The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad & the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece: A History

Author: Subdeacon Nektarios Harrison, M.A. In 1924, the Holy Orthodox Church was shaken when a small minority of Orthodox Churches abandoned the traditional Church calendar for the Gregorian calendar of the Roman Catholic and Protestant confessions. At the instigation of Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis of Constantinople, this single hierarch unilaterally and without the universal consensus of all the local Orthodox Churches adopted the new calendar intending to bring the Orthodox Church into closer union with the various heterodox confessions of the world. The cost of this innovation would be a great division among those in the Church of Greece who rejected this non-canonical act - that would ultimately give rise to the old calendarist movement and the Genuine Orthodox Church of Greece.These Orthodox Christians, who walled themselves off from the state Church of Greece through historical circumstance and God’s providence, found themselves in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church Outs