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The Orthodox Church of Alexandria is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches. Its head bishop is the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, who like the Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and the Coptic Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria, claims to have succeeded the Apostle Mark the Evangelist in the office of Bishop of Alexandria, who founded the Church in the 1st century, and therefore marked the beginning of Christianity in Africa. It is one of the five ancient patriarchates of the early Church, called the Pentarchy.
It is sometimes called the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria to distinguish it from the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, and in Egypt members of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate were also known as Melkite, because they remained in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople after the schism that followed the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
| Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and of All Africa
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| Founder | The Apostle and Evangelist Mark
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| Independence | Apostolic Era
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| Recognition | Orthodox
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| Primate | Pope and Patriarch Theodoros II
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| Headquarters | Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt
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| Territory | Egypt, Nubia, Sudan, Pentapolis, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Nigeria, Cameroun, Ghana and All Africa
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| Possessions | None
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| Language | Greek, Arabic, English, French and many African dialects
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| Population | ~250,000 - 300,000 in Egypt+ ~1,200,000 Native Africans + 150,000 ex-patriates in the African Continent
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| Website | *The Patriarchate of Alexandria (Official site)
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[edit] History
Since the schism occurring as a result of the political and Christological controversies at the Council of Chalcedon (451), the portion of the Church of Alexandria loyal to Chalcedonian Christology has liturgically been Greek-speaking, the majority of its native (i.e., Coptic) population and their modern descendants becoming a part of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria (i.e., non-Chalcedonian). After the Arab conquest of North Africa in the 7th century the Eastern Orthodox were a minority even among Christians, and remained small for centuries.
[edit] New growth
In the 19th century Orthodoxy in Africa began to grow again. One thing that changed this in the 19th century was the Orthodox diaspora. People from Greece, Syria and Lebanon, in particular, went to different parts of Africa, and some established Orthodox Churches. Many Greeks also settled in Alexandria from the 1840s and Orthodoxy began to flourish there again, and schools and printing presses were established.
For a while there was some confusion, especially outside Egypt. As happened in other places, Orthodox immigrants would establish an ethnic "community", which would try to provide a church, school, sporting and cultural associations. They would try to get a priest for the community in the place they had emigrated from, and there was some confusion about which bishops were responsible for these priests.
Eventually, in the 1920s it was agreed that all Orthodox churches in Africa would be under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, and so Africa has managed to avoid the jurisdictional confusion that has prevailed in places like America and Australia.
[edit] Mission growth in the 20th century
In Africa south of the Sahara most of the growth in Christianity began as a result of mission initiatives by Western Christians, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. These Western-initiated churches were, however, very often tied to Western culture. Some African Christians became dissatisfied with this, and formed African-initiated churches, which often became more effective in mission and evangelism than the Western-initiated churches.
Some leaders of African-initiated churches had read about Orthodoxy, but found it difficult to make contact with historic Orthodoxy in the parts of Africa where they lived. In the 1920s some of them made contact with the African Orthodox Church in the USA, notably Daniel William Alexander in South Africa, and Reuben Spartas in Uganda.
In the 1930s, Daniel William Alexander visited first Uganda, and later Kenya. Spartas, however, also made contact with Fr Nikodemos Sarikas, a missionary priest in Tanganyika, and through him made contact with the Patriarch of Alexandria. In 1946 the African Orthodox groups in Kenya and Uganda were received into the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria.
In the 1950s, however, the Orthodox Church in Kenya suffered severe repression at the hands of the British colonial authorities. Most of the clergy were put in concentration camps, and churches and schools were closed. Only the Cathedral in Nairobi (which had a largely Greek membership) remained open. Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus preached an anti-colonialist sermon at the cathedral on his way home from exile, and this led to friendship between him and the leader of the anti-colonial struggle in Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.
After Kenya became independent in 1963 the situation eased, and the Church of Cyprus helped to get the Orthodox Church in Kenya get back on its feet, building a seminary and sending missionary teachers.
[edit] The Church today
In recent years, a considerable missionary effort was enacted by Pope Petros VII. During his seven years as patriarch (1997-2004), he worked tirelessly to spread the Orthodox Christian faith in Arab nations and throughout Africa, raising up native clergy and encouraging the use of local languages in the liturgical life of the Church. Particularly sensitive to the nature of Christian expansion into Muslim countries, His Beatitude worked to promote mutual understanding and respect between Orthodox Christians and Muslims. His efforts were ended as the result of a helicopter crash on September 11, 2004, in the Aegean Sea near Greece, killing him and several other clergy, including Bishop Nectarios of Madagascar, another bishop with a profound missionary vision.
Today, some 300,000 Orthodox Christians comprise the Patriarchate of Alexandria in Egypt, the highest number since the Roman Empire. The current primate of the Church of Alexandria is His Beatitude Theodoros II, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] External links
ca:Església Ortodoxa d'Alexandria
el:Πατριαρχείο Αλεξανδρείας
es:Iglesia Ortodoxa de Alejandría
fr:Église orthodoxe d'Alexandrie
nl:Patriarchaat van Alexandrië
ja:アレクサンドレイア総主教庁
ru:Александрийская православная церковь
fi:Aleksandrian ja koko Afrikan patriarkaatti
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