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The Holy Orthodox Church claims to be the True Church because it is unchanged since the Day of Pentecost. It is the Church which is Orthodox in both its belief and its worship. Indeed, the form of its Eucharistic worship is the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, who lived in the 4th Century. Saint John Chrysostom’s Liturgy is a shortened derivation of the Liturgies of Saint Mark and Saint James, the Apostles.
The Orthodox Church uses the Nicene Creed (which differs from the version thereof used by Catholics and Protestants in that the latter added the filioque clause in the Seventh Century). She adheres to the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the First Millennium, and to Holy Tradition.
Holy Orthodoxy consists of four of the five ancient patriarchates as well as self-governing national churches who share a common Faith and Life. The fifth patriarchate is Rome, which split with four eastern patriarchates in 1054. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow laid claim to the title of “the New Rome.” Today, the Russian Orthodox Church is the largest in Orthodoxy. Worldwide, Orthodoxy is second in size only to the Roman church.
Until the Norman Conquest in 1066 A.D., England was Orthodox. Subsequently, England “became” Roman Catholicism, as it was already under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Roman bishop at the time of the Great Schism of 1054. In 1530’s, the Church of England became independent of Rome. The blood of Orthodox martyrs like Saints Harold, Edward and Edmund was spilled in England. The great See of Canterbury was established by men whom the Orthodox Church holds to be saints – Archbishops Augustine, Dunstan, and Cuthbert among others. Saint Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent to England by the bishop of Rome.
To learn more about the History, Beliefs and Practice of the Orthodox Church, read the modern classic The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware, formerly a professor at Oxford University and now a bishop in the Greek Orthodox Church of Great Britain (now named Kallistos). Bishop Ware’s book is available at www.spckonline.com, as are numerous other books on Orthodoxy.
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