How Are Orthodox Christians Organized?

Our previous Q and A about Islam’s founding Sunni – Shi’a split mentioned divisions within Orthodox Christianity. Orthodoxy, which means “correct teaching,” sees itself as preserving Christianity’s earliest and most authentic form. This faith is in the spotlight what with 1) history’s first meeting between a Catholic pope and a patriarch of Russia’s massive Orthodox church, and 2) the June 16 – 27 “Holy and Great Council” of all bishops in Crete, potentially Eastern Orthodoxy’s most consequential event in more than 12 centuries.

Writing online February 10, sociologist Peter Berger (a Lutheran) said through recent centuries this faith has existed mostly in three contexts: as a state religion, as a “persecuted or barely tolerated” church under Islamic or Communist rule, or in the diaspora outside its heartland (e.g. in the U.S.) where separate and competing churches under foreign hierarchies generate “ethnic cacophony.”