The Road to Autocephaly

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 file narrates the negotiations of 1963–1970 and his part in them, sets out the argument he made, and notes the providential conjunction of the autocephaly with the glorification of St. Herman of Alaska.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration) / Orthodox Church in America

The Situation to Be Resolved

The body that became the OCA descended from the Russian mission to North America, whose roots reach back to the Valaam mission to Alaska in 1794 and whose diocesan structure was built up under St. Tikhon (Bellavin) at the turn of the twentieth century. The 1917 Revolution severed the American diocese from a Moscow Patriarchate now under Soviet pressure; the American Church declared temporary self-government, and by the 1930s stood in formal canonical breach with Moscow. From 1933 to 1970 the “Metropolia” was effectively in schism from the Moscow Patriarchate, which it regarded as compromised by the atheist state (J. H. Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, ch. 5; OCA, “Road to Autocephaly, 1963–1970,” oca.org/history-archives; the full narrative is given in the repository at Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970)).

Around this canonical anomaly lay a second, larger one: North America contained a dozen overlapping Orthodox jurisdictions organized by nationality — an arrangement the canons never contemplated and which pan-Orthodox theology regards as irregular (see Orthodoxy: Twentieth-Century Fragmentation; Orthodoxy: Overlapping Jurisdictions).

Schmemann’s Reframing

The decisive contribution of Schmemann and Fr. John Meyendorff was to change the question. Where the Metropolia’s position had been argued for decades as a matter of emergency canonical provision — a temporary self-government forced by circumstances — they argued that Orthodoxy in America was no longer a diaspora at all: not an émigré outpost keeping vigil over a lost homeland, but a maturing local Church whose canonical destiny was a single, territorially defined, self-governing body. On that premise, autocephaly was not an expedient but the proper outcome (A. Schmemann, in Constance J. Tarasar, ed., Orthodox America 1794–1976: Development of the Orthodox Church in America, Syosset, NY: Department of History and Archives, OCA, 1975, containing his first-person account of the events; see Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970)).

This is a theological argument before it is a canonical one, and it is continuous with everything else Schmemann wrote. If the Church is realized in the eucharistic assembly gathered in a place, then the Church in America is the Church of America — constituted by the people who actually gather there, not by the nations from which their grandparents came. Ethnic jurisdiction, on this account, is not merely untidy; it is a category mistake about what the Church is (see The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom; An American Orthodoxy and the Recognition Dispute).

The Negotiations, 1963–1970

The thaw began in March 1963, when Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) of Leningrad — the Moscow Patriarchate’s chief of external relations and the principal Soviet-era architect of the rapprochement — made an unexpected visit to St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and Metropolitan Leonty instructed Schmemann to “receive them with love.” The possibility of autocephaly was first raised informally in August 1968 at the World Council of Churches assembly at Uppsala (OCA, “Road to Autocephaly, 1963–1970,” oca.org/history-archives).

Formal negotiations then moved quickly:

21 January 1969 (New York) — a first official meeting to set the agenda.
3 February 1969 (Syosset) — a four-point framework: termination of the jurisdictional anomaly, the granting of autocephaly, the transfer of properties (with St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City reserved to Moscow), and the securing of recognition.
24–25 August 1969 (Geneva) — Schmemann drafted a set of canonical presuppositions, arguing that “the growth of the Church in America into a native Church warrants its proclamation as an Autocephalous Church.”
26–27 November 1969 (Tokyo) — the status of the Orthodox Church in Japan and of the Moscow patriarchal parishes was settled.
31 March 1970 (Syosset) — the agreement was signed at the residence of Metropolitan Ireney (Bekish), reportedly just before midnight so as not to bear an April 1 date. The Metropolia’s negotiating committee was chaired by Archbishop Kiprian (Borisevich) of Philadelphia and included Schmemann, Meyendorff, and Fr. John Skvir.

(OCA, “Road to Autocephaly, 1963–1970,” oca.org/history-archives; A. Garklavs, “Reflections on Autocephaly,” Diocese of the Midwest; the sequence as set out in the repository at Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970).)

The Geneva drafting is the sentence to hold on to. Schmemann’s role was not that of a figurehead theologian lending prestige to a diplomatic transaction; he wrote the canonical case on which the grant was made.

The Tomos

The Tomos of Autocephaly bears the date 10 April 1970 and was signed by Patriarch Alexis I (Simansky) of Moscow with the members of the Holy Synod. It grants the former “Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America” full independence “with the right of electing her own Primate and all her bishops, without confirmation or the right of veto,” and “exclusive spiritual and canonical jurisdiction over all bishops, clerics and laymen of the Eastern Orthodox confession in continental North America, excluding Mexico, and including the State of Hawaii” (Tomos of Autocephaly, full text, oca.org/history-archives/tomos-of-autocephaly). The sealed Tomos was presented to the American delegation in Moscow on 18 May 1970 (OCA, “Account of the Reception of the Tomos,” oca.org/history-archives).

That Patriarch Alexis — among the last Russian bishops consecrated before the Revolution — set his hand to the document in the final days of his life has always been remembered as providentially fitting; he died within days, at the age of ninety-two. The exact reckoning is reported inconsistently across the sources, and the repository sets out the discrepancy in full at Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970), which readers should consult rather than this file for the documentary detail.

The grant carried explicit limits that remain canonically significant: the Orthodox Church in Japan was granted autonomy under Moscow rather than folded into the new American Church; parishes wishing to remain directly under Moscow were permitted to do so, continuing as the Patriarchal Parishes; and Mexico was excluded while Hawaii was included, so that the grant did not even claim the whole of North America (Tomos text, oca.org; see Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970)).

St. Herman, 1970

The same year carried a conjunction that the OCA has always read as theologically of a piece with the autocephaly. On 9 August 1970, at Holy Resurrection Cathedral on Kodiak Island, Alaska, Metropolitan Ireney presided over the glorification of St. Herman of Alaska (†1837) — the first saint of North America canonized by the Orthodox Church. ROCOR, despite rejecting the autocephaly, offered its own simultaneous glorification of St. Herman in San Francisco (OCA, “Days of Light and Joy: On the Canonization of St. Herman, August 7–10, 1970,” reflections of A. Schmemann, oca.org; see Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970); St. Herman of Alaska).

Schmemann himself wrote the account of those days, and the conjunction was for him the whole argument in an image: a native saint glorified in the year a native Church was born. It was not, on his reading, an accident of scheduling but a demonstration that the Church in America had a history, a holiness, and a sanctity of its own, and was therefore not a colony (Schmemann, “Days of Light and Joy,” 1970, oca.org).

There is a further fittingness he did not live to record: he died on 13 December 1983, the feast of St. Herman of Alaska (see The Move to America and the Deanship).

The Immediate Consequences

Two things followed at once, and both are treated in the companion file.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate rejected the grant, and a recognition dispute began that remains unresolved (see An American Orthodoxy and the Recognition Dispute; Orthodoxy: The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970)).

And Schmemann was elevated to protopresbyter in 1970, the year of the autocephaly he had done so much to secure (ru.wikipedia, “Шмеман, Александр Дмитриевич”; drevo-info.ru; see The Move to America and the Deanship).

References

Tomos of Autocephaly (full text). Orthodox Church in America, History and Archives, oca.org/history-archives/tomos-of-autocephaly.
“Road to Autocephaly, 1963–1970.” Orthodox Church in America, History and Archives, oca.org/history-archives/road-to-autocephaly-1963-1970. (The Nikodim visit of 1963; Uppsala 1968; the meetings of January, February, August, and November 1969; the Geneva drafting by Schmemann; the signing of 31 March 1970 and the negotiating committee.)
“Account of the Reception of the Tomos.” Orthodox Church in America, History and Archives, oca.org/history-archives.
Schmemann, Alexander. “Days of Light and Joy: On the Canonization of St. Herman, August 7–10, 1970.” Orthodox Church in America, Reflections, oca.org.
Tarasar, Constance J., ed. Orthodox America 1794–1976: Development of the Orthodox Church in America. Syosset, NY: Department of History and Archives, Orthodox Church in America, 1975. (Includes Schmemann’s first-person account of the autocephaly.)
Erickson, John H. Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Garklavs, Alexander. “Reflections on Autocephaly.” Diocese of the Midwest, domoca.org.