What we Charismatics need to Know about the Orthodox Churches

Characterize the Autocephalos Churches which exist today
Technically speaking autocephalous stands for those churches, which are self governing, the word coming from two words autos-self and kephalee-head. The meaning of the term today will point to a church, which is in communion the Patriarch of Constantinople who is styled the Ecumenical Patriarch. He is we might say the first among equals in the Eastern orthodox communion. They are a picture of equal communion as opposed to a hierarchy like the Roman catholic. There are today between thirteen and fifteen patriarchs in this communion. They are members of the Eastern orthodoxy which means they all believe in the 7 councils. It has been styled the church of the seven councils. That is the 7 church councils, which started with Nicea (325) and ended with Nicea II.
The autocephalous of this kind each has a patriarch and each patriarch has a ranking. The first in rank is the Patriarch of Constantinople, his rank and second Patriarch of Moscow the rest being ranked according to the time they received their autocephalous status. Actually historically the council of Chalcedon established the first five Patriarch in a hierarchy of honor. These were Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. But Rome, Alexandria, Antioch are not a part of the Eastern Orthodox communion due to schisms after Chalcedon and in 1054.
The autocephalous patriarchs who are also characterized by having the power to appoint their own primates (patriarchs, catholicos metropolitans) and other heads such as bishops and the power to resolve internal problems on their own.
Like autonomous churches they have authority to run their daily affairs. The key difference from an autonomous church is in the matter of jurisdiction. Whereas the autocephalous have these freedom regarding the appointment of leaders, ecclesial life and mission an autonomous church is under the authority of an autocephalous church.
Generally it is the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople who has the authority to grant autocephalous status to a church. Most of the autocephalous churches today received their status this way. These are the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, their ranks were fixed at Chalcedon in 451, Russia (1589), Serbia (1220), Romania (, Bulgaria (927), Georgia (first fifth century) lost in 1817 regained 1917), Cyprus (431), Greece (1833), Poland (1924) and Albania (1937) . The patriarchates of Czechoslovakia (1923) and North America (1917) were granted by the Patriarch of Moscow but are not recognized as such by the ecumenical patriarch who believed the patriarch of Moscow does not have authority to grant autocephalous status with out his agreement. However with the division of Czechoslovaki into Czech and Slovakia came the establishment of the Czech and Slovakian Orthodox church. The Ecunmenical Patriarch recognized this status as autocephaly in 1998.
The largest of the eastern orthodox autocephalous churches is the Russian orthodox church. In 1721 Peter the Great abolished the Moscow Patriarchate and replaced it with a synod. In 1917 the Patriarchate was restored. The Patriarch of Moscow then gave autocephalous status to the Georgian Church (which it had lost in 1817) and the Orthodox Church of North America, which the Russians had planted a few decades before were granted the status in 1970. However the ecumenical patriarch does not recognize the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow to give autocephalous status to autonomous churches without his agreement and so he viewed both Czechoslovakia and North America as autonomous but not autocephalous, he agreed to Georgia. It is this, which makes the difference in number between 13 and 15 autocephalous churches today.
Each of the autocephalous churches has it’s own rite of liturgy. They are free to worship in their own language and this has always been a characteristic of orthodoxy. The Greek Orthodox church is called such not because it comes from the Greek nation or is a national church but because it worships in with a Greek rite. Autocephalous churches in the making are the Finnish and the Japanese. They are both autonomous.
All of the autocephalous churches are characterized by a rich liturgy, a line of apostolic succession going back to the first century. They may be termed canonically independent daughter of so and so and their line will have developed from one or other of the old autocephalous churches. Unlike the Roman Catholics you won’t see any statues in their Churches and unlike the Apostolic Church of the East or Nestorians and the first century church, you won’t see a simple cross with no iconography, not the church are richly decorated with colorful icons, each having at iconostasis at the front with picture of Mary, patron saints and archangels. They are all characterized any a rich and long liturgy and a worship that reaches out to the physical senses as well as the spiritual side of man.
The term autocephalous we have looked at in a technical sense of dealing with orthodox churches. However it does have a wider meaning. For the term Patriarch and autocephalous also stretches to the Church of the East and they also consider that they are autocephalous and indeed Patriarch (Catholicos) Timothy in the eighth century understood that the Patriarchate of Mesopotamia and Persia in being the birth place of Adam, Eve, Abraham etc really had the right to the true primacy among the patriarchs. The Evangelical Apostolic Church of North America describes itself in its own documents as “Autocephalous Syro-Chaldean Church of North America” So the term autocephalous is more general than that of the usage regarding the Eastern orthodoxy.
Bibliography
New Catholic Encyclopedia, “Autocephaly”
Richardson, A Dictionary of Theology, SCM Press 1969
Heldt Petra, “Lectures on Autocephalous Churches”