Religion: A Little Stove

In a small stucco house in San Francisco last week, five bearded, black-robed men sat talking around a dining-room table. It was a sobor (ecclesiastical meeting) of the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church of North America. But the sobor had none of Orthodoxy’s historic pomp—not even an ikon to remind the assembled bishops of the glory that once was St. Petersburg.

Since 1919, when it broke away from the Communist-suppressed mother church in Moscow, the largest branch of North American Orthodoxy has sadly, steadfastly maintained its autonomy. Not that there has been a lack of interest on the part of Moscow’s Patriarch Alexei and his new friends in the Kremlin. In 1945, the Patriarch sent an archbishop to the U.S. with concessions aimed to bring the exiles back into the fold; but the North American hierarchy refused. Four months ago, another church dignitary arrived from Moscow in a hopeful mood. Last week he was on his way home emptyhanded. As long as the Soviet state controls the Russian Church, the North American Church would not acknowledge the Patriarch’s administrative authority.

White-haired, deep-eyed old Metropolitan Theophilus, 73, head of the American church, refuses to grant Moscow’s Patriarch even spiritual authority. “I wouldn’t trust any Bolshevik,” he mutters. But not all North American bishops share his contempt for the Patriarch’s difficult and dangerous game of pattycake with the Kremlin. Explained handsome, popular young Bishop John of Brooklyn last week:

“What Patriarch Alexei is doing in Russia is all that he can do at present. . . . He has a very difficult task in attempting to propagate the faith. Despite the conditions he faces, he has finally obtained the Government’s permission to open some of the monasteries and some of the churches. . . . The war was the main factor. . . . The Government found that the people didn’t want to die for Karl Marx. Of course the people know that the priests can say very little out loud, even within the walls of the Church, but nevertheless the people wanted a place to return to—a sanctuary. The Church is like a little stove to which the people could come to warm their souls in this cold winter of materialism. . . .

“At present our relations with Patriarch Alexei can only be spiritual. … In the meantime we pray for him, of course.”