Anglicans and Orthodox Have History of Cooperation
Episcopal News Service. February 21, 1992 [92045]
J. Robert Wright
Anglican encounters with the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity seem to extend back as far as the very first archbishop of Canterbury, St. Augustine, who arrived in England in the late sixth century bearing as his standard an image of Christ "painted on a board," what we might call today an icon. Over the succeeding centuries Anglican contacts with the Orthodox have been many and varied.
The Episcopal Church opened a new era of Anglican relations with the Eastern churches in 1862 when the General Convention established the "Russo-Greek Committee" for the purpose of seeking fresh contacts with and information about the Orthodox. An official delegation was sent to Moscow, theological memoranda were published, and regular reports offered to successive General Conventions.
The Episcopal Church was the first member of the Anglican Communion to take a step so direct and official.
In March 1865 Episcopalians provided the use of a chapel for what was most likely the first public celebration of the Orthodox liturgy in New York. The Episcopal chapel is now the Serbian Cathedral of St. Sava.
In 1905 Archbishop Tikhon of North America and the Aleutian Islands -- an early Orthodox leader in mission, education, and ecumenism -- was given an honorary doctorate from Nashotah House. Following the Russian Revolution, Tikhon reestablished the Moscow Patriarchate and in 1989 was canonized a saint.
Official theological conversations between Anglicans and the Orthodox have accelerated in the last few decades. An official theological consultation was established in the United States in 1962 and an international doctrinal commission in 1966. The last three presiding bishops have made official visits to the Russian church, and the Orthodox have sent delegations in 1963, 1979, and 1990. St. Sergius, patron saint of Russia and the founder of the monastery of the Holy Trinity in what was Zagorsk, is now commemorated in the new liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer.