In April 2026, Ukrainian-language edition of Alexander Bogolepov’s book Towards the Unity of the Orthodox Church in America was published. This edition was prepared by the Kyiv Theological Academy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The author of this work, first published in English in 1963 (Toward an American Orthodox Church: The Establishment of an Autocephalous Church), was for many years a professor of canon law at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (Crestwood, New York).
This publication was made possible thanks to the support of the North American organisation Orthodox Christian Cultural Institute (https://www.oc2i.org/), whilst the initiator of this project, the author of the concept and the book’s editor was Sergey Chapnin – Senior Research Fellow at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center in Fordham University.
Professor Volodymyr Bureha, Vice-Rector of the Academy, has translated the book and written the foreword to the Ukrainian edition. In his view, the main narrative threads contained in the published study in contemporary Ukraine “have long since shifted from the realm of abstract theory to real church life” (p. 5). And this is indeed the case, for right now the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is undergoing decisive transformational processes and is seeking to find historical precedents to improve its current canonical status.
The value of this publication stems from a number of factors, among which the author’s analysis of the semantic content of the term autocephaly and self-proclaimed autocephaly, the canonical prerequisites and decrees of the Ecumenical Councils regarding the establishment of new Local Churches, ways of interpreting the role of the Mother Church, the coordinating function and prerogatives of the Patriarch of Constantinople in the matter of granting autocephaly to national Churches in the modern era, and other matters.
A notable feature of the Ukrainian edition are two thematically related articles included as appendices:
– by Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, “Problems of Orthodoxy in America: The Canonical Problem” (1964);
– by Protopresbyter Leonid Kishkovsky, “The Orthodox Church in America and its Tomos of Autocephaly” (2009).
The volume also contains a revised and expanded foreword to the second English edition (2001), written by Archpriest John Erickson. In this foreword, the renowned US theologian recalls the complex path to the independence of the Orthodox Church in America, analyses the fundamental concepts of locality, diaspora and autocephaly in this context, and reflects on the new ecclesiological challenges of the post-communist era. Fr. Erickson notes with regret that the differences between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Churches of the Greek tradition in their interpretation of the procedures for Local Churches to obtain autocephaly remain unresolved to this day, since ‘for most of the twentieth century, the spirit of mutual trust did not grace global Orthodoxy with its presence’ (p. 28).
This book will help readers understand the distinctive features of the canonical structure of the Orthodox Church, the theoretical basis for the establishment of new Local Churches, and the specific circumstances surrounding their attainment of autocephaly from the era of the Ecumenical Councils to the 20th century.
Anyone interested can purchase the book via this link: https://title-book.church.ua/na-shliakhu-do-yednosti-pravoslavnoi-tserkvy-v-amerytsi-oleksandr-boholiepov/
