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Eastern Orthodoxy, official name Orthodox Catholic Church, one of the three major doctrinal and jurisdictional groups of Christianity. It is characterized by its continuity with the apostolic church, its liturgy, and its territorial churches. Its adherents live mainly in the Balkans, the Middle East, and former Soviet countries.
Nature and significance
Eastern Orthodoxy is the large body of Christians who follow the faith and practices that were defined by the first seven ecumenical councils. The word orthodox ("right believing") has traditionally been used in the Greek-speaking Christian world to designate communities or individuals who preserved the true faith (as defined by those councils), as opposed to those who were declared heretical. The official designation of the church in Eastern Orthodox liturgical or canonical texts is "the Orthodox Catholic Church." Because of the historical links of Eastern Orthodoxy with the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium (Constantinople), however, in English usage it is referred to as the "Eastern" or "Greek Orthodox" Church. These terms are sometimes misleading, especially when applied to Russian or Slavic churches and to the Orthodox communities in western Europe and America.
It should also be noted that the Eastern Orthodox Church constitutes a separate tradition from the churches of the so-called Oriental Orthodox Communion, now including the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church, the Eritrean Tewahedo Orthodox Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Syriac Orthodox Partriarchate of Antioch and All the East, and the Malankara Orthodox Church of India. From the time of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to the late 20th century, the Oriental Orthodox churches were out of communion with the Roman Catholic Church and later the Eastern Orthodox Church because of a perceived difference in doctrine regarding the divine and human natures of Jesus. This changed in the 1950s, when both churches independently began dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox churches and resolved many of the ancient Christological disputes.
The cultural context
The Schism of 1054 between the churches of the East and the West was the culmination of a gradual process of estrangement that began in the first centuries of the Christian era and continued through the Middle Ages. Linguistic and cultural differences, as well as political events, contributed to the estrangement. From the 4th to the 11th century, Constantinople (now Istanbul), the centre of Eastern Christianity, was also the capital of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, while Rome, after the barbarian invasions, fell under the influence of the Holy Roman Empire of the West, a political rival. In the West theology remained under the influence of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), while in the East doctrinal thought was shaped by the Greek Fathers. Theological differences could have been settled if the two areas had not simultaneously developed different concepts of church authority. The growth of Roman primacy, based on the concept of the apostolic origin of the church of Rome, was incompatible with the Eastern idea that the importance of certain local churches—Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and, later, Constantinople—could be determined only by their numerical and political significance. For the East, the highest authority in settling doctrinal disputes was the ecumenical council.
At the time of the Schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople, the membership of the Eastern Orthodox Church was spread throughout the Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia, with its centre in Constantinople, which was also called "New Rome." The vicissitudes of history have greatly modified the internal structures of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but even today the bulk of its members live in the same geographic areas. Missionary expansion toward Asia and emigration toward the West, however, have helped to maintain the importance of Orthodoxy worldwide.
The norm of church organization
The Orthodox church is a fellowship of "autocephalous" churches (canonically and administratively independent), with the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople holding titular or honorary primacy. The number of autocephalous churches has varied in history. In the early 21st century there were many: the Church of Constantinople (Istanbul), the Church of Alexandria (Africa), the Church of Antioch (with headquarters in Damascus, Syria), and the churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Albania, Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics, and America.
There are also "autonomous" churches (retaining a token canonical dependence upon a mother see) in Crete, Finland, and Japan. The first nine autocephalous churches are headed by "patriarchs," the others by archbishops or metropolitans. These titles are strictly honorary.
The order of precedence in which the autocephalous churches are listed does not reflect their actual influence or numerical importance. The patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, for example, present only shadows of their past glory. Yet there remains a consensus that Constantinople's primacy of honour, recognized by the ancient canons because it was the capital of the ancient empire, should remain as a symbol and tool of church unity and cooperation. The modern pan-Orthodox conferences were thus convoked by the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. Several of the autocephalous churches are de facto national churches, the Russian church being by far the largest. However, it is not the criterion of nationality but rather the territorial principle that is the norm of organization in the Orthodox church.
Since the Russian Revolution there has been much turmoil and administrative conflict within the Orthodox church. In western Europe and in the Americas, in particular, overlapping jurisdictions have been set up, and political passions have led to the formation of ecclesiastical organizations without clear canonical status. Although it has provoked controversy, the establishment of the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America (1970) by the patriarch of Moscow has as its stated goal the resumption of normal territorial unity in the Western Hemisphere. In October 2018 the Russian Orthodox Church severed its ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople after the latter approved the independence of an autocephalous church of Ukraine; Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch, formally recognized the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from the Russian Orthodox Church in January 2019.
The church of imperial Byzantium
Byzantine Christianity about 1000 ce
At the beginning of the 2nd millennium of Christian history, the church of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, was at the peak of its world influence and power. Neither Rome, which had become a provincial town and its church an instrument in the hands of political interests, nor Europe under the Carolingian and Ottonian dynasties could really compete with Byzantium as centres of Christian civilization. The Byzantine emperors of the Macedonian dynasty had extended the frontiers of the empire from Mesopotamia to Naples (in Italy) and from the Danube River (in central Europe) to Palestine. The church of Constantinople not only enjoyed a parallel expansion but also extended its missionary penetration, much beyond the political frontiers of the empire, to Russia and the Caucasus.
Relations between church and state
The ideology that had prevailed since Constantine (4th century) and Justinian I (6th century)—according to which there was to be only one universal Christian society, the oikoumenē, led jointly by the empire and the church—was still the ideology of the Byzantine emperors. The authority of the patriarch of Constantinople was motivated in a formal fashion by the fact that he was the bishop of the "New Rome," where the emperor and the senate also resided (canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon, 451). He held the title of "ecumenical patriarch," which pointed to his political role in the empire. Technically, he occupied the second rank—after the bishop of Rome—in a hierarchy of five major primates, which also included the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. In practice, however, the latter three were deprived of all authority by the Arab conquest of the Middle East in the 7th century, and only the emerging Slavic churches attempted to challenge, at times, the position of Constantinople as the unique centre of Eastern Christendom.
The relations between state and church in Byzantium are often described by the term caesaropapism, which implies that the emperor was acting as the head of the church. The official texts, however, describe the emperor and the patriarch as a dyarchy (government with dual authority) and compare their functions to that of the soul and the body in a single organism. In practice, the emperor had the upper hand over much of church administration, though strong patriarchs could occasionally play a decisive role in politics: Nicholas I (byname Nicholas Mystikos; patriarch 901–907, 912–925) and Polyeuctus (patriarch 956–970) excommunicated emperors for uncanonical acts. In the area of faith and doctrine, the emperors could never impose their will when it contradicted the conscience of the church: this fact, shown in particular during the struggle over iconoclasm in the 8th and 9th centuries and during the numerous attempts at union with Rome during the late medieval period, proves that the notion of caesaropapism is not unreservedly applicable to Byzantium.
The Church of the Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, built by Justinian in the 6th century, was the centre of religious life in the Eastern Orthodox world. It was by far the largest and most splendid religious edifice in all of Christendom. According to The Russian Primary Chronicle (a work of history compiled in Kiev in the 12th century), the envoys of the Kievan prince Vladimir, who visited it in 987, reported: "We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere upon earth." Hagia Sophia, or the "great church," as it was also called, provided the pattern of the liturgical office, which was adopted throughout the Orthodox world. This adoption was generally spontaneous, and it was based upon the moral and cultural prestige of the imperial capital: the Orthodox church uses the 9th-century Byzantine rite.
Monastic and mission movements
Both in the capital and in other centres, the monastic movement continued to flourish as it was shaped during the early centuries of Christianity. The Constantinopolitan monastery of Studios was a community of more than 1,000 monks, dedicated to liturgical prayer, obedience, and asceticism. They frequently opposed both government and ecclesiastical officialdom, defending fundamental Christian principles against political compromises. The Studite Rule, providing guidelines for monastic life, was adopted by daughter monasteries, particularly the famous Monastery of the Caves (Kiev-Pechersk Lavra) in Kievan Rus (now in Ukraine). In 963 Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas offered his protection to St. Athanasius the Athonite, whose laura (large monastery) is still the centre of the monastic republic of Mount Athos (under the protection of Greece). The writings of St. Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022), abbot of the monastery of St. Mamas in Constantinople, are a most remarkable example of Eastern Christian mysticism, and they exercised a decisive influence on later developments of Orthodox spirituality.
Historically, the most significant event was the missionary expansion of Byzantine Christianity throughout eastern Europe. In the 9th century Bulgaria had become an Orthodox nation and under Tsar Symeon (893–927) established its own autocephalous (administratively independent) patriarchate in Preslav (now known as Veliki Preslav). Under Tsar Samuel (976–1014) another autocephalous Bulgarian centre appeared in Ohrid. Thus, a Slavic-speaking daughter church of Byzantium dominated the Balkan Peninsula. It lost its political and ecclesiastical independence after the conquests of the Byzantine emperor Basil II (976–1025), but the seed of a Slavic Orthodoxy had been solidly planted. In 988 the Kievan prince Vladimir embraced Byzantine Orthodoxy and married a sister of Emperor Basil. After that time Russia became an ecclesiastical province of the church of Byzantium, headed by a Greek or, less frequently, a Russian metropolitan appointed from Constantinople. This statute of dependence was not challenged by the Russians until 1448. During the entire period, Russia adopted and developed the spiritual, artistic, and social heritage of Byzantine civilization, which was received through intermediary Bulgarian translators.
Relations with the West
Relations with the Latin West, meanwhile, were becoming more ambiguous. On the one hand, the Byzantines considered the entire Western world as a part of the Roman oikoumenē, of which the Byzantine emperor was the head and in which the Roman bishop enjoyed honorary primacy. On the other hand, the Frankish and German emperors in Europe were challenging this nominal scheme, and the internal decadence of the Roman papacy was such that the powerful patriarch of Byzantium seldom took the trouble of entertaining any relations with it. From the time of Patriarch Photius (patriarch 858–867, 877–886), the Byzantines had formally condemned as heretical the Filioque clause; inserted into the Nicene Creed by Charlemagne's court theologians, the clause stated that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and from the Son. In 879–880 Photius and Pope John VIII had apparently settled the matter to Photius's satisfaction, but in 1014 the Filioque was introduced in Rome and communion was broken again.
The incident of 1054, wrongly considered as the date of schism (which had actually been developing over a period of time), was in fact an unsuccessful attempt at restoring relations, disintegrating as they were because of political competition in Italy between the Byzantines and the Germans and also because of disciplinary changes (enforced celibacy of the clergy, in particular) imposed by the reform movement that had been initiated by the monks of Cluny, France. The conciliatory efforts of Emperor Constantine Monomachus (reigned 1042–55) were powerless to overcome either the aggressive and uninformed attitudes of the Frankish clergy, who were now governing the Roman church, or the intransigence of Byzantine Patriarch Michael Cerularius (reigned 1043–58). When papal legates came to Constantinople in 1054, they found no common language with the patriarch. Both sides exchanged recriminations on points of doctrine and ritual and finally hurled anathemas of excommunication at each other, thus provoking what has been called the Schism of 1054.
Invasions from east and west
The Crusades
After the Battle of Manzikert (1071) in eastern Asia Minor, Byzantium lost most of Anatolia to the Turks and ceased to be a world power. Partly solicited by the Byzantines, the Crusades proved another disaster: they brought the establishment of Latin principalities on former imperial territories and the replacement of Eastern bishops by a Latin hierarchy. The culminating point was, of course, the sack of Constantinople itself in 1204, the enthronement of a Latin emperor on the Bosporus, and the installation of a Latin patriarch in Hagia Sophia. Meanwhile, the Balkan countries of Bulgaria and Serbia secured national emancipation with Western help, the Mongols sacked Kiev (1240), and Russia became a part of the Mongol empire of Genghis Khan. The Byzantine heritage survived this series of tragedies mainly because the Orthodox church showed an astonishing internal strength and a remarkable administrative flexibility.
Until the Crusades, and in spite of such incidents as the exchanges of anathemas between Michael Cerularius and the papal legates in 1054, Byzantine Christians did not consider the break with the West as a final schism. The prevailing opinion was that the break of communion with the West was due to a temporary takeover of the venerable Roman see by misinformed and uneducated German "barbarians" and that eventually the former unity of the Christian world under the one legitimate emperor—that of Constantinople—and the five patriarchates would be restored. This utopian scheme came to an end when the Crusaders replaced the Greek patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem with Latin prelates, after they had captured these ancient cities (1098–99). Instead of reestablishing Christian unity in the common struggle against Islam, the Crusades demonstrated how far apart Latins and Greeks really were from each other. When finally, in 1204, after a shameless sacking of the city, the Venetian Thomas Morosini was installed as patriarch of Constantinople and confirmed as such by Pope Innocent III, the Greeks realized the full seriousness of papal claims over the universal church: theological polemics and national hatreds were combined to tear the two churches further apart.
After the capture of Constantinople, the Orthodox patriarch John Camaterus fled to Bulgaria and died there in 1206. A successor, Michael Autorianus, was elected in Nicaea (1208), where he enjoyed the support of a restored Greek empire. Although he lived in exile, Michael Autorianus was recognized as the legitimate patriarch by the entire Orthodox world. He continued to administer the immense Russian metropolitanate. The Bulgarian church received from him—and not his Latin competitor—its right for ecclesiastical independence with a restored patriarchate in Trnovo (1235). It was also with the Byzantine government at Nicaea that the Orthodox Serbs negotiated the establishment of their own national church; their spiritual leader, St. Sava, was installed as autocephalous archbishop of Serbia in 1219.
The Mongol invasion
The invasion of Russia by the Mongols had disastrous effects on the future of Russian civilization, but the church survived, both as the only unified social organization and as the main bearer of the Byzantine heritage. The "metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia," who was appointed from Nicaea or from Constantinople, was a major political power, respected by the Mongol Khans. Exempt from taxes paid by the local princes to the Mongols and reporting only to his superior (the ecumenical patriarch), the head of the Russian church acquired an unprecedented moral prestige—though he had to abandon his cathedral see of Kiev, which had been devastated by the Mongols. He retained ecclesiastical control over immense territories from the Carpathian Mountains to the Volga River, over the newly created episcopal see of Sarai (near the Caspian Sea), which was the capital of the Mongols, as well as over the Western principalities of the former Kievan empire—even after they succeeded in winning independence (e.g., Galicia) or fell under the political control of Lithuania and Poland.
Attempts at ecclesiastical union and theological renaissance
In 1261 the Nicaean emperor Michael Palaeologus recaptured Constantinople from the Latins, and an Orthodox patriarch again occupied the see in Hagia Sophia. From 1261 to 1453 the Palaeologan dynasty presided over an empire that was embattled from every side, torn apart by civil wars, and gradually shrinking to the very limits of the imperial city itself. The church, meanwhile, kept much of its former prestige, exercising jurisdiction over a much greater territory, which included Russia as well as the distant Caucasus, parts of the Balkans, and the vast regions occupied by the Turks. Several patriarchs of this late period—e.g., Arsenius Autorianus (patriarch 1255–59, 1261–65), Athanasius I (patriarch 1289–93, 1303–10), John Calecas (patriarch 1334–47), and Philotheus Coccinus (patriarch 1353–54, 1364–76)—showed great independence from the imperial power, though remaining faithful to the ideal of the Byzantine oikoumenē.
Without the military backing of a strong empire, the patriarchate of Constantinople was, of course, unable to assert its jurisdiction over the churches of Bulgaria and Serbia, which had gained independence during the days of the Latin occupation. In 1346 the Serbian church even proclaimed itself a patriarchate; a short-lived protest by Constantinople ended with recognition in 1375. In Russia, Byzantine ecclesiastical diplomacy was involved in a violent civil strife. A fierce competition arose between the grand princes of Moscow and Lithuania, who both aspired to become leaders of a Russian state liberated from the Mongol yoke. The "metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia" was by now residing in Moscow and, as in the case of the metropolitan St. Alexis (1354–78), often played a directing role in the Muscovite government. The ecclesiastical support of Moscow by the church was decisive in the final victory of the Muscovites and had a pronounced impact on later Russian history. The dissatisfied western Russian principalities (which would later constitute Ukraine) could only obtain—with the strong support of their Polish and Lithuanian overlords—the temporary appointment of separate metropolitans in Galicia and Belorussia. Eventually, late in the 14th century, the metropolitan residing in Moscow again centralized ecclesiastical power in Russia.
Relations with the Western church
One of the major reasons behind this power struggle in the northern area of the Byzantine world was the problem of relations with the Western church. To most Byzantine churchmen, the young Muscovite principality appeared to be a safer bulwark of Orthodoxy than the Western-oriented princes who had submitted to Roman Catholic Poland and Lithuania. Also, an important political party in Byzantium itself favoured union with the West in the hope that a new Western Crusade might be made against the menacing Turks. The problem of ecclesiastical union was in fact the most burning issue during the entire Palaeologan period.
Emperor Michael Palaeologus (1259–82) had to face the aggressive ambition of the Sicilian Norman king Charles of Anjou, who dreamed of restoring the Latin empire in Constantinople. To gain the valuable support of the papacy against Charles, Michael sent a Latin-inspired confession of faith to Pope Gregory X, and his delegates accepted union with Rome at the Council of Lyons (1274). This capitulation before the West, sponsored by the emperor, won little support in the church. During his lifetime, Michael succeeded in imposing an Eastern Catholic patriarch, John Beccus, upon the church of Constantinople, but upon Michael's death an Orthodox council condemned the union (1285).
Throughout the 14th century, numerous other attempts at negotiating union were initiated by Byzantine emperors. Formal meetings were held in 1333, 1339, 1347, and 1355. In 1369 Emperor John V Palaeologus was personally converted to the Roman faith in Rome. All these attempts were initiated by the government and not by the church, for an obvious political reason—i.e., the hope for Western help against the Turks. But the attempts brought no results either on the ecclesiastical or on the political levels. The majority of Byzantine Orthodox churchmen were not opposed to the idea of union but considered that it could be brought about only through a formal ecumenical council at which East and West would meet on equal footing, as they had done in the early centuries of the church. The project of a council was promoted with particular consistency by John Cantacuzenus, who, after a brief reign as emperor (1347–54), became a monk but continued to exercise great influence on ecclesiastical and political events. The idea of an ecumenical council was initially rejected by the popes, but it was revived in the 15th century with the temporary triumph of conciliarist ideas (which advocated more power to councils and less to popes) in the West at the councils of Constance and Basel. Challenged with the possibility that the Greeks would unite with the conciliarists and not with Rome, Pope Eugenius IV called an ecumenical council of union in Ferrara, which later moved to Florence.
The Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–45) lasted for months and allowed for long theological debates. Emperor John VIII Palaeologus, Patriarch Joseph, and numerous bishops and theologians represented the Eastern church. They finally accepted most Roman positions—the Filioque clause, purgatory (an intermediate stage for the soul's purification between death and heaven), and the Roman primacy. Political desperation and the fear of facing the Turks again, without Western support, was the decisive factor that caused them to place their signatures of approval on the Decree of Union, also known as the Union of Florence (July 6, 1439). The metropolitan of Ephesus, Mark Eugenicus, alone refused to sign. Upon their return to Constantinople, most other delegates also renounced their acceptance of the council and no significant change occurred in the relations between the churches.
The official proclamation of the union in Hagia Sophia was postponed until December 12, 1452. However, on May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. Sultan Mehmed II transformed Hagia Sophia into an mosque, and the few partisans of the union fled to Italy.
Theological and monastic renaissance
Paradoxically, the pitiful history of Byzantium under the Palaeologan emperors coincided with an astonishing intellectual, spiritual, and artistic renaissance that influenced the entire Eastern Christian world. The renaissance was not without fierce controversy and polarization. In 1337 Barlaam the Calabrian, one of the representatives of Byzantine humanism, attacked the spiritual practices of the Hesychast (from the Greek word hēsychia, meaning "quiet") monks, who claimed that Christian asceticism and spirituality could lead to the vision of the "uncreated light" of God. Barlaam's position was upheld by several other theologians, including Akyndinus and Nicephorus Gregoras. After much debate, the church gave its support to the main spokesman of the monks, St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), who showed himself as one of the foremost theologians of medieval Byzantium. The councils of 1341, 1347, and 1351 adopted the theology of Palamas, and after 1347 the patriarchal throne was consistently occupied by his disciples. John VI Cantacuzenus, who, as emperor, presided over the council of 1351, gave his full support to the Hesychasts. His close friend, Nicholas Cabasilas, in his spiritual writings on the divine liturgy and the sacraments, defined the universal Christian significance of Palamite theology. The influence of the religious zealots, who triumphed in Constantinople, outlasted the empire itself and contributed to the perpetuation of Orthodox spirituality under Turkish rule. It also spread to the Slavic countries, especially Bulgaria and Russia. The monastic revival in northern Russia during the last half of the 14th century, which was associated with the name of St. Sergius of Radonezh, as well as the contemporaneous revival of iconography (e.g., the work of the great painter Andrey Rublyov), would have been unthinkable without constant contacts with Mount Athos, the centre of Hesychasm, and with the spiritual and intellectual life of Byzantium.
Along with the Hesychast revival, a significant "opening to the West" was taking place among some Byzantine ecclesiastics. The brothers Prochorus and Demetrius Cydones, under the sponsorship of Cantacuzenus, for example, were systematically translating the works of Latin theologians into Greek. Thus, major writings of St. Augustine, St. Anselm of Canterbury, and St. Thomas Aquinas were made accessible to the East for the first time. Most of the Latin-minded Greek theologians eventually supported the union policy of the emperors, but there were some—like Gennadios II Scholarios, the first patriarch under the Turkish occupation—who reconciled their love for Western thought with total faithfulness to the Orthodox church.
Orthodoxy under the Ottomans (1453–1821)
The Christian ghetto
According to Muslim belief, Christians as well as Jews were "people of the Book"—i.e., their religion was seen as not entirely false but incomplete. Accordingly, provided that Christians submitted to the dominion of the caliphate and the Muslim political administration and paid appropriate taxes, they deserved consideration and freedom of worship. Any Christian mission or proselytism among the Muslims, however, was considered a capital crime. In fact, Christians were formally reduced to a ghetto existence: they were the Rūm millet, or "Roman nation" conquered by Islam but enjoying a certain internal autonomy.
In January 1454 the sultan Mehmed II, who had conquered Constantinople in 1453, allowed the election of a new patriarch, who was to become millet-bachi, the head of the entire Christian millet, or in Greek the "ethnarch," with the right to administer, to tax, and to exercise justice over all the Christians of the Turkish empire. Thus, under the new system, the patriarch of Constantinople saw his formal rights and jurisdiction extended both geographically and substantially: on the one hand, through the privileges granted to him by the sultan, he could practically ignore his colleagues, the other Orthodox patriarchs; on the other hand, his power ceased to be purely canonical and spiritual but became political as well. To the enslaved Greeks, he appeared not only as the successor of the Byzantine patriarchs but also as the heir of the emperors. For the Ottomans, he was the official and strictly controlled administrator of the Rūm millet. In order to symbolize these new powers, the patriarch adopted an external attire reminiscent of that of the emperors: mitre in the form of a crown, long hair, eagles as insignia of authority, and other imperial accoutrements.
The new system had many significant consequences. Most important, it permitted the church to survive as an institution. Indeed, the prestige of the church was actually increased because, for Christians, the church was now the only source of education, and it alone offered possibilities of social promotion. Moreover, through the legal restrictions placed on mission, the new arrangement created the practical identification of church membership with ethnic origin. And finally, since the entire Christian millet was ruled by the patriarch of Constantinople and his Greek staff, it guaranteed to the Phanariotes, the Greek aristocracy of the Phanar (now called Fener, the area of Istanbul where the patriarchate was, and still is, located), a monopoly in episcopal elections. Thus, Greek bishops progressively came to occupy all the hierarchical positions. The ancient patriarchates of the Middle East were practically governed by the Phanar. The Serbian and Bulgarian churches came to the same fate: the last remnants of their autonomy were formally suppressed in 1766 and 1767, respectively, by the Phanariot patriarch Samuel Hantcherli. This Greek control, exercised through the support of the hated Turks, was resented more and more by the Balkan Slavs and Romanians as the Turkish regime became more despotic, taxes grew heavier, and modern nationalisms began to develop.
It is necessary, however, to credit the Phanariotes with a quite genuine devotion to the cause of learning and education, which they alone were able to provide inside the oppressed Christian ghetto. The advantages they obtained from the Porte (the Turkish government) for building schools and for developing Greek letters in the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Walachia that were entrusted to their rule came to play a substantial role in the rebirth of Greece.
Relations with the West
The Union of Florence became fully inoperative as soon as the Turks occupied Constantinople (1453). In 1484 a council of bishops condemned it officially. Neither the sultan nor the majority of the Orthodox Greeks were favourable to the continuation of political ties with Western Christendom. The Byzantine cultural revival of the Palaeologan period was the first to experience adverse effects from the occupation. Intellectual dialogue with the West became impossible. Through liturgical worship and the traditional spirituality of the monasteries, the Orthodox faith was preserved in the former Byzantine world. Some self-educated men were able to develop the Orthodox tradition through writings and publications, but they were isolated exceptions. Probably the most remarkable among them was St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, the Hagiorite (1748–1809), who edited the famous Philocalia, an anthology of spiritual writings, and also translated and adapted Western spiritual writings (e.g., those of the Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola) into modern Greek.
The only way for Orthodox Greeks, Slavs, or Romanians to acquire an education higher than the elementary level was to go to the West. Several of them were able to do so, but in the process they became detached from their own theological and spiritual tradition.
The West, in spite of much ignorance and prejudice, had a constant interest in the Eastern church. At times there was a genuine and respectful curiosity; in other instances, political and proselytistic (conversion) concerns prevailed. Thus, in 1573–81 a lengthy correspondence was initiated by Lutheran scholars from Tübingen (in Germany). Although interesting as a historical event, this correspondence, which includes the Answers of Patriarch Jeremias II (patriarch 1572–95), shows how little mutual understanding was possible at that time between the reformers and traditional Eastern Christianity.
Relations with the West, especially after the 17th century, were often vitiated in the East by the incredible corruption of the Turkish government, which constantly fostered diplomatic intrigues. An outstanding example of such manipulation was the kharāj, a tax required by the Porte at each patriarchal election. Western diplomats were often ready to provide the amount needed in order to secure the election of candidates favourable to their causes. The French and Austrian ambassadors, for example, supported candidates who would favour the establishment of Roman Catholic influence in the Christian ghetto, while the British and Dutch envoys supported patriarchs who were open to Protestant ideas. Thus, a gifted and Western-educated patriarch, Cyril Lucaris, was elected and deposed five times between 1620 and 1638. His stormy reign was marked by the publication in Geneva of a Confession of Faith (1629), which was, to the great amazement of all contemporaries, purely Calvinistic (i.e., it contained Reformed Protestant views). The episode ended in tragedy. Cyril was strangled by Turkish soldiers at the instigation of the pro-French and pro-Austrian party. Six successive Orthodox councils condemned the Confession: Constantinople, 1638; Kiev, 1640; Jassy, 1642; Constantinople, 1672; Jerusalem, 1672; and Constantinople, 1691. In order to refute its positions, the metropolitan of Kiev, Petro Mohyla, published his own Orthodox Confession of Faith (1640), which was followed in 1672 by the Confession of the patriarch of Jerusalem, Dosítheos Notaras. Both, especially Petro Mohyla, were under strong Latin influence.
These episodes were followed in the 18th century by a strong anti-Western reaction that was inspired in part by Roman Catholic missionary activity and the church unions of Brest-Litovsk (1596), Uzhhorod (1646), and Antioch (1724), formal agreements under which several Orthodox priests agreed (under political coercion in the case of Brest-Litovsk) to accept the authority of the pope in Rome while being allowed to preserve liturgical and linguistic independence. In 1755 the Synod of Constantinople decreed that all Westerners—Latin or Protestant—had invalid sacraments and were only to be admitted into the Orthodox Church through baptism.
The church of Russia (1448–1800)
The "third Rome"
Origin of the Muscovite patriarchate
At the Council of Florence, the Greek "metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia," Isidore, was one of the major architects of the Union of Florence. Having signed the decree, he returned to Moscow in 1441 as a Roman cardinal but was rejected by both church and state, arrested, and then allowed to escape to Lithuania. In 1448, after much hesitation, the Russians received a new primate, Jonas, elected by their own bishops. Their church became autocephalous, administratively independent under a "metropolitan of all Russia," residing in Moscow. In territories controlled by Poland, Rome (in 1458) appointed another "metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia." The tendencies toward separation from Moscow that had existed in Ukraine since the Mongol invasion and that were supported by the kings of Poland thus received official sanction. In 1470, however, this metropolitan broke the union with the Latins and reentered—nominally—the jurisdiction of Constantinople, by then under Turkish control.
After this the fate of the two churches "of all Russia" became quite distinct. The metropolitanate of Kiev developed under the control of Roman Catholic Poland. Hard pressed by the Polish kings, the majority of its bishops, against the will of the majority of their flock, eventually accepted union with Rome at Brest-Litovsk (1596). In 1620, however, an Orthodox hierarchy was reestablished, and a Romanian nobleman, Petro Mohyla, was elected metropolitan of Kiev (1632). He suppressed the old school at Kiev that taught a curriculum based on Greco-Slavic letters and literature and created the first Orthodox theological school of the modern period, the famous Academy of Kiev. Modelled after the Latin seminaries of Poland, with instruction given in Latin, this school served as the theological training centre for almost the entire Russian high clergy in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1686 Ukraine was finally reunited with Muscovy, and the metropolitanate of Kiev was attached to the patriarchate of Moscow, with approval given by Constantinople.
Muscovite Russia, meanwhile, had acquired the consciousness of being the last bulwark of true Orthodoxy. In 1472 Grand Prince Ivan III (reigned 1462–1505) married Sofia (Zoë), the niece of the last Byzantine emperor. The Muscovite sovereign began to use more and more of the Byzantine imperial ceremonial, and he assumed the double-headed eagle as his state emblem. In 1510 the monk Philotheus of Pskov addressed Vasily III as "tsar" (emperor), saying: "Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and a fourth there will not be." The meaning of the sentence was that the first Rome was heretical, the second—Byzantium—was under Turkish control, and the third was Moscow. Ivan IV (the Terrible) was crowned emperor, according to the Byzantine ceremonial, by the metropolitan of Moscow, Makary, on Jan. 16, 1547. In 1551 he solemnly presided in Moscow over a great council of Russian bishops, the Stoglav ("Council of 100 Chapters"), in which various issues of discipline and liturgy were settled and numerous Russian saints were canonized. These obvious efforts to live up to the title of the "third Rome" lacked one final sanction: the head of the Russian church did not have the title of "patriarch." The "tsars" of Bulgaria and Serbia did not hesitate in the past to bestow the title on their own primates, but the Russians wanted an unquestionable authentication and waited for proper opportunity. It occurred in 1589, when the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremias II, was on a fund-raising tour of Russia. He could not resist the pressure of his hosts and established the metropolitan Job as "patriarch of Moscow and all Russia." Confirmed later by the other Eastern patriarchs, the new patriarchate obtained the fifth place in the honorific order of the Oriental sees, after the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
Relations between patriarch and tsar
After the 16th century the Russian tsars always considered themselves as successors of the Byzantine emperors and the political protectors and financial supporters of Orthodoxy throughout the Balkans and the Middle East. The patriarch of Moscow, however, never pretended to occupy formally the first place among the patriarchs. Within the Muscovite empire, many traditions of medieval Byzantium were faithfully kept. A flourishing monastic movement spread the practice of Christian asceticism in the northern forests, which were both colonized and Christianized by the monks. St. Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1314–92) was the spiritual father of this monastic revival. His contemporary, St. Stephen of Perm, missionary to the Zyryan tribes, continued the tradition of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the 9th-century "apostles to the Slavs," in translating Scripture and the liturgy into the vernacular. He was followed by numerous other missionaries who promoted Orthodox Christianity throughout Asia and even established themselves on Kodiak Island off the coast of Alaska (1794). The development of church architecture, iconography, and literature also added to the prestige of the "third Rome."
The Muscovite empire, however, was quite different from Byzantium both in its political system and in its cultural self-understanding. The Byzantine "symphony" (harmonious relationship) between the emperor and the patriarch was never really applied in Russia. The secular goals of the Muscovite state and the will of the monarch always superseded canonical or religious considerations, which were still binding on the medieval emperors of Byzantium. Muscovite political ideology was always influenced more by the beginnings of western European secularism and by Asiatic despotism than by Roman or Byzantine law. Although strong patriarchs of Constantinople were generally able to oppose open violations of dogma and canon law by the emperors, their Russian successors were quite powerless; a single metropolitan of Moscow, St. Philip (metropolitan 1566–68), who dared to condemn the excesses of Ivan IV, was deposed and murdered.
A crisis of the "third Rome" ideology occurred in the middle of the 17th century. Nikon (reigned 1652–58), a strong patriarch, decided to restore the power and prestige of the church by declaring that the patriarchal office was superior to that of the tsar. He forced the tsar Alexis Romanov to repent for the crime of his predecessor against St. Philip and to swear obedience to the church. Simultaneously, Nikon attempted to settle a perennial issue of Russian church life: the problem of the liturgical books. Originally translated from the Greek, the books suffered many corruptions through the centuries and contained numerous mistakes. In addition, the different historical developments in Russia and in the Middle East had led to differences between the liturgical practices of the Russians and the Greeks. Nikon's solution was to order the exact compliance of all the Russian practices with the contemporary Greek equivalents. His liturgical reform led to a major schism in the church. The Russian masses had taken seriously the idea that Moscow was the last refuge of Orthodoxy. They wondered why Russia had to accept the practices of the Greeks, who had betrayed Orthodoxy in Florence and had been justly punished by God, in their view, by becoming captives of the infidel Turks. The reformist decrees of the patriarch were rejected by millions of lower clergy and laity who constituted the Raskol, or schism of the "Old Believers." Nikon was ultimately deposed for his opposition to the tsar, but his liturgical reforms were confirmed by a great council of the church that met in the presence of two Eastern patriarchs (1666–67).
The reforms of Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725)
The son of Tsar Alexis, Peter the Great, changed the historical fate of Russia by radically turning away from the Byzantine heritage and reforming the state according to the model of Protestant Europe. Humiliated by his father's temporary submission to Patriarch Nikon, Peter prevented new patriarchal elections after the death of Patriarch Adrian in 1700. After a long vacancy of the see, he abolished the patriarchate altogether (1721) and transformed the central administration of the church into a department of the state, which adopted the title of "Holy Governing Synod." An imperial high commissioner (oberprokuror) was to be present at all meetings and act as the administrator of church affairs. Peter also issued a lengthy Spiritual Regulation (Dukhovny Reglament) that served as bylaws for all religious activities in Russia. Weakened by the schism of the Old Believers, the church found no spokesman to defend its rights and passively accepted the reforms.
With the actions of Peter, the Russian Orthodox Church entered a new period of its history that lasted until 1917. The immediate consequences were not all negative. Peter's ecclesiastical advisers were Ukrainian prelates, graduates of the Kievan academy, who introduced in Russia a Western system of theological education. The most famous among them was Peter's friend, Feofan Prokopovich, archbishop of Pskov. Throughout the 18th century the Russian church also continued missionary work in Asia and produced several spiritual writers and saints: St. Mitrofan of Voronezh (died 1703), St. Tikhon of Zadonsk (died 1783)—an admirer of the German Lutheran Johann Arndt and of German Pietism—as well as other eminent prelates and scholars such as Platon Levshin, metropolitan of Moscow (died 1803). All attempts at challenging the power of the tsar over the church, however, met with failure. The metropolitan of Rostov, Arseny Matsiyevich, who opposed the secularization of church property by the empress Catherine the Great, was deposed and died in prison (1772). The atmosphere of secularistic officialdom that prevailed in Russia was not favourable for a revival of monasticism, but such a revival did take place through the efforts of a young Kievan scholar, Paissy Velichkovsky (1722–94), who became the abbot of the monastery of Neamts in Romania. His Slavonic edition of the Philocalia contributed to the revival of Hesychast traditions in Russia in the 19th century.
Orthodox churches in the 19th century
Autocephalies in the Balkans
The ideas of the French Revolution, the nationalistic movements, and the ever living memory of past Christian empires led to the gradual disintegration of Turkish domination in the Balkans. According to a pattern existing since the late Middle Ages, the birth of national states was followed by the establishment of independent autocephalous Orthodox churches. Thus, the collapse of Ottoman rule was accompanied by the rapid shrinking of the actual power exercised by the patriarch of Constantinople. Paradoxically, the Greeks, for whom—more than anyone—the patriarchate represented a hope for the future, were the first to organize an independent church in their new state.
In Greece
In 1821 the Greek revolution against the Turks was officially proclaimed by the metropolitan of Old Patras, Germanos. The patriarchate, being the official Turkish-sponsored organ for the administration of the Christians, issued statements condemning and even anathematizing the revolutionaries. These statements, however, failed to convince anyone, least of all the Turkish government, which on Easter Day in 1821 had the ecumenical (Constantinopolitan) patriarch Gregory V hanged from the main gate of the patriarchal residence as a public example. Numerous other Greek clergy were executed in the provinces. After this tragedy the official loyalty of the patriarchate was, of course, doubly secured. Unable either to communicate with the patriarchate or to recognize its excommunications, the bishops of liberated Greece gathered in Návplion and established themselves as the synod of an autocephalous church (1833). The ecclesiastical regime adopted in Greece was modelled after that of Russia: a collective state body, the Holy Synod, was to govern the church under strict government control. In 1850 the patriarchate, forced to recognize what was by then a fait accompli, granted a charter of autocephaly (tómos) to the new Church of Greece.
In Serbia
The independence of Serbia led in 1832 to the recognition of Serbian ecclesiastical autonomy. In 1879 the Serbian church was recognized by Constantinople as autocephalous under the primacy of the metropolitan of Belgrade. This church, however, covered only the territory of what was called "old Serbia." The small state of Montenegro, always independent from the Turks, had its own metropolitan in Cetinje. This prelate, who was also the civil and military leader of the nation, was consecrated either in Austria or, as in the case of the famous bishop-poet Pyotr II Negosh, in St. Petersburg (1833).
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire two autocephalous churches, with jurisdiction over Serbs, Romanians, and other Slavs, were in existence during the second half of the century. These were the patriarchate of Sremski-Karlovci (Karlowitz), established in 1848, which governed all the Orthodox in the Kingdom of Hungary; and the metropolitanate of Czernowitz (now Chernovtsy) in Bukovina, which after 1873 also exercised jurisdiction over two Serbian dioceses (Zara and Kotor) in Dalmatia. The Serbian dioceses of Bosnia and Herzegovina, acquired by Austria in 1878, remained autonomous but were never completely independent from Constantinople.
In Romania
The creation of an independent Romania—after centuries of foreign control by Bulgarians, Turks, Greek-Phanariots, and, more recently, Russians—led in 1865 to the self-proclamation of the Romanian church as an autocephalous church, even against the violent protests of the Phanar. The new Romanian church was under the strict control of a pro-Western government. Prince Alexandru Cuza secularized the monasteries, and Constantinople recognized the Romanian autocephaly under the metropolitan of Bucharest (1885). The Romanians of Transylvania, still in Austria-Hungary, remained under the autocephalous metropolitan of Sibiu and others under the church of Czernowitz.
In Bulgaria
The reestablishment of the church of Bulgaria eventually was secured, but not without tragedy and even a schism. The issue of reestablishing the autocephalous church arose at a time when both Greek and Bulgarian populations lived side by side in Macedonia, Thrace, and Constantinople itself, though still within the framework of the Ottoman imperial system. After the Turkish conquest, and especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Bulgarians were governed by Greek bishops and were often prevented from worshipping in Slavonic. This enforced policy of Hellenization was rejected in the 19th century when Bulgarians began to claim not only a native clergy but also equal representation on the higher echelons of the Christian millet—i.e., the offices of the patriarchate. These claims were met with firm resistance by the Greeks. The alternative was a national Bulgarian church, which was created by a sultan's firman (decree) in 1870. The new church was to be governed by its own Bulgarian exarch, who resided in Constantinople and governed all the Bulgarians who recognized him. The new situation was uncanonical because it sanctioned the existence of two separate ecclesiastical structures on the same territory. Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimus VI convened a synod in Constantinople, which also included the Greek patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem (1872). The council condemned phyletism—the national or ethnic principle in church organization—and excommunicated the Bulgarians, who were certainly not alone guilty of phyletism. This schism lasted until 1945, when a reconciliation took place with full recognition of Bulgarian autocephaly within the limits of the Bulgarian state. A Bulgarian patriarch was elected in 1961.
After their liberation from the Turkish yoke, the Balkan churches freely developed both their national identities and their religious life. Theological faculties, generally following German models, were created in Athens, Belgrade (in Yugoslavia), Sofia (in Bulgaria), and Bucharest (in Romania). The Romanian church introduced the full cycle of the liturgical offices in vernacular Romanian. But these positive developments were often marred by nationalistic rivalries. In condemning phyletism, the synod of Constantinople (1872) had in fact defined a basic problem of modern Orthodoxy.
The church in imperial Russia
The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great remained in force until the very end of the Russian Empire (1917). Many Russian churchmen consistently complained against the submission of the church to the state, but there was little they could do except to lay plans for future reforms. This they did not fail to do, and in the 20th century the necessary changes were rapidly enacted. Although Peter himself and his first successors tended to deal personally and directly with church affairs, the tsars of the 19th century delegated much authority to the oberprokurors, who received a cabinet rank in the government and were the real heads of the entire administration of the church. One of the most debilitating aspects of the regime was the legal division of Russian society by a rigid caste system. The clergy was one of the castes with its own school system, and there was little possibility for its children to choose another career.
In spite of these obvious defects, the church kept its self-awareness, and among the episcopate such eminent figures as Philaret of Moscow (1782–1867) promoted education, theological research, biblical translations, and missionary work. In each of its 67 dioceses, the Russian Orthodox Church created a seminary for the training of priests and teachers. In addition, four theological academies, or graduate schools, were established in major cities (Moscow, 1769; St. Petersburg, 1809; Kiev, 1819; Kazan, 1842). They provided a generally excellent theological training for both Russians and foreigners. The rigid caste system and the strictly professional character of these schools, however, were obstacles to their seriously influencing society at large. It was, rather, through the monasteries and their spirituality that the church began to reach the intellectual class.
More influential than the rigid discipline of the large monastic communities, the prophetic ministry of the "elders" (startsy), who acted as living examples of the standards of the spiritual life or as advisers and confessors, attracted large masses of the common people and also intellectuals. St. Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833), for example, lived according to the standards of the ancient Hesychast tradition that had been revived in the Russian forests. The startsy of Optino—Leonid (1768–1841), Makarius (1788–1860), and Ambrose (1812–91)—were visited not only by thousands of ordinary Christians but also by the writers Nikolay Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The latter was inspired by the startsy when he described in his novels monastic figures such as Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov. From the ranks of an emerging group of Orthodox lay intellectuals, the production of a living theology—if less scholarly than in the academies—was taking shape. The great influence of a lay theologian like Aleksey Khomyakov (1804–60), who belonged to the Slavophile (pro-Slavic) circle before it acquired a political flavour, eventually helped in the conversion to Orthodoxy of such leading Marxists as Sergey Bulgakov (1871–1944) and Nikolay Berdyayev (1874–1948) at the end of the century. Missionary expansion also continued, particularly in western Asia, Japan, and Alaska.
Disproportionately larger and richer than its sister churches of the Balkans and the Middle East, the Russian Orthodox Church included in 1914 more than 50,000 priests, 21,000 monks, and 73,000 nuns. It supported thousands of schools and missions. It cooperated with the Russian government in exercising great influence in Middle Eastern affairs. Thus, with Russian help, an Arab (Meletios Doumani) rather than a Greek was elected for the first time as patriarch of Antioch (1899). With the successive partitions of Poland and the reunions with Russia of Belorussian and Ukrainian territories, many Eastern Catholic descendants of those who had joined the Roman communion in Brest-Litovsk (1596) returned to Orthodoxy.
After 1905 Tsar Nicholas II gave his approval for the establishment of a preconciliar commission charged with the preparation of an all-Russian Church Council. The avowed goal of the planned assembly was to reestablish the church's independence, lost since Peter the Great, and eventually to restore the patriarchate. This assembly, however, was fated to meet only after the fall of the empire.
The Eastern Orthodox Church since World War I
The almost complete disappearance of Christianity in Asia Minor, the regrouping of the Orthodox churches in the Balkans, the tragedy of the Russian Revolution (1917), and the Orthodox diaspora in the West radically changed the entire structure of the Orthodox world. The period from World War I to the present was marked by profound technological changes, violent conflict on a previously unimagined scale, and economic and cultural globalization. Yet, despite many challenges and changes, the Eastern Orthodox Church has preserved dogmatic and theological unity with regard to faith, tradition, worship, and ethics. This unity continues even though Orthodox Christianity comprises diverse national churches, each with its own jurisdiction and expression of faith.
The Russian Revolution and the Soviet period
The Russian Orthodox Church was better prepared than is generally believed to face the revolutionary turmoil. Projects of necessary reform had been readied since 1905, and most clergy did not feel particularly attached to the fallen regime that had deprived the church of its freedom for several centuries. In August 1917, during the rule of the provisional government, a council representing the entire church met in Moscow, including 265 members of the clergy and 299 laymen. The democratic composition and program of the council had been planned by the church's Pre-Conciliar Commission. This council adopted a new constitution of the church that provided for the reestablishment of the patriarchate, the election of bishops by the dioceses, and the representation of laymen in all levels of church administration. It was only in the midst of the new revolutionary turmoil, however, that Tikhon, metropolitan of Moscow, was elected patriarch on October 31 (Old Style), six days after the revolution. The bloody events into which the country was plunged did not allow all the reforms to be carried out, but the people elected new bishops in several dioceses.
The Bolshevik government, because of its Marxist ideology, considered all religion as the "opium of the people." On January 20, 1918, it published a decree depriving the church of all legal rights, including that of owning property. The stipulations of the decree were difficult to enforce immediately, and the church remained a powerful social force for several years. The patriarch replied to the decree by excommunicating the "open or disguised enemies of Christ," without naming the government specifically. He also made pronouncements on political issues that he considered of moral importance: in March 1918 he condemned the peace of Brest-Litovsk that brought an unsatisfactory armistice between Russia and the Central Powers, and in October he addressed an "admonition" to Vladimir I. Lenin, calling on him to proclaim an amnesty. Tikhon was careful, however, not to appear as a counterrevolutionary, and in September 1919 he directed the faithful to refrain from supporting the Whites (anticommunists) and to obey those decrees of the Soviet government that were not contrary to their Christian conscience.
The independence of the church suffered greatly after 1922. In February of that year the government decreed the confiscation of all valuable objects preserved in the churches. The patriarch would have agreed to that measure if he had had the means to check on the government contention that all confiscated church property would be used to help the starving population on the Volga. The government refused all guarantees but supported a group of clergy who were ready to cooperate with it and to overthrow the patriarch. While Tikhon was under house arrest, this group took over his office and soon claimed the allegiance of a sizable proportion of bishops and clergy. This became known as the schism of the "Renovated" or "Living Church," and it broke the church's internal unity and resistance. Numerous bishops and clergy who were faithful to the patriarch were tried and executed, including the young and progressive metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd. The Renovated Church soon broke the universal discipline of Orthodoxy by admitting married priests to the episcopate and by permitting widowed priests to remarry.
Upon his release, Tikhon condemned the schismatics, and many clergy returned to his obedience. But he also published a declaration affirming that he "was not the enemy of the Soviet government" and dropped any opposition to the authorities. Tikhon's attitude of conformism did not bring immediate results. His designated successors (after he died in 1925) were all arrested. In 1927 the "substitute locum tenens" (holder of the position) of the patriarchate, Metropolitan Sergius, pledged loyalty to the Soviet government. Nevertheless, under the rule of Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s and '30s, the church suffered a bloody persecution that claimed thousands of victims. By 1939 only three or four Orthodox bishops and 100 churches could officially function; the church was practically suppressed.
A spectacular reversal of Stalin's policies occurred, however, during World War II, when Sergius was elected patriarch in 1943 and the Renovated schism was ended. Under Sergius's successor, Patriarch Alexis (1945–70), some 25,000 churches were opened and the number of priests reached 33,000. But a new antireligious move was initiated by Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev in 1959–64, reducing the number of open churches to less than 10,000. Following Alexis's death in 1971, Patriarch Pimen was elected amid uncertainty about the church's future. However, the church experienced greater religious freedom in the late 1980s, culminating with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Balkans and eastern Europe
In bringing about the fall of the Turkish, Austrian, and Russian empires, World War I provoked significant changes in the structures of the Eastern Orthodox Church. On the western borders of what was then the Soviet Union, in the newly born republics of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the Orthodox minorities established themselves as autonomous churches. The first three joined the jurisdiction of Constantinople, and the Lithuanian diocese remained nominally under Moscow. In Poland, which then included several million Belorussians and Ukrainians, the ecumenical patriarch established an autocephalous church (1924) over the protests of Patriarch Tikhon. After World War II the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian autonomies were again suppressed, and in Poland the Orthodox church was first reintegrated to the jurisdiction of Moscow and later declared autocephalous again (1948).
In the Balkans changes were even more significant. The five groups of Serbian dioceses (Montenegro, the patriarchate of Karlovci, Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia) were united (1920–22) under one Serbian patriarch, residing in Belgrade, the capital of the new Yugoslavia. Similarly, the Romanian dioceses of Moldavia-Walachia, Transylvania, Bukovina, and Bessarabia formed the new patriarchate of Romania (1925), the largest autocephalous church in the Balkans. Finally, in 1937, after some tension and a temporary schism, the patriarchate of Constantinople recognized the autocephaly of the church of Albania.
After World War II communist regimes were established in the Balkan states. There were no attempts, however, to liquidate the churches entirely. In both Yugoslavia and Bulgaria church and state were legally separated. In Romania, paradoxically, the Orthodox church remained legally linked to the communist state. With its solid record of resistance to the Germans, the Serbian church was able to preserve more independence from the government than its sister churches of Bulgaria and Romania. Generally speaking, however, all the Balkan churches adopted an attitude of loyalty to the new regime, according to the pattern given by the patriarchate of Moscow. At that price, they could keep some theological schools, some publications, and the possibility of worship. This was also the situation of the Orthodox minority in Czechoslovakia, which was united and organized into an autocephalous church by the patriarchate of Moscow in 1951. Only in Albania did a communist government announce the total eradication of organized religion, following its cultural revolution of 1967.
Among the national Orthodox churches, the Church of Greece is the only one that preserved the legal status it acquired in the 19th century as the national state church. As such, it was supported by the successive political regimes of Greece. It could also develop an impressive internal mission. The Brotherhood Zoe ("Life"), organized according to the pattern of Western religious orders, was successful in creating a large system of church schools.
The communist governments throughout eastern Europe collapsed during the late 1980s and early 1990s, effectively dissolving state control over churches and bringing new political and religious freedoms into the region. In the early 1990s Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were divided into countries that reflected older ethnic identities. In each case, one Orthodox church continued to have jurisdiction. The Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church has jurisdiction over the Czech Republic and Slovakia (both of which became independent states in 1993). The Serbian Orthodox Church has jurisdiction over the countries that once constituted Yugoslavia: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Montenegro. The Albanian Orthodox Church was reconstituted in 1992 with the appointment by the ecumenical patriarchate of a Greek primate. In 2019 the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was granted independence from the Russian Orthodox Church, a move that caused tensions between the patriarchate of Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which approved of the split.
The Eastern Orthodox Church in the Middle East
As a result of the Greco-Turkish War, the entire Greek population of Asia Minor was transferred to Greece in 1922. The Orthodox under the immediate jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople were thus reduced to the Greek population of Istanbul and its vicinity. This population was reduced to a few thousand by the early 21st century. Still recognized as holding an honorary primacy among the Orthodox churches, the ecumenical patriarchate also exercises jurisdiction over several dioceses of the "diaspora" and, by consent of the Greek government, over the Greek islands. The impressive personality of Patriarch Athenagoras I (1948–72), who was succeeded by Dimitrios, contributed to its prestige on the pan-Orthodox and ecumenical levels. Beginning in 1962, the patriarchate convened pan-Orthodox conferences in Rhodes, Belgrade, Geneva, and other cities and began preparations for a "Great Council" of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Together with the ecumenical patriarchate, the ancient sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem are remnants of the Byzantine imperial past, but under the present conditions they still possess many opportunities of development: Alexandria as the centre of emerging African communities (see below The Orthodox diaspora and missions); Antioch as the largest Arab Christian group, with dioceses in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq; and Jerusalem as the main custodian of the Christian holy places in that city.
The two ancient churches of Cyprus and Georgia, with their quite peculiar history, continue to play important roles among the Orthodox sister churches. Autocephalous since 431, the church of Cyprus survived successive occupations, and often oppressions, by the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Venetians, the Turks, and the English. Following the pattern of all areas where Islam was predominant, the archbishop is traditionally seen as the ethnarch of the Greek Christian Cypriots. Archbishop Makarios also became the first president of the independent Republic of Cyprus in 1960. The church of Georgia, isolated in the Caucasus in a country that became part of the Russian Empire in 1801, is the witness of one of the most ancient Christian traditions. It received autocephaly from its mother church of Antioch as early as the 6th century and developed a literary and artistic civilization in its own language. Its head bears the traditional title of "Catholicos-Patriarch." When the Russians annexed the country in 1801, they suppressed Georgia's autocephaly, and the church was governed by a Russian exarch until 1917, when the Georgians reestablished their ecclesiastical independence. the Georgian church was fiercely persecuted during the 1920s but survives to the present day as an autocephalous patriarchate.
Orthodoxy in the United States
The first Orthodox communities in what is today the continental United States were established in Alaska and on the West Coast, as the extreme end of the Russian missionary expansion through Siberia (see above The church in imperial Russia). Russian monks settled on Kodiak Island in 1794. Among them was St. Herman (canonized 1970), an ascetic and a defender of the indigenous people's rights against ruthless Russian traders. After the sale of Alaska to the United States, a separate diocese "of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska" was created by the Holy Synod (1870). After the transfer of the diocesan centre to San Francisco and its renaming as the diocese "of the Aleutian Islands and North America" (1900), the original church establishment exercised its jurisdiction over the entire North American continent. In the 1880s it accepted back into Orthodoxy hundreds of "Uniate" (Eastern rite) parishes of immigrants from Galicia and Carpatho-Russia, particularly numerous in the northern industrial states and in Canada. It also served the needs of immigrants from Serbia, Greece, Syria, Albania, and other countries. Some Greek and Romanian communities, however, invited priests directly from the mother country without official contact with the American bishop. In 1905 the American archbishop St. Tikhon (the future patriarch of Moscow) presented to the Russian synod the project of an autocephalous church of America, whose structure would reflect the ethnic pluralism of its membership. He also foresaw the inevitable Americanization of his flock and encouraged the translation of the liturgy into English.
These projects, however, were hampered by the tragedies that befell the Russian Orthodox Church following the Russian Revolution. The administrative system of the Russian church collapsed. The non-Russian groups of immigrants sought and obtained their affiliation with mother churches abroad. In 1921 a "Greek Archdiocese of North and South America" was established by the ecumenical patriarch Meletios IV Metaxakis. Further divisions within each national group occurred repeatedly, and several independent jurisdictions added to the confusion.
American Orthodoxy challenged the feasibility of preserving the ethnic identity of the national churches, which had characterized Orthodoxy in Europe and the Middle East. A reaction against this chaotic pluralism manifested itself in the 1950s. More cooperation between the jurisdictions and a more systematic theological education contributed to an increased desire for unity. A Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA) was established in 1960 in order to provide administrative unity amid jurisdictional confusion. In 1970 the patriarch of Moscow, reviving Tikhon's project of 1905, formally proclaimed its diocese in America (which had been in conflict with Moscow since 1931 on the issue of loyalty to the Soviet Union) as the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America (OCA), which had no administrative connections abroad. However, the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople protested this move, turned down a request for autonomy presented by the Greek archdiocese (the largest single Orthodox body in the United States), and reiterated its opposition to the use of English in the liturgy. Meanwhile, the American archdiocese of the Antiochian Orthodox Church was granted self-rule (though not full autocephaly) in 2003 and later incorporated into itself the Evangelical Orthodox Church, a group of former Evangelicals who embraced Orthodoxy. Led by Peter Gillquist, it operates as the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission (AEOM) and promotes the unity of Orthodox Christians in America.
The Orthodox diaspora and missions
Since World War I millions of eastern Europeans were dispersed in various areas where Orthodox communities had never existed before. The Russian Revolution provoked a massive political emigration, predominantly to western Europe and particularly France. It included eminent churchmen, theologians, and Christian intellectuals, such as Bulgakov, Berdyayev, and V.V. Zenkovsky, who were able not only to establish in Paris a theological school of great repute but also to contribute significantly to the ecumenical movement. In 1922 Patriarch Tikhon appointed Metropolitan Evlogy as head of the émigré churches, with residence in Paris. The authority of the metropolitan was challenged, however, by a group of bishops who had left their sees in Russia, retreating with the White armies, and who had found refuge in Sremski-Karlovci as guests of the Serbian church. Despite several attempts at reconciliation, the "Synod" of Karlovci, proclaiming its firm attachment to the principle of tsarist monarchy, refused to recognize any measure taken by the reestablished patriarchate of Moscow. This group transferred its headquarters to New York and became known as the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). It had no canonical relation with the official Orthodox patriarchates and churches until May 2007. That year, following reforms within both Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, the ROCOR signed an agreement of unity with the patriarchate of Moscow. The "Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Exile," by contrast, continues to be in an irregular canonical situation. Other émigré groups found refuge under the canonical auspices of the ecumenical patriarchate.
After World War II many Greeks emigrated to western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. In East Africa, without much initial effort on their part, these Greek-speaking emigrants attracted a sizable number of black Christians, who discovered in the Orthodox liturgy and sacramental worship a form of Christianity more acceptable to them than the more dogmatic institutions of Western Christianity. Also, in their eyes, Orthodoxy had the advantage of having no connection with the colonial regimes of the past. Orthodox communities, with an ever increasing number of native clergy, are spreading in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Less professionally planned than the former Russian missions in Alaska and Japan, these young churches constitute an interesting development in African Christianity.
Ecumenical involvement
Between the two World Wars, many Orthodox churchmen of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, of Greece, of the Balkan churches, and of the Russian emigration took part in the ecumenical movement. After World War II, however, the churches of the communist-dominated countries failed to join the newly created World Council of Churches (1948); only Constantinople and Greece did so. The situation changed drastically in 1961, when the patriarchate of Moscow applied for membership and was soon followed by other autocephalous churches. Before and after 1961 the Orthodox churches repeatedly declared that their membership did not imply any relativistic understanding of the Christian truth but demonstrated that they were ready to discuss with all Christians the best way of restoring the lost unity of Christendom, as well as problems of common Christian action and witness in the modern world.
The ecumenical patriarchate, despite the hesitation of some faithful, has devoted special attention to dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. In the 1960s Patriarch Athenagoras I and Pope Paul VI met in Jerusalem, Istanbul, and Rome, symbolically lifting the anathemas imposed in 1054 and making other gestures of rapprochement, though these moves were sometimes mistakenly interpreted as if they were ending the schism itself; the Orthodox view holds that full unity can be restored only in the fullness of truth witnessed by the entire church and sanctioned in sacramental communion. Despite stringent criticism by conservative Orthodox Christians, Athenagoras and his successors not only improved relations with Rome but also engaged in dialogues with Anglicans, the Oriental Orthodox churches, and even non-Christians, including Muslims and Jews. As ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew I (enthroned 1991) addressed concerns outside the purview of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He endorsed Turkey's application for membership in the European Union and displayed such a dedication to global environmental issues that he became known as the "green patriarch."
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Christianity: The church and the Byzantine, or Eastern, EmpireIn the 4th century the emperor Constantine granted himself, as "bishop of foreign affairs," certain rights to church leadership. These rights concerned not only the "outward" activity of the church but also encroached upon the inner life of the church—as was shown by…
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Careers don't just reflect which jobs are available, they represent who we are as people. Fast Company was founded on that notion (among others). The ensuing 10 years have seen everything from the rise of online job boards to the Brand Called You, the birth of blogs to offshoring.
All of these developments have had a significant impact on the way we manage our careers--and the next 10 years promise to be just as dramatic. A number of technological and demographic trends still in their infancy will shape the way you develop and guide your professional life in the decade to come. Here's how to ride those waves.
Spin Out Your Network
Networks are morphing from small, closely knit circles into expanding webs that can reach just about anywhere--and collect virtually all the information you need. "It used to be that a young professional's network consisted of six friends and their dad's uncle," says Elliot Masie, president of the Masie Center and author of a weekly industry newsletter that goes out to 55,000 corporate executives.
Now even an average student who doesn't think much about networking in the traditional sense will already have dozens of "friends" in his or her Facebook network (an online directory for college and high-school students and alumni) before leaving campus.
"We are amazed by the sheer number of grads staying connected to others today," says Christopher Morris, the director of MBA career management at the Wharton School. Because sites such as Facebook are viral, the new friends you acquire give you access to all of their friends. The result? People are entering the workforce with hundreds of contacts--and they're eager and ready to deploy them.
Today's power networkers aren't just hoarding contacts but sharing information in unprecedented amounts at unbelievable speed. "They're far more open about discussing their private lives, from what they did at that party this weekend to salary information about their jobs," says Morris.
"What used to be difficult to get, you can now just ask [for]." Masie sees this warp-speed, ultraconnected culture at work in his own company. "Students who do internships with me use Facebook more than email," he says. Their conversation threads regularly focus on work experiences: What did they learn? Who did they meet? Was it fun? Did it pay well? Where do they want to work next? "One used Facebook to decide not to take a full-time job she was offered," he says. "Her network told her it wasn't a good place to work."
"This is a group with a team, a project, and a collaborator mentality," says Alice Snell, VP of the talent-management research division at Taleo, a San Francisco-based company that produces human-resources software for companies such as Citigroup, Honeywell, and Dell. If there's a tech problem, their first instinct is to instant-message a geek buddy for advice on how to fix it. If they're on a product-development team, they'll reach out to friends for input, not necessarily caring whether they're observing traditional corporate boundaries. And if they hate their boss, maybe they'll post that on their blog.
The increasing breadth and power of employees' personal networks to disperse information about work experiences will force companies to rethink how they organize teams and departments. Look for interdisciplinary teams that involve employees from different generations in an effort to take advantage of as many perspectives and sources of input as possible.
It's possible that companies will flatten their hierarchies even more than we've already seen in an effort to make junior employees with their brainstorming networks feel more empowered to speak up and contribute ideas at work. It will also affect what sorts of controls they try to exert on communication with peers outside company walls.
Trying to shut down these informal networks obviously won't work, even if companies find them threatening. The only option, predicts Masie, will be a "high level of honesty and transparency" and the incorporation of rewards for those employees who use their networks on the company's behalf.
If you're not 21 and burning up your Facebook account, next-generation networks aren't closed to you. Try out business-oriented Web services such as LinkedIn and Ryze to track and expand your personal network.
Or go the old-fashioned route: Pull out a big piece of paper, stick it up on the wall, and map out everyone you know, how you know them, and how they connect to one another. "If it's not visual, it's easy to miss things," Masie says. "Look at it and realize this is an asset you can legitimately mature." The next step, he adds, is looking for ways to expand beyond your own peer group. "Operate up," Masie says. "Too many people forget to do that." Recognize the value of mentors and identify those above you who can help you learn.
And most important of all, adds Morris, remember that technology is just a "new enabler. These are still relationships. They have to be cultivated."
A long list of names is meaningless unless it represents real relationships, developed by offering your own help and input over time. Then, when the day comes that you need a job lead, a problem-solving tip, or just the inside scoop on the new boss, you'll be in the loop, not banished to the outer circle.
Put Your Best Face Forward
"It's a big problem when someone's Facebook profile says that her favorite thing is to get s--tfaced on a Saturday night."
Your network may make companies transparent to you, but you're transparent to employers as well. Anything online, whether easily available or tucked away in a private network, is fair game. "It's a big problem when someone's Facebook profile says that her favorite thing is to get s--tfaced on a Saturday night," says Masie.
"Google is the first stop for finding info [on potential hires], then Facebook," he says. So there may be a number of versions of "you" being projected into the world. Not all of them will necessarily be what you want an employer to see. Can you control that? If not, can you live with it?
Over time, hiring managers will be less interested in the salacious stuff that a Google search might reveal. "So you were president of your frat," says Morris. "As more information gets out there about everyone, it diffuses the importance of each individual piece of information. It will be okay."
But that doesn't mean you won't have to manage your professional image. Lara Kammrath, a psychology postdoc at Columbia University who is making the rounds in the academic job market, recently had to deal with one of those moments when the Web's power rears up and surprises you.
She arrived for an interview at a school in Ohio on a Friday, and the dean asked her how her job talk in New York the previous Monday had gone. She was shocked. Turns out that her "candidate talk" had been posted on the calendar of events at the New York school's site, and it turned up in a Google search. Kammrath couldn't help feeling panicked.
"I wondered if they were waiting to see if I mentioned it," she says. "A lot of the politics of these jobs is whether they think you'll say yes. They might go with a less preferred candidate with a higher chance of return if they thought my interviewing at another school was a sign that I wasn't placing them first on my list." She got the offer (and turned it down), but the experience was nerve-wracking.
It's no wonder, then, that there are now services to groom the online you. "Reputation management" outfits such as ZoomInfo, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based company, aim to aggregate information about people from the Web into profiles with a professional focus.
The company's technology crawls the Web in search of names to match with particular kinds of information: location, position, education, experiences, and credentials. The good news is that it's not interested in anything but who you are as a professional. And ZoomInfo's customers are large companies (more than 20% of the Fortune 500) that subscribe precisely so they don't have to wade through the muck when they need to look someone up. Even Google uses ZoomInfo when it's looking for a particular kind of person to fill a job opening.
"We've got 70 million people identified," says ZoomInfo founder and CEO Jonathan Stern. "We're able to create power searches to find people with specific certifications, who have worked at specific places, or have specific affiliations."
Stern calls it "comparison shopping" for the kinds of people companies would like to hire. And you have input into what appears on your "label" when those hiring managers go shopping. "We want to give people more control over what is found when people look them up," Stern says.
Simply go to ZoomInfo.com, search for yourself, then review what turns up. There may be several profiles for one name, indicating that the engine thinks these may all be different people. If you register with the site, which is free, you can make changes to the profile, adding accurate information about your education and work experience, and your contact information if you want companies to find you directly.
You can also review all the Web links that have been aggregated under your name and verify that "this is me" or that it isn't. Then write a paragraph or two about who you are and what goals you have. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a small way to shape the impression you give clients and bosses if they search for you online.
Embrace the Liberal Arts (Again)
Solid communication skills, analytical thinking, and being a quick study are the new keys to success. Ironically, these are staples of the classic liberal-arts education. This is in marked contrast to the ever-more-specialized approach that some of today's college degrees take. That UMass Amherst degree in building materials and wood technology? Hard to believe it's going to last you a lifetime.
Even a degree with a bit more mass appeal, such as communications, shows how quickly things change. If you graduated even three years ago, such emerging niche media as blogs, podcasts, and satellite radio are all new to you. Each requires a different approach, and you have to develop specialized tactics to get your message across. Whatever specifics you learned in school are hopelessly out of date.
"As world economies come up and the environment gets ever more competitive, the U.S. educational infrastructure is struggling to keep up," says Gautam Godhwani, CEO of online job aggregator SimplyHired.com. Many of today's exciting jobs (Java developer, brand-experience designer) didn't really exist 10 years ago.
And the exciting professions of tomorrow have yet to be imagined. As a result, what we need from our education has changed. "What you want to learn is how to learn," says Taleo's Snell. And that's where the liberal-arts education becomes valuable again.
Labor trends point to the increasing importance of adaptability. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker currently holds 10 different jobs before hitting age 40. Job tenures now hover around four years. Forrester Research's Claire Schooley predicts these numbers will only get more extreme, anticipating that today's youngest workers will hold 12 to 15 jobs in their lifetimes.
One way to approach lifelong learning is to think about what's threatening your job or your company. "Everyone can articulate what they're threatened by," says Rob McGovern, author of Bring Your 'A' Game.
"Years ago, when I worked at HP, a few people went to Microsoft. We worried about what Microsoft was doing. If you're at Microsoft today, you're worrying about Google. Go find out about the thing that threatens you. Understand it. You might pick the wrong company, but what you will learn will always be valuable." The bottom line? If your degree gets you in the door, it's your experiential résumé that will take you to the executive suite.
Harness Your Inner (Mini) Mogul
Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson aren't the only ones who should be juggling multihyphenate careers. We may not all manage clothing lines and signature fragrances along with our pop-singing starlet gigs, but we will all need to start thinking of ourselves as one-person empires.
As we stay in the workforce longer, it's going to take more to keep us interested, which may mean keeping fingers in several different career pies. Jeremy Bieger, a 29-year-old senior manager of interactive marketing for American Express, has a pretty cool job.
Got an AmEx corporate card? When you go online to access any of its services, Bieger is the one designing your experience. He's a rising star, having already been promoted since joining the company in 2004, and has won an internal innovators award for creating a Mac "widget" that could help customers manage balances from their many accounts all over the Web.
Bieger created that widget for fun, in his spare time. And last fall, he coproduced a friend's music album and also collaborated and performed in a performance-art show--involving original music compositions, dances, and video art--in Brooklyn's trendy Williamsburg neighborhood. Bieger's not some frenetic, obsessive overachiever with no time for a personal life.
He's happily married and quite soft-spoken. A double major in economics and music composition at Oberlin in the late 1990s, Bieger simply sees these activities as different parts of who he is. "It all has to do with creating something," he says. "I see a lot of people who work a lot of late nights and burn out. I don't feel that way. I see myself as a collaborator and an ideas guy. It's all about going from the idea to the creation of some living, breathing thing."
Whether that's a piece of music, a video, or an interactive Web site, for Bieger it's part of creating an elegant performance and staying energized.
We need to feed the different parts of our personality, because one job may not provide all of the satisfaction we need from work.
So like him, consider what's at the root of what you do now. Are you an ideas person? Then think of different platforms where your ideas can help create a new product. Are you someone who's great at management? Try to get a seat on a board of directors or an advisory board to broaden your experience and develop a high-level perspective.
"Top performers are always thinking, What comes next?" says McGovern. We need to feed the different parts of our personality, because one job may not provide all of the satisfaction we need to derive from work. Some of those 15 jobs you'll hold over the next decade may be at the same time. This mini-mogul approach is also a hedge against burnout and the rapidly morphing economic landscape.
Post Your Résumé . . . Forever
Although everyone may already be willing to take a new job if a great new gig smacks them in the face, the changing nature of technology means that we'll all be in the job market, all the time, even if we're happily employed. The first wave of online job boards made the want ads searchable, but they also let dilettantes flood hiring managers, making it unlikely for any given CV to float to the top. It also made it all too easy--and embarrassing--to apply for a job online only to find that you were applying for something at your own company. Busted.
The next generation of online job services gives more control to the employer than the job seeker. Employers are tired of sifting through junk from a pool limited to the unemployed and disaffected. Those aren't the best candidates.
"We're all about the employed person," says McGovern, who founded job-matching service Mkt10 to meet this shift. "Companies want the top performers who are already doing well." That also means the gloves have come off. "Ten years ago, people didn't admit they were trying to hire the already employed," says ZoomInfo's Stern. "Now it's the other company's problem to figure out how to keep their own employees."
The new services force candidates to state their skills and interests honestly rather than just apply for a job with a large starting salary. The technology lets employers find qualified matches. Fortunately, it also gives job seekers more privacy. Services like Mkt10 reveal only a candidate's skills and profile. The potential candidate gives up her personal info only if she's interested in a company's offer to meet.
Missele Vegas, the HR director at VitalSpring Technologies, a health-care-benefits software company in McLean, Virginia, has been beta-testing Mkt10 to find candidates for the past seven months. She has used Monster since 1996 to fill positions but says that service too often left her with résumé spam and mismatched candidates. Vegas is currently using Mkt10 to look for everything from a CFO to an SAP program director.
"They find people for me with 100% matches in the key elements I'm looking for--secret clearances for government work, technical skills for other positions," Vegas says. "It cuts down a lot of my pre-work." Positions that once took three or four months to fill now take 30 days.
Tushar Desai has benefited from the new approach, too. He completed a profile on Mkt10 that led to an account-executive position with VitalSpring this past fall. "The form was more detailed than 'What's your skill set?' " he says. "There were qualitative questions: Where did I want to be? What were my long-term goals?"
Desai appreciated that depth, as well as the constant updates from the system about where he was matching and how far along his materials were. Having experienced a job match in place of a search, Desai is unlikely to go back to the old way of posting his résumé on Monster the next time he's thinking about a job change.
And that's exactly what these services want to accomplish. By helping us think about who we are, what we want from work, and what experiences we need to get there, they hope to create a pool of elite, available employees all ready for their next big thing on a moment's notice.
"In the future, [employers] aren't going to advertise job openings anymore," says Warren Bare, CEO and founder of Jobkabob, another job-matching service. "They'll find you." It's a scary prospect for anyone who has ever been out of work. But for the agile, well-presented, ever-learning, constantly networking top performer, it sounds . . . perfect.
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text:
Tire Care Technician in Middletown
- Employer
- Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores
- Location
- Millersville, PA
- Posted
- Feb 02, 2018
- Closes
- Feb 16, 2018
- Function
- Accountant, IT
- Industry
- Specialty Trades
- Career Level
- Experienced (Non-Manager)
- Hours
- Full Time
Love's is looking to hire Tire Care Technicians. Tire Care Techs help run our business by keeping a safe, clean and well-maintained stop. You′ll also help your manager keep things flowing and get our customers back on the road quickly. We take a lot of pride in making customers want to come back and your work makes a big difference. With the Love′s Tire Care business on the rise, opportunities for career growth will increase as well.