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Bishop Allin Meets Church Leaders in Russia and Armenia

Episcopal News Service. August 5, 1977 [77258]

The Rev. Richard J. Anderson

MOSCOW, U.S.S.R. -- Freedom of religion and rights of believers, the ordination of women to the priesthood and the "filioque" clause in the Nicene Creed were among topics discussed during an eight-day visit by the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop John M. Allin to church leaders in the Soviet Union in July.

The conversations were held in Moscow and in Armenia against the background of fears that the Russian Orthodox Church would cease all ecumenical talks with Anglicans due to the growing acceptance of women in to the priesthood of the Anglican Communion. Leading bishops and theologians of the Russian Orthodox Church participated in the discussions.

The Presiding Bishop was accompanied by Dr. Peter Day and the Rev. William Norgren, ecumenical officers on the Episcopal Church Center staff, and by Dr. Paul Anderson of Black Mountain, N. C., long-time authority on Russian Christianity.

The Episcopalians told the Russians that questions about religious freedom in the Soviet Union were being asked in the United States, but agreed that the discussion should not be limited to conditions in the U. S. S. R.

Bishop Kyrill, rector of the Leningrad Theological Academy, said U. S. and U. S. S. R. church leaders "should not remain silent on the question of human rights."

"It is often true that such humanitarian problems are used for political aims," said the theologian. "Many here see the U. S. concern for human rights as political. If we want to contribute to this question, nobody should think that while putting such questions we are in the line of some government for whom it is useful to have such questions raised."

Dr. Alexy S. Bouevsky, secretary of the Department of Interchurch Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, offered a lengthy testimonial to the freedom allowed his church under the Soviet constitution.

"Our task is to affirm the normal progress of our church life," he said. "According to law, our government cannot interfere in the life of our church because the church has its own laws."

He added that the state provides the church with "all the materials necessary for the production of church articles."

"In my view," claimed Dr. Bouevsky, "the state does its best to insure the normal life of our church."

His presentation evoked some hard questions from the American visitors. Dr. Anderson asked about the possibility of religious education of children, an indirect reference to the Russian law against religious propaganda that makes church schools an impossibility. He also asked about individual expressions of Christianity in public life, noting the absence of any information about the church in the Russian press.

Presiding Bishop Allin explained the Episcopal Church's decision to permit women to serve as priests and bishops.

"Can God today call women to be priests?" was a question put before the Russians by the Presiding Bishop. "The Episcopal Church is divided on this question," he said. "The Episcopal Church found no progress was being made through argument. So permission was given by our General Convention for the church to test by experiment that which could not be settled by argument. It was an effort to proceed in faith. It does not suggest that the Episcopal Church is correct and that other churches are wrong."

Professor A. I. Osopov of the Moscow Theological Academy replied that "women in the priesthood is out of the question for the Orthodox Church. Priesthood is more than pastoral. It is a sacrament of special vocation. It cannot be a social development. No human condition can change it," added the professor.

Bishop Kyrill said "women's ordination is not a problem of social or anthropological interpretation of the Gospel. For us, we can say with all sincerity that women's ordination is not an experiment in church practice. It is a heresy. "

Metropolitan Juvenaly, head of the Department of External Church Affairs for the Moscow Patriarchate, said that though some Russian Orthodox would like to cease ecumenical conversations with Anglicans because of the women's ordination issue, he thought such talks would continue.

"We have not agreed to stop dialogue," he said. "The Russian Orthodox Church does not want to take a step back, but to face the difficulties."

The Americans and Russians also discussed the "filioque" in the Creed as it is used in the western Church. This was the addition of the words "and the Son" after "proceeding from the Father" to the ancient Creed of the Ecumenical Councils. The Orthodox object to it as a unilateral addition to the Creed and the possibility of its interpretation in a heretical sense. It had been omitted in the modern English version of the Creed in the Draft Proposed Book of Common Prayer, but was put back in by action of the House of Deputies at the 1976 General Convention.

The Orthodox were disappointed when the Convention decided to return the clause to the creedal text; they have been trying for centuries to get western churches to drop it. Bishop Allin assured them that the matter was not settled "in finality" and noted that the House of Bishops had voted in favor of the Orthodox position.

The formal conversations were part of a busy schedule that took the American delegation into monasteries, banquet halls, and liturgies -- and still left some time for sight-seeing in Moscow's Kremlin.

A two-day trip to Etchmiadzin in Soviet Armenia included theological discussions similar to those with the Russian Orthodox and also sight-seeing in the land which first made Christianity its official religion in 301 A. D. Churches carved out of the insides of mountains and a pagan temple dated about the third century A. D. were of special interest, together with Mount Ararat, traditional site of grounding of Noah's ark, and a magnificent modern shrine in honor of the Armenians massacred in 1913 by the Turks.

Representatives of the Armenian Apostolic Church agreed with the Russian Orthodox position on women's ordination, though the only (and very slight) hint that there might someday be a change of thinking came from an Armenian lay theologian.

Professor Barkev Shahbazian, a Biblical scholar, said that Armenians have not yet attained the level of social development of the United States.

"If we reach that, we may one day take a different view (of ordination of women)," he said.

Both Patriarch Pimen of the Russian Orthodox Church and Catholicosn Vasken I, Patriarch of all Armenians, received the Americans in private audience. There was an exchange of pectoral crosses between Bishop Allin and both prelates, and copies of the Proposed Book of Common Prayer were presented to other Russian church leaders.

At the conclusion of the visit, Bishop Allin said he thought the conversations have helped to "improve the understanding of our decision to ordain women to the priesthood" by the Russian Orthodox. The Presiding Bishop admitted, however, that he thinks the Orthodox position on the subject will not readily change. He also said that he thinks sacramental unity between Anglicans and the Orthodox is far distant in the future, though he said it remains an important goal to pursue.

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