07 — The American Church and the Ecumenical Work

Meyendorff spent thirty-three years — his entire adult working life after 1959 — inside two overlapping institutions: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, where he taught from 1959 and was dean from 1984 to 1992, and the Orthodox Church in America, whose autocephaly he helped negotiate in 1970 and whose theological voice he largely was. Beyond both he served as chairman of the World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order from 1967. This section covers the churchman.

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

What This Section Covers

  • St. Vladimir’s and the OCA — the seminary, the deanship, the 1970 Tomos of Autocephaly, the editorships of St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly and of The Orthodox Church, and the vision of an indigenous, English-speaking American Orthodoxy.
  • The Ecumenical Engagement — Syndesmos, the World Council of Churches and Faith and Order, Orthodox–Catholic dialogue, and the criticism of all of it from traditionalist quarters (§4.2).

The Offices, Verified

From the seminary’s own record (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, “Protopresbyter John Meyendorff,” svots.edu), corroborated where noted:

  • Professor of Church History and Patristics, St. Vladimir’s Seminary, from 1959. Also seminary librarian and director of studies at different periods.
  • Dean, St. Vladimir’s Seminary, March 1984 – 30 June 1992 (corroborated at The OCA, which gives the deanship succession Florovsky → Schmemann (1962–1983) → Meyendorff (1984–1992) → Hopko (1992–2002)).
  • Professor of Byzantine History, Fordham University, from 1967; lecturer in Byzantine theology at Harvard; acting director of studies, Dumbarton Oaks, 1977; adjunct at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary.
  • Editor, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly (long-term); editor, The Orthodox Church (the OCA’s monthly newspaper), January 1965 – December 1984.
  • Chairman of the Department of External Affairs of the Orthodox Church in America; advisor to the Holy Synod; rector of Christ the Saviour Church, Manhattan, 1977–1984 (OrthodoxWiki, “John Meyendorff,” for the rectorship).
  • Chairman of the Commission on Faith and Order, World Council of Churches, from 1967; member of the WCC Central Committee. Co-founder and first general secretary of Syndesmos, the World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth, later its president.
  • President of the Orthodox Theological Society in America and of the American Patristic Association (later the North American Patristics Society).

[Disputed: the terminal year of the Faith and Order chairmanship. St. Vladimir's Seminary and OrthodoxWiki give 1967–1976; Wikipedia and the Scribner encyclopedia entry give 1967–1975. The discrepancy is probably the difference between the end of his term and the meeting at which a successor was seated. This collection gives "from 1967, to 1975 or 1976."]

Honors: honorary doctorates from the University of Notre Dame and from the General Theological Seminary; honorary membership of the Leningrad Theological Academy (1990); a Guggenheim Fellowship (1981); a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship (1976–77); the Order of St. Vladimir, 2nd Class, from Patriarch Aleksy II of Moscow (1991) (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, svots.edu).

See Also

References

  • St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. “Protopresbyter John Meyendorff.” svots.edu.
  • OrthodoxWiki. “John Meyendorff.” (Used to locate the rectorship of Christ the Saviour and the Syndesmos offices; corroborated against the seminary record.)
  • Aretakis, Jonathan G. “Meyendorff, John.” The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, via encyclopedia.com.