An American Orthodoxy and the Recognition Dispute

The 1970 autocephaly was rejected by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and by ROCOR, and the recognition split it opened has never been resolved. This file reports that dispute non-partisanly (§4.2), naming the positions and their sources; it then sets out the larger vision the autocephaly was meant to serve — an English-speaking, non-ethnic American Orthodox Church — and assesses honestly how far that vision has been realized.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (North American context)

The Rejection

The Ecumenical Patriarchate rejected the grant. In a letter of 24 June 1970, Patriarch Athenagoras protested that Moscow had exceeded its authority — that “the granting of autocephaly is a right belonging to the Church as a whole, and cannot at all be considered a right of each Autocephalous Church,” and that the decision properly belonged to “a Synod representing more generally the entirety of the local Autocephalous Churches, and especially to an Ecumenical Synod.” He further charged Moscow with “usurping an authority not belonging to her, which is an act condemned by the holy canons” (Athenagoras to the Orthodox Church in America, 24 June 1970; primary document located via orthodoxhistory.org and set out in the repository at Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970)).

ROCOR’s rejection was sharper still, and on different grounds: that the Moscow Patriarchate, having submitted to the atheist regime, had forfeited its canonical voice, so that none of its acts possessed legal force; and that it was contrary to canonical order for a body that had been in schism from Moscow between 1933 and 1970 to be raised by that same Moscow directly to autocephaly. ROCOR remained out of communion with the OCA for decades (see Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970); Orthodoxy: ROCOR in America).

The Ecclesiological Question — Both Sides (§4.2)

Beneath the jurisdictional quarrel lies a genuine and unresolved ecclesiological dispute: how is autocephaly rightly granted? The collection sets out both positions and adjudicates neither.

The mother-church position — held by Moscow and by the OCA, and the one for which Schmemann drafted the canonical case — is that a mother Church may release a mature daughter to self-government on its own authority, with pan-Orthodox recognition to follow. On this view, autocephaly has historically arisen de facto and been recognized afterward, and no single see possesses a unilateral prerogative to confer or withhold it. The Moscow Patriarchate’s Position on the Problem of Primacy in the Universal Church (Holy Synod, 26 December 2013) holds that primacy at the universal level is a primacy of honor determined by the diptychs and not a primacy of power (see Orthodoxy: Autocephaly and Canonical Territory).

The Constantinople-prerogative position is that autocephaly, because it touches the whole Church, requires a pan-Orthodox or conciliar act, with the Ecumenical Throne exercising an indispensable coordinating role — so that a mother Church cannot confer it alone. Constantinople grounds this in its conciliar privileges and in its reading of Chalcedon canons 9, 17, and 28 (see Orthodoxy: Autocephaly and Canonical Territory, where the contested canons and both readings are set out in full).

Because no Ecumenical Council ever adjudicated between these readings, and because the pre-conciliar process at Chambésy reached agreement on the substance of a procedure but deadlocked over the manner of signing the Tomos — that is, over whose pen confers the grant — the Church has no agreed procedure and no agreed forum in which such disputes can be settled (Pre-Conciliar Commission, “Autocephaly and the Way in Which It Is to Be Proclaimed,” 1993; see Orthodoxy: Autocephaly and Canonical Territory).

This is why the 1970 case is not a closed historical episode. The same fault line reopened in 2018–2019, when the Ecumenical Patriarchate granted autocephaly to a new Orthodox Church of Ukraine and Moscow refused to recognize it — the mirror image of 1970, with the roles of grantor and objector reversed. Neither question has reached a pan-Orthodox resolution (see Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970); Orthodoxy: Ukraine and the Russian Church).

Where Recognition Stands

As of 2026, the churches that recognize the OCA’s autocephaly are Russia (the grantor), Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Those that do not recognize it include the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Alexandria, Greece, and Cyprus. The remaining churches are generally described as neither formally recognizing the autocephalous title nor opposing the OCA’s canonicity (OrthodoxWiki, “Responses to OCA autocephaly,” used as a locator; Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America, ch. 5; see Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970)).

[Disputed: the placement of a few churches in this list varies across sources. The repository's dedicated treatment of the Tomos places **Antioch, Jerusalem, Serbia, Romania, and Albania** among those neither recognizing nor opposing, while its jurisdiction profile of the OCA places **Jerusalem** among those opposing (compare [Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970)](../../orthodoxy/10-orthodoxy-in-america/history/tomos-of-autocephaly-1970.md) with [Orthodoxy: The Orthodox Church in America](../../orthodoxy/10-orthodoxy-in-america/jurisdictions/oca.md)). The divergence reflects genuine ambiguity in how non-recognition and formal opposition are distinguished in the sources; the figures given here should be treated as approximate, and readers wanting precision should consult the churches' own statements.]

The crucial point, and the one most often lost in polemic: even most non-recognizing churches treat the OCA as a fully canonical body and concelebrate with its clergy. The dispute is over the status of autocephaly, not over communion or over the Orthodoxy of the OCA’s faithful (Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America, ch. 5; see Orthodoxy: The Orthodox Church in America).

The Vision Behind the Grant

For Schmemann the autocephaly was never an end in itself. It was instrumental to a vision he had held since before he crossed the Atlantic and argued for the rest of his life: an Orthodox Church of America — one Church on one territory, English-speaking, not defined by any nation of origin, and understanding itself as a missionary body in a new land rather than as a diaspora preserving an old one (Schmemann, Church, World, Mission: Reflections on Orthodoxy in the West, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1979; see The Move to America and the Deanship).

The critique implicit in this is severe, and Schmemann made it explicit: an Orthodoxy that has become the religious expression of an ethnic identity has ceased to be catholic. Where the parish exists chiefly to preserve a language, a cuisine, and a memory, the Church has been made an instrument of something other than the Gospel — and the tendency has a name in Orthodox canonical language, ethnophyletism, condemned by the Synod of Constantinople in 1872 (see Orthodoxy: Autocephaly and Canonical Territory; Orthodoxy: Twentieth-Century Fragmentation).

The autocephaly was, on this reading, the canonical form of the eucharistic ecclesiology (see The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom). If the Church is realized where the faithful gather around the altar, then the Church in America is constituted by those who gather there — and the proper structure is one Church for that territory, not many parallel Churches sorted by ancestry.

How Far the Vision Was Realized

An honest assessment must say both things.

What was achieved is real. The OCA became the most thoroughly English-language of the major American jurisdictions and the direct heir of the Schmemann–Meyendorff aspiration to an American Orthodoxy not bound to a single ethnicity. Its eucharistic revival — frequent communion, vernacular worship, strong adult catechesis, and a mission-minded convert ministry — has made it, despite small numbers, a disproportionately influential voice in the formation of a native American Orthodoxy (see Orthodoxy: The Orthodox Church in America; Orthodoxy: English as a Liturgical Language). Its seminary formed clergy across jurisdictional lines, and the model of an English-speaking, convert-receiving American Orthodoxy has been widely adopted — not least by the Antiochian Archdiocese — by bodies that never accepted the OCA’s autocephaly.

What was not achieved is equally real, and Schmemann knew it before he died. The overlapping jurisdictions were not resolved. The other Orthodox bodies in America did not join the new Church; there are today more jurisdictions in North America, not fewer, and the OCA is one of them rather than the single local Church the Tomos envisaged. The autocephaly intended to end the anomaly became, in the judgment of its critics, one more jurisdiction and one more disputed status. The OCA’s own membership has been modest and, by the census data, declining (see Orthodoxy: The Orthodox Church in America; Orthodoxy: Overlapping Jurisdictions).

Later efforts toward unity — the Ligonier meeting of 1994, at which nearly all the canonical bishops of North America declared that they were “not a diaspora,” and the present Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops — have carried the question forward without settling it (see Orthodoxy: Ligonier 1994).

The Cost, and a Quarrel

The autocephaly cost Schmemann something, and it should be recorded.

It made him a partisan figure. To Constantinople and its adherents he was the theologian of an irregular act; to ROCOR he was worse — the architect of a settlement with a Church they regarded as captive to the atheist state, at the very period when new martyrs were still being made (see Orthodoxy: ROCOR in America; The New Martyrs of Russia). The traditionalist critique of his liturgical theology and the traditionalist rejection of the autocephaly are, in practice, hard to separate: the polemical literature of 1970 attacks both at once (see The Liturgiological and Traditionalist Critique).

It also cost him a friendship. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who had listened to his broadcasts for years with “spiritual delight,” turned on him publicly over precisely this question: his rejoinder of September 1977 in Вестник РХД no. 122 states that Schmemann’s reply “did not satisfy me and greatly distressed me,” because the question of the OCA’s autocephaly had been passed over entirely (Solzhenitsyn, rejoinder of September 1977, Вестник РХД no. 122, in Публицистика, vol. 2, solzhenitsyn.ru; see Radio Liberty and Solzhenitsyn).

That the most admired Russian writer of the age and the most admired Russian theologian in America should have fallen out over the canonical status of a small American Church is, in its way, the whole problem in miniature: the emigration could not agree on what it was for.

See Also

References

  • Athenagoras, Ecumenical Patriarch. Letter to the Orthodox Church in America, 24 June 1970. (Primary document located via orthodoxhistory.org, “1970 Letter from Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras on Autocephaly.”)
  • Tomos of Autocephaly (full text). Orthodox Church in America, oca.org/history-archives/tomos-of-autocephaly.
  • Erickson, John H. Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, ch. 5.
  • Moscow Patriarchate. “Position of the Moscow Patriarchate on the Problem of Primacy in the Universal Church.” Holy Synod, 26 December 2013, mospat.ru.
  • Pre-Conciliar Commission. “Autocephaly and the Way in Which It Is to Be Proclaimed.” Chambésy, 1993.
  • Schmemann, Alexander. Church, World, Mission: Reflections on Orthodoxy in the West. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979.
  • Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. Rejoinder of September 1977, Вестник РХД no. 122; in Публицистика, vol. 2, solzhenitsyn.ru.
  • “Responses to OCA autocephaly.” OrthodoxWiki. (Used to locate the primary statements and the recognition status; not as terminal citation.)
  • St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 15, nos. 1–2 (1971): symposium on autocephaly. (The early scholarly defense of the grant.)