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Published by
The Times, London,
May 22, 2004
Old-time religion -
A star rises in the east
by Anthony Gardner
While the Church of England
struggles to hold on to its flock, a newcomer with
an ancient pedigree is packing them in - including
the Prince of Wales.
On a Saturday night last month, police were called
to control a crowd in the Knightsbridge area of
London. Fifteen hundred people were attempting to
squeeze into a building designed to hold half that
number, and some had started to faint in the
crush. Inside, a policeman reported, it was "like
an oven".
The occasion was not an illegal rave, but the
celebration of Easter Vespers [Midnight Liturgy
really] at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in
Ennismore Gardens. In the past 15 years, the
number of Orthodox worshippers in Britain has
increased from 170,000 to more than a quarter of a
million, making them far and away the
fastest-growing Christian denomination. Orthodox
churches - and half a dozen monasteries - can be
found from Truro to Dunblane. This is all the more
remarkable since Orthodoxy is not given to
evangelism, and is, in the words of a convert,
"absurdly divided, quarrelsome and
grudge-bearing".
A major factor has been the arrival of tens of
thousands of immigrants from Eastern Europe and
the former Soviet Union. But while the number of
converts is small by comparison, they have played
a disproportionately important role. The two most
influential clergyman in British Orthodoxy –
Bishop Kallistos Ware in the Greek Church, and
Bishop Basil Osborne in the Russian - were both
brought up as Protestants.
There are, moreover, a number of important figures
in the British Establishment who sympathise with
the faith without having converted. A focus for
these is the Friends of Mount Athos, which
supports the monasteries on Greece's "Holy
Mountain", and whose members include Sir Patrick
Leigh Fermor, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince
of Wales.
Prince Philip's involvement is not surprising,
given that he was brought up in the Greek Orthodox
Church. Less expected is Prince Charles's, as the
future head of the Church of England.
"Spiritually, he is very moved by Mount Athos,"
says a member of the society. "He visits it every
year for a week, and he is very much admired
there." The Prince has been influenced by Philip
Sherrard, a radical commentator on Orthodoxy and
ecology, who argued that Western Christianity had
devalued the environment by emphasising the
division between the spiritual and the physical.
The Prince is also intrigued by his
great-great-aunt Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of
Russia - a victim of the Revolution who was
canonised in 1993 - and has commissioned an icon
of her from Aidan Hart [a New Zealander], a former
Orthodox monk based in Shropshire. In addition, he
has had a requiem written for her by the most
eminent of Orthodox converts, John Tavener, who
has composed many works for the Church, and
created his own icon-filled chapel in Dorset.
To the uninitiated, the Orthodox church is
Byzantine in more senses than one, and unravelling
it requires a clear head and a good map of the
Middle East in the first millennium AD. The early
Christian church was organised into five
patriarchies, based in Antioch, Alexandria,
Jerusalem, Rome and Constantinople; but the first
three fell to Muslim invaders, and in 1054 the
Roman Church broke away in the Great Schism. This
left Constantinople as "first among equals" in the
Orthodox world, bolstered by the emergence of new
churches and patriarchies in Greece and Eastern
Europe. The churches in Britain are offshoots of
these, and all have their headquarters overseas:
the Russian in Moscow, the Greek in Istanbul, and
the Antiochian in Damascus.
The Greek Church has the largest presence here,
with 120 parishes. The Russian musters only 35,
but according to the author Victoria Clarke, an
expert on Orthodoxy, "it's trendier and more open
to converts than the Greek. If you go to Ennismore
Gardens on a Sunday morning, you'll find young
couples who have nothing to do with Russia."
What attracts them? The conservatism of Orthodoxy
is part of it: as Anglicans and Catholics agonise
over demands to modernise, many find reassurance
in a body which, in the words of Bishop Ware, "has
preserved the tradition and continuity of the
ancient church in its fullness".
This adherence to dogma is complemented by a
belief that the Western church relies too heavily
on human reason. Orthodox services, with their
lighting of candles, prostrations and kissing of
icons, are both more physical and more attuned to
the emotions. "Our liturgy has a beauty which
appeals to the whole person," says Father John
Hockway, an English-born priest based in Enfield.
"The singing, the incense, the way the church is
designed - everything is a manifestation of God
and our participation in His kingdom. It answers
a deep longing in the soul of man."
If the Church is reluctant to proselytise, it is
partly because it believes that the liturgy speaks
for itself. In addition, says one convert, "the
Orthodox are very conscious of being guests in
Britain, and worry about damaging their relations
with other churches". The most notable recent
conversions have been of about 30 Anglican
clergyman who rejected the ordination of women;
but according to one of them, Father Michael
Harper, neither the Greeks nor the Russians were
receptive. "We joined the Antiochian Church simply
because they opened their arms to us and the
others didn't."
The fact that Orthodox services are traditionally
held in unfamiliar languages - Church Slavonic,
Byzantine Greek, or Arabic - has been an obstacle
to converts. But this is now changing, and many
churches have introduced services which are either
partly or wholly in English.
The man most credited with bringing
English-speakers to Orthodoxy is Metropolitan (or
Archbishop) Anthony Bloom. A charismatic figure
who died last year, he is considered by many to
have been a saint. "I couldn't believe the number
of English people at his funeral," says Piers
Buxton, the former secretary of the Royal Academy,
who was among the mourners. "They
were scrambling over the headstones to try to get
closer." Among those giving orations was the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who has approved the
sharing of Anglican churches by Orthodox
congregations.
Inevitably, there are differences of opinion,
though not of doctrine, between the church's
different branches. But the most serious conflicts
often take place among those of the same
nationality. Bitterest of all has been that
between the "Red" Russians who accepted the Moscow
patriarchy even when it was manipulated by the
Communists, and the "Whites" who have given their
allegiance to a succession of exiled bishops.
Relations, however, are thawing. "There isn't the
feeling against the Moscow patriarchy that there
used to be," says one White, "because it's not so
riddled with KGB – though there are still a few of
them in there."
In his book The Inner Kingdom, Ware acknowledges
these problems, but argues that it is better to
bicker over unimportant things than to be - as the
Anglicans are - "united (for the most part) in
outward organisation, but deeply divided in their
beliefs and in their forms of public worship".
"The Orthodox Church," says one convert, "is full
of petty personal arguments. But at the heart of
it remains an unshakable belief that the world is
transformed by the celebration of the Eucharist.
It's quite common to find converts who have just
wandered into a service off the street and
thought, 'This is where I belong. I have come
home'."
Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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