Introduction

At Easter 2006, a schism broke out in the British diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate (named Sourozh, after the present city of Sudak in Crimea). Approximately one-third of clergy and parishioners left the Moscow Patriarchate and were received under the omophorion of Constantinople. Despite the numerically small and provincial nature of the crisis, it was to have large ramifications for inter-Orthodox relations in the so-called ‘Orthodox diaspora’. The crisis that developed in the Sourozh Diocese therefore represents the convergence of several developing strands of conflict. Although similar events took place across Europe, the British situation was heightened by its already dissident trajectory within the Church. It was the culmination of years of subtly opposing cultural and religious dichotomies. The accepted assessment of the Sourozh crisis and similar conflicts in the western media, and to some extent academia, was and remains rather black and white.