37 Facts About Eastern Orthodox Church

Eastern Orthodox Church, called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members.

The Eastern Orthodox Church officially calls itself the Orthodox Catholic Church.

Eastern Orthodox theology is based on holy tradition, which incorporates the dogmatic decrees of the seven ecumenical councils, the Scriptures, and the teaching of the Church Fathers.

Eastern Orthodox communities are present in many other parts of the world, particularly North America, Western Europe, and Australia, formed through diaspora, conversions, and missionary activity.

Eastern Orthodox Church is defined as the Eastern Christians which recognize the seven ecumenical councils and usually are in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Patriarchate of Antioch, and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

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Common name of the church, "Eastern Orthodox Church", is a shortened practicality that helps to avoid confusions in casual use.

Today, many of those same churches remain, while a very large number of Eastern Orthodox are not of Greek national origin, and do not use Greek as the language of worship.

The depth of this meaning in the Eastern Orthodox Church is registered first in its use of the word "Orthodox" itself, a union of Greek orthos and doxa .

The term Catholicity of the Eastern Orthodox Church is used in its original sense, as a designation for the universality of the Christian Eastern Orthodox Church, centered around Christ.

Just as Christ is indivisible, so are union with him and faith in him, whereby the Christian Eastern Orthodox Church is "universal", unseparated, and comprehensive, including all who share that faith.

Eastern Orthodox Church made it possible for this council to meet not only by providing a location, but by offering to pay for the transportation of all the existing bishops of the church.

The Coptic Orthodox Church is currently the largest Christian church in Egypt and in the whole Middle East.

Oriental Eastern Orthodox Church are sometimes referred to as "non-Chalcedonians", or "anti-Chalcedonians".

Under the Ottomans, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired substantial power as an autonomous millet.

In 1547, his grandson Ivan IV, a devout Eastern Orthodox Church Christian, cemented the title as "Tsar of All Rus", establishing Russia's first centralised state with divinely appointed rulers.

The Orthodox faith became further tied to Russian identity and nationalism, while the church was further subordinated to the interests of the state.

Eastern Orthodox Church is a fellowship of autocephalous churches, with the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople recognized as having the primus inter pares status.

The Eastern Orthodox Church considers Jesus Christ to be the head of the church and the church to be his body.

The Eastern Orthodox assert that apostolic succession requires apostolic faith, and bishops without apostolic faith, who are in heresy, forfeit their claim to apostolic succession.

Eastern Orthodox communion is organised into several regional churches, which are either autocephalous or lower-ranking autonomous church bodies unified in theology and worship.

However, Eastern Orthodoxy has become more globalized over the last century, seeing greater growth in Western Europe, the Americas, and parts of Africa; churches are present in the major cities of most countries.

Eastern Orthodox Church Christians believe in the Trinity, three distinct, divine persons, without overlap or modality among them, who each have one divine essence —uncreated, immaterial, and eternal.

Eastern Orthodox Church doctrine regarding the Trinity is summarised in the Nicene Creed.

Eastern Orthodox Church Christians believe in a monotheistic conception of God, which is both transcendent and immanent .

Eastern Orthodox Church Christians believe that Christ Jesus was both God and Man absolutely and completely, having two natures indivisibly: eternally begotten of the Father in his divinity, he was born in his humanity of a woman, Mary, by her consent, through descent of the Holy Spirit.

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The Eastern Orthodox Christian life is a spiritual pilgrimage in which each person, through the imitation of Christ and hesychasm, cultivates the practice of unceasing prayer.

Eastern Orthodox Church believes death and the separation of body and soul to be unnatural—a result of the Fall of Man.

Eastern Orthodox believe that Christ, from the moment of his conception, was both fully God and fully human.

Eastern Orthodox Church Christians believe that when a person dies the soul is temporarily separated from the body.

Eastern Orthodox Church do not accept the doctrine of Purgatory, which is held by Catholicism.

Eastern Orthodox believe that the state of the soul in Hades can be affected by the love and prayers of the righteous up until the Last Judgment.

Eastern Orthodox Church Christians hold that the Bible is a verbal icon of Christ, as proclaimed by the 7th ecumenical council.

Once established as holy scripture, there has never been any question that the Eastern Orthodox Church holds the full list of books to be venerable and beneficial for reading and study, even though it informally holds some books in higher esteem than others, the four gospels highest of all.

The church understands marriage to be the union of one man and one woman, and certain Orthodox leaders have spoken out strongly in opposition to the civil institution of same-sex marriage.

Hilarion Alfeyev, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and head of external relations for the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, stated that Orthodox and Evangelical Protestant Christians share the same positions on "such issues as abortion, the family, and marriage" and desire "vigorous grassroots engagement" between the two Christian communions on such issues.

Various autocephalous and autonomous synods of the Eastern Orthodox Church are distinct in terms of administration and local culture, but for the most part exist in full communion with one another.

Eastern Orthodox Church is a communion of 15 autocephalous—that is, administratively completely independent—regional churches, plus the Orthodox Church in America and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.