Orthodox Church in America

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Orthodox Church in America ( Orthodox Church in America , OCA ) is the proper name of a in its understanding autocephalous church that the area of the United States , from Canada , like Mexico and Australia includes. In addition to it, there are bishoprics of other Orthodox churches in North America, such as the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Serbian Orthodox Church in the USA and Canada, the Antiochene Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America and others

history

The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) goes back to the work of Russian Orthodox missionaries around Hermann von Alaska in Alaska and the Aleutians in the late 18th century; in the late 19th century, Russian exile communities in California and on the east coast were added. In 1917, the October Revolution and the ensuing church persecution brought communication between the churches in North America and Russia to a standstill. In the early 1920s, Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow , who had previously been the head of the American Church himself , instructed all Russian Orthodox churches outside Russia to govern themselves until regular communication and travel relationships were restored.

Around the same time, larger parishes that had belonged to a single North American diocese organized themselves as independent dioceses and in some cases joined other mother churches. This led to the current situation, where the organizational areas of different Orthodox churches in North America - in contradiction to Orthodox canon law - overlap.

In the early 1960s, after the fall of Stalinism, the American Orthodox Church resumed full relations with the Patriarch of Moscow, and communion was confirmed in 1970. In April of the same year the Patriarch of Moscow signed a tomos , which granted the OCA autocephaly.

The OCA has an extremely difficult relationship, characterized by rivalry to cooperation, with the Russian Orthodox Church abroad , because both have their origins in Russia and the status of both churches has been or is controversial until recently.

present

In the past twenty years the OCA has set up a good 220 new parishes . It currently has a total of 12 dioceses , 623 parishes, missions and other institutions. Among them are 456 parishes.

The OCA has three spiritual seminars to train their priests: the Orthodox St. Tikhon Theological Seminary in South Canaan ( Pennsylvania ), the Seminar St. Herman on the island of Kodiak (Alaska) and Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York .

There are also 27 monasteries under the jurisdiction of the OCA, six of which are directly under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan .

The OCA was a member of the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops in America (SCOBA), along with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Antiochene Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, and other member churches. In 2010 the SCOBA was dissolved and replaced by the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America .

management

The head of the OCA bears the title "Archbishop of Washington and New York and Metropolitan of all America and Canada". The church has been led by Metropolitan Tikhon since 2012.

Ecclesiology

The autocephaly of the OCA is controversial between the other Orthodox churches. It is recognized by Moscow , but not by the Ecumenical Patriarchate .

Since, according to Orthodox doctrine, there can only be one autocephalous church in each area, which all Orthodox Christians living there must join, autocephaly was not recognized by the ecumenical patriarchy, because otherwise the Greek congregations in the USA would have dissolved and their members would have dissolved to join the Russian communities. The status of the American Church remains an unsolved problem in Orthodoxy to this day.

Ecumenism

The Church is a member of the United States National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches .

literature

Web links

Commons : Orthodox Church in America  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files