Great Schism 2.0, or, 2018 - The Year Institutional Christendom Died
By Bp. Joseph Boyd (HCCAR)
Sept. 14th, 2018 - In 2013, as a toddler convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, I saw an ugliness that, at first, I tried hard to ignore. A “soft schism” between Hellenic and Slavic worlds settled into our daily lives as the reality of Orthodoxy in China. Both the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate claimed China as their exclusive canonical territory, and neither one would give in to the other, concelebrate with one another, or recognize the presence of the other, revealing the deep division that was already solidly in place by the time I came onto the scene. I wanted Eastern Orthodoxy to be the answer for Western apostasy, to be an easy alternative to the hard process of rebuilding faithfulness and piety one generation at a time, through persecution and marginalization over many centuries. The understanding that communion could exist on paper for apologetic reasons and not in reality was deeply devistating. It was an extremely difficult time, and o…
Sept. 14th, 2018 - In 2013, as a toddler convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, I saw an ugliness that, at first, I tried hard to ignore. A “soft schism” between Hellenic and Slavic worlds settled into our daily lives as the reality of Orthodoxy in China. Both the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate claimed China as their exclusive canonical territory, and neither one would give in to the other, concelebrate with one another, or recognize the presence of the other, revealing the deep division that was already solidly in place by the time I came onto the scene. I wanted Eastern Orthodoxy to be the answer for Western apostasy, to be an easy alternative to the hard process of rebuilding faithfulness and piety one generation at a time, through persecution and marginalization over many centuries. The understanding that communion could exist on paper for apologetic reasons and not in reality was deeply devistating. It was an extremely difficult time, and o…
