ABSTRACT

The Eastern Orthodox Church in the Middle East is composed of the four ancient patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. These are autocephalous churches, each independent and self-governing.1 The independence between the four churches is administrative; some pre-eminence given to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople ‘is one of honour and not authority’. However, each patriarch has its own metropolitans, bishops and synod.2 The four patriarchates have a shared identity based upon doctrine, patristic theology, liturgy, ecclesiology and canon law.3 Charles Malik has identified seven common challenges posed by history for Eastern Orthodoxy in the Middle East: relations to Islam, relations to Russian Orthodoxy and the Russian State, relations to Rome and Eastern Catholicism, relations to Protestantism – European then American, friction and conflict among the four sees, and the problem of relations between the Greek Hierarchy and the Arab Orthodox.4