The Search for a New Church Consciousness in Current Russian Orthodox Discourse

Abstract

In the course of the twentieth century, contacts between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and Western Christianity, its concepts and values, took place on two levels. The first was occasioned by the emigration of Russian theologians to the West in the first decades of the century, and the second by the “invasion” of Western theological ideas into the “canonical territory” of the ROC through ecumenical contacts and the translation of theological works into Russian since the 1990s. In this context, Orthodox theologians found themselves in a twofold dialogue with the West: an encounter with “heterodoxy” (whether as part of ecumenical dialogue or in polemical opposition to it), and another with the Russian Orthodox diaspora, including such figures as Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, and Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), whose books appealed to a broad readership in Russia in the 1990s.