Reprinted from:
"For the Peace from Above: an Orthodox
Resource Book on War, Peace and Nationalism", edited
by Hildo Bos and Jim Forest (Syndesmos, 1999).
Want
to add a useful word to your
vocabulary? The term phyletism
from phyli:
race or tribe was coined at the
Holy and Great pan-Orthodox Synod that met in Istanbul (formerly
Constantinople) in 1872. The
meeting was prompted by the
creation of a separate bishopric
by the Bulgarian community of
Istanbul for parishes only open
to Bulgarians. It was the first
time in Church history that a
separate diocese was established
based on ethnic identity rather
than principles of Orthodoxy and
territory. Here is the Synod’s
official condemnation of
ecclesiastical racism, or “ethno-phyletism”,
as well as its theological
argumentation. It was issued on
the 10th of August 1872.
"We renounce, censure and condemn racism, that is racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds and dissensions within the Church of Christ, as contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the holy canons of our blessed fathers which “support the holy Church and the entire Christian world, embellish it and lead it to divine godliness.”
A section of the
report drawn up by the special
commission of the pan-Orthodox
Synod of Constantinople in 1872
reviewed the general principles
which guided the Synod in its
condemnation.
The
question of what basis racism -
that is, discriminating on the
basis of different racial
origins and language and the
claiming or exercising of
exclusive rights by persons or
groups of persons exclusively of
one country or group - can have in
secular states lies beyond the
scope of our inquiry. But in the
Christian Church, which is a
spiritual communion, predestined
by its Leader and Founder to
contain all nations in one
brotherhood in Christ, racism is
alien and quite unthinkable.
Indeed, if it is taken to mean
the formation of
special racial churches,
each accepting all the members
of its particular race,
excluding all aliens and
governed exclusively by pastors
of its own race, as its
adherents demand, racism is
unheard of and unprecedented.
All the Christian
churches founded in the early
years of the faith were local
and contained the Christians of
a specific town or a specific
locality,
without racial distinction.
They were thus usually named
after the town or the country,
not after the ethnic origin of
their people.
The Jerusalem
Church consisted of Jews and
proselytes from various nations.
The Churches of Antioch,
Alexandria, Ephesus, Rome and
all the others were composed of
Jews but mainly of gentiles.
Each of these churches formed
within itself an integral and
indivisible whole. Each
recognized as its Apostles the
Apostles of Christ, who were all
Jews. Each had a bishop
installed by these Apostles
without any racial
discrimination: this is evident
in the account of the founding
of the first Churches of God….
The same system
of establishing churches by
locality prevails even after the
Apostolic period, in the
provincial or diocesan churches
which were marked out on the
basis of the political
organization then prevailing, or
of other historical reasons. The
congregation of the faithful of
each of these churches consisted
of Christians of every race and
tongue….
Paradoxically, the Church of
Greece, Russia, Serbia, Moldavia and
so on, or
less properly
the "Russian Church", "Greek
Church", etc., mean autocephalous or
semi-independent churches within
autonomous or semi-independent
dominions, with fixed boundaries
identical with those of the secular
dominions, outside which they have
no ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
They were composed not on ethnic
grounds, but because of a particular
situation, and do not consist
entirely of one race or tongue.
The Orthodox Church has never known
racially-based churches… to coexist
within the same parish, town or
country…
If we examine
those canons on which the
Church’s government is
constructed, we find nowhere in
them any trace of racism. …
Similarly, the canons of the
local churches, when considering
the formation, union or division
of ecclesiastical groupings, put
forward political reasons or
ecclesiastical needs, never
racial claims…. From all this,
it is quite clear that racism
finds no recognition in the
government and sacred
legislation of the Church.
But the racial
principle also undermines the
sacred governmental system of
the Church…
In
a racially organized church, the
church of the local diocese has
no area proper to itself, but
the ethnic jurisdictions of the
supreme ecclesiastical
authorities are extended or
restricted depending on the ebb
and flow of peoples constantly
being moved or migrating in
groups or individually… If the
racial principal is followed, no
diocesan or patriarchal church,
no provincial or metropolitan
church, no episcopal church, not
even a simple parish, whether it
be the church of a village,
small town or a suburb, can
exist with its own proper place
or area, containing within it
all those of one faith. Is not
Christ thus divided, as He was
once among the Corinthians, by
those who say: “I am for Paul, I
am for Apollo, I am for Cephas”
(1 Cor. 1:12)? …
No
Ecumenical Council would find it
right or in the interests of
Christianity as a whole to admit
an ecclesiastical reform [whose
membership was based on ethnic
identity] to serve the ephemeral
idiosyncrasies of human passions
and base concerns, because,
apart from overthrowing the
legislative achievements of so
many senior Ecumenical Councils,
it implies other destructive
results, both manifest and
potential:
First
of all, it introduces a Judaic
exclusiveness, whereby the idea
of the race is seen a sine qua
non of a Christian, particularly
in the hierarchical structure.
Every non-Greek, for instance,
will thus be legally excluded
from what will be called the
Greek Church and hierarchy,
every non-Bulgarian from the
Bulgarian Church, and so on. As
a Jew, St. Paul, the Apostle of
the Gentiles, could only have
been a pastor in one nation, the
Jewish. Similarly, Saints Cyril
and Methodius, being of Greek
origin, would not have been
accepted among the Slavs. What a
loss this would have entailed
for the Church! …
Thus
the sacred and divine are
rendered entirely human, secular
interest is placed above
spiritual and religious concerns,
with each of the racial churches
looking after its own. The
doctrine of faith in “one Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church”
receives a mortal blow. If all
this occurs, as indeed it has,
racism is in open dispute and
contradiction with the spirit
and teaching of Christ.
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