Missions
We
have already spoken of the missionary witness of the diaspora, but it remains
to say
something of Orthodox missionary work in
the stricter sense of preaching to the heathen. Since
the time of Joseph de Maistre it has been
fashionable in the west to say that Orthodoxy is not a
missionary Church. Certainly Orthodox have
often failed to perceive their missionary responsi-
bilities; yet de Maistre.s charge is not
entirely just. Anyone who reflects on the mission of Cyril
and Methodius, on the work of their
disciples in Bulgaria and Serbia, and on the story of Rus-
sia.s conversion, will realize that
Byzantium can claim missionary achievements as
great as
those of Celtic or Roman Christianity in
the same period. Under Turkish rule it became impossi-
ble to undertake missionary work of an open kind; but in Russia, where the Church remained
free, missions continued uninterrupted .
although there were periods of diminished activity .
from Stephen of Perm (and even before)
to Innocent of Kamchatka and the
beginnings of the
twentieth century. It is easy
for a westerner to forget how
vast a missionary field the Russian
continent embraced. Russian missions
extended outside Russia, not only to Alaska (of which we
have spoken already), but to China, Japan,
and Korea.
What of the present? Under the Bolsheviks, as under the Turks, open missionary work is
impossible. But the missions founded by Russia
in China, Japan, and Korea still exist, while a
new Orthodox mission has shot up suddenly
and spontaneously in Central Africa. At the same
time both the Orthodox in America and the
older Churches in the eastern Mediterranean, who do
not suffer from the same disabilities as
their brethren in communist countries, are beginning to
show a new missionary awareness.
The Chinese mission at Peking was set up in 1715, and its origins go
back earlier still, to
1686, when a group of Cossacks entered service in the
Chinese Imperial Guard and took their
chaplain with them. Mission work, however,
was not undertaken on any scale until the end of the
nineteenth century, and by 1914 there were
still only some 5,000 converts, although there were
already Chinese priests and a seminary for
Chinese theological students. (It has been the constant
policy of Orthodox missions to build up a
native clergy as quickly as possible). After the 1917
Revolution, so far from ceasing,
missionary work increased considerably, since a large number
of Russian émigrés, including many clergy, fled eastward
from Siberia. In China and Manchuria
in 1939 there were 200,000 Orthodox
(mostly Russians, but including some converts) with five
bishops and an Orthodox university at
Harbin.
Since 1945 the situation has changed utterly. The communist government
in China, when it
ordered all non-Chinese missionaries to
leave the country, gave no preferential treatment to the
Russians: the Russian clergy, together
with most of the faithful, have either been .repatriated. to
the U.S.S.R., or have escaped to America.
In the 1950s there was at least one Chinese Orthodox
bishop, with some 20,000 faithful; how
much of Chinese Orthodoxy survives today it is difficult
to tell. Since 1957 the Chinese Church,
despite its small size, has been autonomous; since the
79
Chinese government allows no foreign
missions, this is probably the only means whereby it can
hope to survive. Isolated in Red China,
this tiny Orthodox community has a thorny path before it.
The Japanese Orthodox Church was founded by Father (later Archbishop)
Nicholas Kassat-
kin (1836-1912), canonized in 1970. Sent
in 1861 to serve the Russian Consulate
in Japan, he
decided from the start to work not only
among Russians but among Japanese, and after a time he
devoted himself exclusively to missionary
work. He baptized his first convert in 1868, and four
years later two Japanese Orthodox were
ordained priests. Curiously enough, the first Japanese
Orthodox bishop, John Ono (consecrated
1941), a widower, was son-in-law to the first Japanese
convert. After a period of discouragement
between the two World Wars, Orthodoxy in Japan is
now reviving. There are today about forty
parishes, with 25,000 faithful. The seminary at Tokyo,
closed in 1919, was reopened in 1954.
Practically all the clergy are Japanese, but one of the two
bishops is American. There is a small but
steady stream of converts . about 200-300 in each
year, mostly young people in their
twenties or thirties, some with higher education. The Ortho-
dox Church in Japan is autonomous or
self-governing in its internal life, while remaining under
the general spiritual care of its Mother
Church, the Moscow Patriarchate. Though limited in
numbers, it can justly claim to be no
longer a foreign mission but an indigenous Church of the
Japanese people.
The Russian mission in Korea, founded in 1898, has always been on a much
smaller scale.
The first Korean Orthodox priest was
ordained in 1912. In 1934 there were 820 Orthodox in Ko-
rea, but today there would seem to be
less. The mission suffered in 1950 during the Korean civil
war, when the church was destroyed; but it
was rebuilt in 1953, and a larger church
was con-
structed in 1967. At present the mission
is under the charge of the Greek diocese of New Zea-
land.
Besides these Asian Orthodox Churches, there is now an exceedingly
lively African Ortho-
dox Church in Uganda and Kenya. Entirely
indigenous from the start, African Orthodoxy did not
arise through the preaching of
missionaries from the traditional Orthodox lands, but was a spon-
taneous movement among Africans themselves. The founders of
the African Orthodox move-
ment were two native Ugandans, Rauben
Sebanja Mukasa Spartas (born 1899, bishop 1972, died
1982) and his friend Obadiah Kabanda
Basajjakitalo. Originally brought up as Anglicans, they
were converted to Orthodoxy in the 1920s,
not as a result of personal contact with other Ortho-
dox, but through their own reading and
study. Over the past forty years Rauben and Obadiah
have energetically preached their
new-found faith to their fellow
Africans, building up a com-
munity which, according to some reports,
numbers more than 100,000, mostly in Kenya.
In
1982, after the death of Bishop Rauben, there
were two African bishops.
At
first the canonical position of Ugandan Orthodoxy was in some doubt, as
originally Rau-
ben and Obadiah established contact with
an organization emanating from the United States, the
.African Orthodox Church,. which, though
using the title .Orthodox,. has in fact no connection
with the true and historical Orthodox
communion. In 1932 they were both ordained by a certain
Archbishop Alexander of this Church, but
towards the end of that same year they became aware
of the dubious status of the .African Orthodox Church,. whereupon
they severed all relations
with it and approached the Patriarchate of
Alexandria. But only in 1946, when Rauben visited
Alexandria in person, did the Patriarch
formally recognize the African Orthodox community in
Uganda, and definitely take it under his
care. In recent years the bond with Alexandria has been
considerably strengthened, and since 1959
one of the Metropolitans of the
Patriarchate . a
Greek . has been charged with special
responsibility for missionary work in Central Africa. Af-
rican Orthodox have been sent to study
theology in Greece, and since 1960 more than eighty Af-
80
ricans have been y ordained as deacons and
priests (until that year, the only .priests were the two
founders themselves). In 1982 a seminary
for training priests was opened at Nairobi. Many Afri-
can Orthodox have high ambitions, and are
anxious to cast their net still wider. In the words of
Father Spartas: .And, methinks, that in no
time this Church is going to embrace all the Africans
at large and thereby become one of the
leading Churches in Africa. (Quoted in F. B. Welbourn, East
African Rebels, London,
1961, p. 83;
this book gives
a critical but
not unsympathetic account
of Orthodoxy in
Uganda). The rise of Orthodoxy in Uganda has of
course to be seen against the background of Af-
rican nationalism: one of the obvious
attractions of Orthodox Christianity in Ugandan eyes is the
fact that it is entirely unconnected with
the colonial regimes of the past hundred years. Yet, de-
spite certain political undertones,
Orthodoxy in Central Africa is a genuinely religious move-
ment.
The enthusiasm with which these Africans have embraced Orthodoxy has
caught the imagi-
nation of the Orthodox world at
large, and has helped to arouse missionary interest in many
places. Paradoxically, in Africa hitherto
it has been the Africans who have taken
the initiative
and converted themselves to Orthodoxy.
Perhaps the Orthodox, encouraged by the Ugandan
precedent, will now establish missions
elsewhere on their own initiative, instead of waiting for
the Africans to come to them. The
.missionary. situation of the diaspora has made Orthodox bet-
ter aware of the meaning of their own
tradition: may not a closer involvement in the task of
evangelizing non-Christian countries have
the same effect?
Every Christian body is
today confronted by grave problems, but the Orthodox have per-
haps greater difficulties to face than
most. In contemporary Orthodoxy it is not always easy .to
recognize victory beneath the outward
appearance of failure, to discern the power of God fulfill-
ing itself in weakness, the true Church
within the historic reality. (V. Lossky, The Mystical
Theology of
the Eastern Church, p. 246). But if there are obvious weaknesses, there are also many signs of life.
Whatever the doubts and ambiguities of
Church-State relations in communist countries, today as
in the past Orthodoxy has its martyrs and
confessors. The decline of Orthodox monasticism, un-
mistakable in many areas, is not by any
means universal; and there are centers which may prove
the source of a future monastic
resurrection. The spiritual treasures of Orthodoxy . for example,
the Philokalia and the Jesus Prayer . so far
from being forgotten, are used and appreciated more
and more. Orthodox theologians are few in
number, but some of them . often under the stimu-
lus of western learning . are
rediscovering vital elements in their theological inheritance. A
shortsighted nationalism is hindering the
Church in its work, but there are growing attempts at
cooperation. Missions are still on a very
small scale, but Orthodoxy is showing a greater aware-
ness of their importance. No Orthodox who
is realistic and honest with himself can feel compla-
cent about the present state of his
Church; yet despite its many problems
and manifest human
shortcomings, Orthodoxy can at the same
time look to the future with confidence and hope.
|