion "not outside the Church."

3) 1936 Bucharest Agreement: The Church of Romania and the Church of England established mutual sacramental respect.

There are also many other Eastern Orthodox Patriarchal declarations on the validity and continuity of Anglican Orders (pre-Women’s Ordination), but under today’s rising ecclesial nationalism and Byzantine triumphalism, all that has been swept aside. Now, under the banner of a false and weaponized anti-ecumenism, Orthodoxy denies its own history of cooperation with the West. In doing so, it betrays the very Christian spirit that sustained the East through centuries of Turkish subjugation - sustained, we should note, in large part by Anglican support: diplomatic, financial, and spiritual. It was English missionaries, bishops, and sympathizers who helped sustain the Orthodox during their darkest centuries. Anglican voices pleaded their case in Parliament. Anglican bishops opened pulpits, translated texts, and protected persecuted Orthodox clergy. And what is the repayment for five hundred years of sponsorship, love, and tolerance? Mockery. Scorn. Erasure.

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES AND THE FATHERS CONDEMN THIS BEHAVIOR

The Fathers and Scripture rebuke the spirit behind these attacks:

St. Basil the Great, Epistle 188: “Should we not therefore be careful lest, in our desire to exact the full rigor of the rules, we ourselves become the cause of loss to many, cutting them off from salvation?”

St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium: “In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”

The Fathers knew the difference between rebellion and separation due to historical complexity, applying pastoral wisdom rather than rigid legalism. The Lord commands us to restore struggling churches “in the spirit of meekness” (Galatians 6:1), not to ridicule them. The UOJ’s scornful tone betrays pride and political ambition, not truth or meekness. This is the work of the flesh, puffed up with pride, lust, and desire for power, rather than meekness, love and the desire for the salvation of others.

THE APOSTOLIC MISSION OF THE ENGLISH PATRIMONY

The faithful among Continuing Anglican bodies (APA, ACA, DOHC, ACC, and many others), have preserved core elements of the Orthodox Faith at great cost:

Apostolic Succession

The Seven Sacraments

The Nicene Creed and Ecumenical Councils

Patristic Theology and Liturgical Orthodoxy

What they lack is not the grace of the Holy Spirit, but the recognition of Eastern Patriarchates. Conservative Anglicanism has produced saints, martyrs, and theologians whose writings echo the Fathers and stand within the tradition of the Unbroken and Undivided Church. Yet, the Orthodox mock these witnesses while ignoring their own divisions: rival patriarchates, the schism between Moscow and Istanbul, competing jurisdictions, political bishops, overlapping jurisdictions, nationalist propaganda, and monastic scandals. Our Church, the Ancient Church of the West, rejects both the chaos of modern Anglican pluralism (High vs. Low, Evangelical vs. Ritualist), and the self-hating servility that demands assimilation to Byzantine customs and late Medieval accretions as the hallmarks of grace-filled and true Christian life. We have returned to the ancient Western liturgy, the Divine Liturgy of Saint James, and to the Apostolic Constitutions rather than the 39 Articles, embodying an Orthodox and English, Apostolic and Western identity, that is not the result of anti-apostolic canonical fundamentalism or Protestant innovation, but of direct and faithful continuity with the Ancient Church within our own holy patrimony.

Eastern Orthodoxy today presents a monolithic identity, an illusion created by Theodore Balsamon's misrepresentation of the canons, backed as soft power by the Russian state, now projecting the heretical ideology of Russky Mir into global Christendom. This ideology is a direct challenge to every part of our theological anthropology and ecclesial formation. It demands submission, not conversion; silence, not collaboration; destruction, not dialogue. It must be truthfully addressed as such by those within the English Patrimony. We are no longer dealing with rigorist Eastern brethren, but with heretics bent on spreading a known and destructive heresy within the Church!

A CALL TO REPENTANCE

The Orthodox are not saved by their jurisdiction but by Jesus Christ and their faithfulness to the Gospel as it was once delivered unto the saints. Their unity should not require destroying the ancient and venerable English traditions, equal to or more ancient than their own inheritance. It should not require suppressing language, invalidating priests, or denying conciliar history of past recognition of a conservative and Apostolic Anglicanism. Such actions advance an empire, not the Church. Anglicans, too, must stand firm, recognizing their inheritance and grace, resisting the siren song of foreign altars built on the rubble of their own. The English Patrimony must re-dig its ancient Apostolic wells. It must push back from the precipice of complete and absolute annihilation that modernism represents, jettisoning liberalism, unbiblical interpretations, anti-apostolic attitudes, and the error of Women’s Ordination. Our Church, the Ancient Church of the West stands as a witness: there is a way that is Orthodox, English, Apostolic, and faithful. You do not have to compromise. You do not have to sell yourself into slavery and indentured servitude to Turkish or Slavic overlords.

To Orthodox brothers and sisters: repent of the scorn poured upon your Western brethren, those who loved you and protected you for hundreds of years during your subjugation to Islam. To Anglicans: do not be ashamed of your patrimony. The true Church is built not by mockery but by reconciled diversity, ancient and unaltered doctrines, and the unbroken laying on of hands, not by submission through obliteration.

COLLECT

O Lord Jesus Christ, Great High Priest and Shepherd of our souls, who didst plant Thy Church in every nation and tongue, and who didst sanctify both East and West through the witness of the Apostles: forgive us our pride, our mockery, and our imperial pretensions. Cleanse Thy Church from every spirit of division, rebuke the spirit of conquest masquerading as conciliarity, and deliver us from imperial heresies, political seduction, and cultural self-loathing. Raise up holy bishops, humble monks, faithful priests, and confessors who will restore the ruins of many generations. May Thy Holy Spirit breathe again upon the English-speaking Ancient, Apostolic, Orthodox Catholic Church, that she may stand in bold holiness, united not by erasure but by union in Thee; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.