Orthodox Christianity : A Very Short Introduction

To many in the West, Orthodoxy remains shrouded in mystery, an exotic and foreign religion that survived in the East following the Great Schism of 1054 that split the Christian world into two camps- Catholic and Orthodox. However, as the second largest Christian denomination, Orthodox Christianity is anything but foreign to the nearly 300 million worshippers who practice it. For them, Orthodoxy is a living, breathing reality; a way of being Christian ultimately rooted in the person of Jesus and the experience of the early church, with liturgy that encompasses elaborate icons and glorious music. Orthodox history is littered with tales of schisms and divisions, from the sack of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, to the experience of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet Union. Orthodoxy today is a vibrant part of the religious landscape, not only in its historic homes of Greece, Russia, and Eastern Europe, but also increasingly in the West.