Eastern Mission Efforts, prelude to autocephaly

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CHAPTER 3 – THE MISSIONS, UNITING THE CHURCH

EASTERN MISSION EFFORTS, PRELUDE TO AUTOCEPHALY

This chapter will present the missionary context in the Eastern Churches’ development of autocephaly. The first Church making a declaration of self-governance was in Russia. The political situation in Russia was unique and its isolation lent itself to considering independent self-rule. The mission expansion of Christianity into Russia was unlike that which occurred into Africa, Asia or the Americas.
Unlike the Apostolic Churches in Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch, the Russian Church never fell into Muslim control. Missionaries into Russian territories enjoyed a more friendly reception (though there were significant difficulties). This was different than what happened in the Americas and Asia where missionaries were not welcomed from the start.
The impact of Islam cannot be underestimated in Church history. In 630, Islam began to spread with the Prophet Muhammad’s entry into Mecca. It had a distinct advantage over Christianity at the time. Christianity had suffered from many schisms from its very beginning (1 COR 1:10). Councils of the Church addressed heresies and made divisions within Christian communities with their declarations of orthodoxy. Islam had a religious problem with the Christian understanding of the divinity of Jesus. There would be no compromise on this dogma for the Islamic faith. This, among other matters, set Islam and Christianity on a path of violent confrontations. Despite some issues of governance, Islam was at first a united religion (as Christianity was in its early days). This helped Islam grow quickly and have a far-reaching military power that Christians did not have until the Crusades.
Islam’s first foothold into Christian territory was in North Africa. North Africa already had a long history of Christianity. Aside from Israel, North Africa is the most Ancient of Christian lands (Eusebius, 1965, p. 50). Jesus had walked as a young boy in Egypt (Matthew 3:19) and it is understood that the Apostle Mark brought the Gospel to the continent and established the Church of Alexandria. Alexandria was declared one of the five early centers of Christianity. Alexandria was to be the foundation of the Coptic Christian Church. It was also the first to fall to the Muslims in 639 [loc 1344] (Meinhardus, 1999). Already separated from the other Christian Churches after the Council of Chalcedon in 450 because of its monophysitic theology, it was not recognized by the other churches and left on its own. While the conquering ‘sel seemed tolerant at first, he eventually started a heavy taxation on Christians which became intolerable. While Christians were not allowed into the Ottoman army, they did enjoy its military protection. The Amir thought it was only appropriate to tax the Christians in lieu of military service. Rather than pay the tax and suffer social persecutions, many converted to Islam. This attrition exacerbated the situation for the Christians in Northern Africa. Not only were they no longer free to practice their religion openly, as their numbers declined, the amount of tax that they had to pay increased in order to sustain the same gross amount each year. Several Coptic uprisings were put down and many churches were destroyed. This further subjugated the Church with many losing all enthusiasm for Christianity. Missionary efforts were halted. The remainder of Africa would not become missionary territory for the Coptic Church for another thousand years [loc 1345, 1349, 1352, 1360] (Meinardus, 1999).
In 1046, the Coptic Patriarchy was moved from Alexandria to Cairo where it remains today. Knowing its schismatic status, the Coptic Church did not appeal to the other churches for help during troubled times. Rather it accepted its fate and held on by the smallest of hope [loc 1363] (Meinhardus, 1999).

Western mission efforts

The missionary efforts in Europe differed from that of Russia in many ways. The Latin language was promulgated in religious and academic matters. There was little attempt at first to enculturate as the legacy of Rome was still a treasured memory. Later, after the fall of Constantinople, the Byzantium refugees sparked the Renaissance that reignited the primacy of classic Roman culture. In 711, Islam made a significant inroad into Europe at the battle of Guadalete in Spain (Macnab, 1999, p. 23). However, Islam failed to overcome most of Western and Northern Europe leaving major portions of the continent to develop into Christendom during the Middle Ages. Christian mission efforts into Europe reached the far North (Norway) around the year 1000 and were dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant divisions in the Roman Catholic Church did not appear until after the Muslims were expelled from Spain. The political calm that followed allowed for unbridled internal dissidence spurred on by economic and political interests. The opening of the Americas gave completely new territories for the heretical to live unfettered and the unscrupulous to exploit. The Catholic Reformation and the Protestant movement arose in the absence of a Muslim presence.

 Mission efforts into Russia

The early missionary work in the East had the distinctions of generating vernacular worship liturgies, the development of an indigenous clergy and some degree of self- governance in the context of a patristic ecclesial structure. There was also the overt effort to appreciate local cultures and the absence of colonialism (Stamoolis, 2001, pp. 21-22). There is little comprehensive material on the Eastern Orthodox mission efforts from the Fall of Constantinople up to the present day (Stamoolis, 2001, p. 19). This is not because the Orthodox were disinterested in spreading the Gospel. Rather, the occupation of the Ottomans brought a repression of Christians throughout the East. There was little aid from the West for the Eastern Orthodox. The West was preoccupied with local wars and exploring the New World. The “Age of Discovery” in the West was a major distraction for all Europeans. The sheer size of the Americas would preoccupy Westerners. The West did not really notice the East until the creation of the powerful Soviet nation after World War II.
The heavy taxation of Christians by the Ottoman Empire also depleted funds for missionary work. Restrictions on building new churches made establishing new places of worship for converts extremely difficult in the East. The bright spot in the development of Christianity after 1453 in the East is Russia. Remote from the Muslim oppression, the Russian Church was able to build on the pillars of Byzantine enculturation, the growth of local clergy and a degree of self-governance imbued by the first missionaries. The wholehearted conversion of Vladimir had a lasting effect. Religious experts from Constantinople were welcomed and sponsored. Relics, sacred vessels and icons were imported into Russia. As with the Roman Church, the Orthodox based themselves on the Scriptures and were in harmony with the Sacred Traditions of the Church. Under these conditions, Christianity flourished in Russia.
Eastern Christianity did not have schismatic reformers during the 14th and 15th centuries. While there were many abuses in the Russian Church, these were handled by an intervention of the state, as had been the tradition in the Byzantine Church in Constantinople (Stamoolis, 2001, p. 27). Under the reforms of Peter the Great (1682 – 1725), early mission monasteries were put under government control. Imperial leadership removed the impetus for secular protests that had overtaken the Western Church. However, it also limited the mission efforts of the Church in the East (Stamoolis, 2001, p. 28). There were a few mission exploits that did occur. However, those that did take place yielded exceptional results. The mission efforts to the Altai ranges, led by Macarius Gloukharev in 1828 proved successful after he abandoned verbally preaching the Scriptures. When he became a servant to their material needs, especially in medicine and general hygiene, the people became receptive first to the Liturgy and then to the Gospel as embodied in the Eastern Church (Stamoolis, 2001, p. 31).
Macarius Gloukharev is noteworthy in that he reignited mission efforts in the East and is considered the first to develop an Orthodox theory of missions (Stamoolis, 2001, p. 50). He was innovative in having women involved in his missions and approached church planting in an ecumenical way.73 His Hesychist experience allowed him to focus on Orthodox spirituality without distractions from his all-encompassing ministry (Stamoolis, 2001, p. 31).
Christian missionary campaigns are often a call to unify desperate Christian groups to combine resources, then go forth and spread the Good News. The call to missionary effort was often seen as the coalescence of logistics and a strengthening of purpose that required unity. Before the World Council of Churches (founded in 1948), there was no effective organizing mechanism to bring about a comprehensive unity of effort in the Protestant and
73 Macarius Gloukharev worked on common worship centers that included Quakers and other non-Orthodox [page 31, note 52] (Stamoolis, 2001). non-Protestant Christian missions. Unity was seen as the best of effective mission efforts, especially concerning providing material support. Spiritual and theological unity was not needed for the humanitarian efforts of Churches (Stamoolis, 2001, p. 109).
In the West, there was the growing missionary theme of bringing justice to the poor along with material aid. The Roman Catholics built on this simple concept of justice and found inspiration in the Scriptures for uniting their efforts to feed the hungry (Matthew 14:16). In this synthesis of justice and charity, the presence of the Church in mission territories can also be seen as the manifestation of the Kingdom of God (Stamoolis, 2001, p. 111). In this way, missions resulted in a continued unity of the Church even as its geographic presence increased. The Church is the singular manifestation designated by Jesus in the teaching commission (Matthew 28:19-20) to bring the Good News to all. The mission effort in this understanding continues to be a witness to the power of salvific acts, in the context of the Church’s actions and not in only words (1 Timothy 1:1:5).

1 Chapter 1 – A Critical Historical Survey, revealing what it is to be Church
1.1 Early Admonitions
1.2 Early Schisms
1.3 Councils of Unity
1.4 Effects of Heresies
1.5 Trent to Today
2 Chapter 2 – Cause and Effect, a history of being one Church
2.1 Deeper causes
2.2 Social and political influences
2.3 Ecclesial accommodations
2.4 Dynamics of time
3 Chapter 3 – The Missions, uniting the Church
3.1 Eastern Mission Efforts, prelude to autocephaly
3.2 Many People, One Faith, the Five Churches
3.3 Many Heresies, one faith remains
4 Chapter 4 – Context of Ecclesial Ontology
4.1 Many Churches Among Many Nations
4.2 Western Christendom
4.3 Moscow as the Third Rome
4.4 Independent Reunions, new relations
4.4.1 Independent reunions
5 Chapter 5 – Conclusion
6 Bibliography
7 ADDENDUM
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