Evaluation

This article offers an assessment of the twelfth congress of the Orthodox Brotherhood of Western Europe, held in Blankenberge (Belgium) in October 2005, which brought together some six hundred participants of various national and jurisdictional backgrounds. Written in the form of an analytical report, the text presents in turn the three plenary lectures — given by philosopher Bertrand Vergely, Bishop Kallistos Ware, and theologian Michel Stavrou —, the round tables and workshops, as well as the Sunday Eucharistic liturgy. The central idea is that Orthodoxy in Western Europe, despite its vitality and diversity, remains confronted with persistent jurisdictional and identity tensions that hinder the formation of a genuinely inculturated local Church. The contribution of the article is to document the concrete state of Western diasporic Orthodoxy in the mid-2000s, by articulating the theological issues — eschatological newness, paschal joy, inculturation — and the institutional challenges that structure this milieu.