Ecumenical Movement: the moment of truth for Orthodoxy

This article by Father Alexander Schmemann examines the participation of the Orthodox Churches in the Ecumenical Movement and the World Council of Churches. In the form of a critical essay, it argues that, despite a growing official presence, Orthodoxy remains fundamentally outside the Movement, due to a lack of genuine participation. Schmemann identifies a structural gap between official positions and Orthodox ecclesial reality, and analyzes the theological presuppositions specific to Orthodoxy — the priority of East-West dialogue, the centrality of the undivided Tradition, the primacy of truth over unity — which the Western framework of the Ecumenical Movement has neither understood nor integrated. The contribution of the article is to show that the Orthodox position within the W.C.C. is theologically and institutionally distorted, and to call Orthodoxy to affirm its own vocation as an irreducible pole of the ecumenical encounter.