Who Are the Western Orthodox?

In order to proclaim the Good News of the risen Christ, to teach and baptise in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, to “persevere in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2: 42), in our small way we take part in the life of the Orthodox Church in the West.

We claim as our own the spiritual legacy of the first-millennium Church of the West, which was one family, one faith, with the universal Orthodox-Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ, the Church whose spiritual and liturgical tradition would have been close to the hearts of the first-millennium saints of these islands who worked out their salvation here through this Western Orthodox spirituality: St Melangell, St Hilda, St Patrick, St Etheldreda (Audrey), St David, St Columcille (Columba), St Aidan, St Eanswythe, St Kentigern, St Bede, St Winefride, St Dunstan, and countless others.

We believe that it is fitting and right that people of Western heritage who are seeking the authentic Apostolic Faith and life in the Holy Trinity should not have to abandon their rich, western, spiritual heritage in favour of Greek, Russian, Syrian, and other forms of prayer and worship.  The western prayers, hymns, liturgies, Gregorian chants, patterns of fasting, and domestic spiritual customs that nourished the daily lives of prayer of the Christians in the British Isles and Western Europe of old have their origins in the Orthodox Church, and have begun to find their place there once more, once again united to and serving as expressions of the fullness of the Apostolic Tradition.

However, being Western in our Orthodox Faith isn’t solely about how we worship God.  We also seek to live our Orthodoxy in a way that is expressive of our culture, rather than importing practices and ways of operating that developed in other countries and which might not be the best method of restoring the unchanging Faith to the people of 21st-century Britain.

We are fully united as one with our brothers and sisters of the East in confessing the ancient Faith of the Holy and Ecumenical Councils of the Church, including the Council of Constantinople of 879/880, which reaffirms the Creed in its original form and condemns the heresy of papism, and those of 1341 and 1351, which confirm the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas on the Divine Light and the Uncreated Energies, as well as the whole doctrine and practice of Hesychasm.

Ever accepting and embracing as our own the true theology of these holy councils, we lament any unjust condemnations of people and divisions that might have arisen in the fiery heat of human passions.  We believe that there are no fundamental differences of faith between the Orthodox Churches.  For us, the unity of the Orthodox Church is defined not by a nationalistic, or cultural, or even liturgical insularity, or by the ever-changing political relationships between jurisdictions vying for power and geographical territory, but rather by her common faith and sacramental life in the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Following the example of the Undivided Church, while our faith involves adhering intellectually to truths to be believed, it moreover means experiencing the mysteries which the Church confesses.  At the heart of everything and above all there is Someone: the active Presence of the paschal Christ, dead and risen, Who gives life, energises, and gives meaning to every aspect of our daily lives.  This means clearly affirming the spiritual Way of transformation of the whole human person: body, soul, and spirit.

We recognise our own position in this powerful assertion by Father Alexander Schmemann:

‘The first Christians did not provide any programme, any theory, but wherever they went the seed of the Kingdom germinated, the flame started to burn, their whole being was a living torch of praise for the risen Christ; He and He alone was the sole happiness of their life, and the Church had no other aim than to make present in the world and in history the Joy of the Risen Christ, in whom all things have their beginning and their end. Without proclaiming this Joy, Christianity is incomprehensible!’

We wish to be the witnesses to this reality at the heart of human distress in a world searching for God, going as far as loving our enemies according to Christ’s command.