07 — Autocephaly and the American Church

Schmemann was a principal negotiator and the chief theological advocate of the 1970 grant by which the Russian “Metropolia” in North America became the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America. This section narrates the negotiations, sets out his argument, and reports the recognition dispute — unresolved to this day — with the both-sides discipline it requires.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (North American context) / Orthodox Church in America

The autocephaly is the one place where Schmemann’s theology became a canonical act. His conviction was that the multiplication of overlapping ethnic jurisdictions on one territory is not a regrettable accident but an ecclesiological impossibility — a denial in practice of what the Church confesses about herself — and that the remedy is a single local Church, in the language of the country, on the territory where the faithful actually live. He drafted the seven canonical presuppositions that both sides adopted in the negotiations, and he wrote the fullest theological defense of the result, “A Meaningful Storm: Some Reflections on Autocephaly, Tradition and Ecclesiology,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 15, nos. 1–2 (1971): 3–27.

It made him a partisan figure, and remains the reason he is read with suspicion in some quarters. The Tomos was signed at Moscow on 10 April 1970 by Patriarch Alexis I, seven days before his death. It was recognized by Russia, the Czech Lands and Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Georgia; protested by Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Greece, and Cyprus. The dispute is reported here without adjudication (METHODOLOGY §4.2).

Contents

File Description
The Road to Autocephaly The negotiations of 1963–1970, Schmemann’s part, and the argument he made
An American Orthodoxy and the Recognition Dispute The §4.2 treatment of recognition; the vision of a local American Church, and how far it was realized

See Also