Eastern Orthodox Church

Eastern Orthodox Church
Symbol
Organised Religion
Ideological doctrine:	Eastern Orthodox theology, Palamism
Ecumenical Patriarch:	Cyril X
Operation
Region(s) of operation:	Multi-system
Based in:	Pyotr I, Commonwealth of Earth
Historical information
Founded:	1st century
Notable splinter factions:	Old Believers
[Source]

“	Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him: because evil is but a chance misfortune, an illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement.	”
–Saint John of Kronstadt

The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, is an interplanetary sect of the Christian church. The church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the former Bishop of Rome, but the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognised by all as primus inter pares ("first among equals") of the bishops. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church maintains that it practices the original Christian faith, as passed down by holy tradition, in stark contrast to Christianislam.

History

Background

Following Jesus Christ's Great Commission to the apostles, Christianity spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire. Paul and the Apostles traveled extensively throughout the Empire, including Asia Minor, establishing Churches in major communities, with the first churches appearing in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, then in Antioch, Ethiopia, Egypt, Rome, Alexandria, Athens, Thessalonica, Illyricum, and Byzantium, which centuries later would become prominent as the New Rome. Christianity in the Roman Empire met with considerable resistance, as its adherents would refuse to comply with the Roman state (even at the threat of death) in offering sacrifice to the pagan gods. Despite persecutions, the Christian Church spread. The persecution dissipated upon the conversion of Emperor Constantine I in 312.

By the 4th century, Christianity had spread to numerous regions. A number of influential schools of thought had arisen, particularly the Alexandrian and Antiochian philosophical approaches. Other groups, such as the Arians, had also managed to gain influence. However, their positions caused theological conflicts within the Church, thus prompting the Emperor Constantine to call for a great ecumenical synod in order to define the Church's position against the growing, often widely diverging, philosophical and theological interpretations of Christianity. He made it possible for this council to meet not only by providing a location, but by offering to pay for the transportation of all the existing bishops of the Church. Most modern Christian Churches regard this synod, commonly called the First Council of Nicaea or more generally the First Ecumenical Council, as of major importance.

Several doctrinal disputes from the 4th century onwards led to the calling of ecumenical councils. In the Orthodox Church, an ecumenical council is the supreme authority that can be invoked to resolve contested issues of the faith. As such, these councils have been held to resolve the most important theological matters that came to be disputed within the Christian Church. Many lesser disagreements were resolved through local councils in the areas where they arose, before they grew significant enough to require an ecumenical council.

There are seven councils authoritatively recognised as ecumenical, and There are also two other councils which are considered ecumenical by some Orthodox. All Orthodox agree that the decisions of these further councils are valid; the disagreement is only whether they carry sufficient importance to be considered truly ecumenical. In addition to these councils there have been a number of other significant councils meant to further define the Orthodox position. They are the Synods of Constantinople, in 1484, 1583, 1755, 1819, and 1872, the Synod of Jassy (Iași) in 1642, and the Pan-Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem in 1672. Another council convened in June 2016 to discuss many modern phenomena including Modernism, other Christian confessions, Orthodoxy's relation with other religions and fasting disciplines. A last council met during the 27th century regarding Christianislam and situation surrounding the emerging religion.

Eastern Christian culture reached its golden age during the high point of the Byzantine Empire and continued to flourish in Ukraine and Russia, after the fall of Constantinople. Numerous autocephalous churches were established in Europe: Greece, Georgia, Ukraine, as well as in Russia and Asia.

In the 11th century what was recognised as the Great Schism took place between Rome and Constantinople, which led to separation between the Church of the West, the Catholic Church, and the Eastern Byzantine Churches, now the Orthodox. There were doctrinal issues like the filioque clause and the authority of the Roman Pope involved in the split, but these were greatly exacerbated by political factors of both Church and state, and by cultural and linguistic differences between Latins and Greeks.

The final breach is often considered to have arisen after the capture and sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204; the final break with Rome occurred circa 1450. The sacking of Church of Holy Wisdom and establishment of the Latin Empire as a seeming attempt to supplant the Orthodox Byzantine Empire in 1204 is viewed with some rancour to the present day.

Reunion was attempted twice, at the 1274 Second Council of Lyon and the 1439 Council of Florence. The Council of Florence briefly reestablished communion between East and West, which lasted until after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In each case, however, the councils were rejected by the Orthodox people as a whole, and the union of Florence also became very politically difficult after Constantinople came under Ottoman rule.

In 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Empire. By this time Egypt had been under Muslim control for some seven centuries, but Orthodoxy was very strong in Russia which had recently acquired an autocephalous status; and thus Moscow called itself the Third Rome, as the cultural heir of Constantinople.

Up until 1666, when Patriarch Nikon was deposed by the tsar, the Russian Orthodox Church had been independent of the State. In 1721 the first Russian Emperor, Peter I abolished completely the patriarchate and so the church effectively became a department of the government, ruled by a most holy synod composed of senior bishops and lay bureaucrats appointed by the Emperor himself. From 1721 until the Bolsheviks' October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Orthodox Church was essentially transformed into a governmental agency, a tool used to various degrees by the tsars in the imperial campaigns of Russification. The church was allowed by the State to levy taxes on the peasants. Therefore, the church, along with the imperial regime, to which it belonged, came to be presented as an enemy of the people by the Bolsheviks and the other Russian revolutionaries.

After the October Revolution of 1917, part of the clergy of the Russian Church escaped the Bolshevik persecutions by fleeing abroad, where they founded an independent church in exile, reunified with the Russian one in 2007. The Orthodox Church clergy in Russia were seen as sympathetic with the cause of the White Army in the Civil War after the Revolution, and occasionally collaborated with it; Patriarch Tikhon's declared position was vehemently anti-Bolshevik in 1918. This may have further strengthened the Bolshevik animus against the church. The Soviet government confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by state interests, and most organised religions were never outlawed. Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers along with execution included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.

After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. However, in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. It is estimated that 50,000 clergy had been executed between the revolution and the end of the Khrushchev era. Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or forced out, their places taken by docile clergy, many of whom had ties with the KGB. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active.

However, there was a marked return to Christian Orthodoxy in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Eastern Orthodox Church would rise in power as it once again became the de-facto state church of an increasingly autocratic Russia while also remaining a force to be reckoned with in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.

During the Christianislam Crisis, the Eastern Orthodox Church briefly considered rejoining the Catholic Church in communion and taking part in this new religion. However, an immense grassroots backlash from regular laypeople convinced the church’s leadership otherwise, and the Eastern Orthodox Church remained distinctly Christian while the Catholic Church became more syncretic.

As humanity left Earth for the stars, religion followed it. Eastern Orthodoxy especially followed Russian spacefarers with the most prominent examples being Ross 128 b and Pluto. The religion also followed the Slavic diaspora through immigration to Mars and some exoplanets. Eastern Orthodoxy was wiped out on Mars in the wake of the Martian Civil War by ALIAS in the early 38th century like many other Martian religions.

Current Era

Currently, the Eastern Orthodox Church still has its largest base on Earth, with the center of Eastern Orthodoxy being Pyotr I. However, a lot of the flock is also off-world now with the current Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople extending privileges to Pluto and Ross 128 b in particular in the form of autonomous churches. The future of church looks stable for now, but Eastern Orthodoxy remains on guard against Christianislam, secularism, and modernity in general.

Structure

The Eastern Orthodox Church is a fellowship of "autocephalous" (Greek for self-headed) churches, with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople being the only autocephalous head who holds the title primus inter pares, meaning "first among equals" in Latin. The Patriarch of Constantinople has the honor of primacy, but his title is only first among equals and has no real authority over churches other than the Constantinopolitan. Currently, the Patriarch of Constantinople is located in Pyotr I at the behest of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Eastern Orthodox communion is organised into several regional churches, which are either autocephalous ("self-headed") or lower ranking autonomous (the Greek term for "self-lawed") church bodies unified in theology and worship. Historically, there were many autocephalous churches but that number has been now been reduced to seven: America, Bulgaria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Poland, Russia, and Serbia. These larger autocephalous churches are also given authority for Orthodox communities outside of Earth with the Russian Orthodox Church given authority over the Autonomous Orthodox Church on Pluto and the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem given authority over the Autonomous Orthodox Church on Devana.

Many (but not all) Orthodox seminaries are attached to monasteries, combining academic preparation for ordination with participation in the community's life of prayer. Monks who have been ordained to the priesthood are called hieromonk (priest-monk); monks who have been ordained to the diaconate are called hierodeacon (deacon-monk). Not all monks live in monasteries, some hieromonks serve as priests in parish churches thus practicing "monasticism in the world". Normal priests are attached to churches to preach to congregations, and they are allowed to marry and have children unlike monks.

Membership

The Eastern Orthodox Church has remained strong in its heartlands of Eastern Europe, and it remains the majority religion in the Pyotr I arcology, a majority religion in many of the domed cities of Europe, most significantly in Sofia and Belgrade, and a minority religion across Earth. Outside of Earth, the Eastern Orthodox Church is most prevalent on Pluto and Ross 128 b due to historical Russian involvement in the colonisation of those bodies.