5) THE SERGIAN SCHISM:

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external Orthodox link:

Sergianism.

This is seldom described as a schisms by the Orthodox who are keen to pretend they do not also have a array of what amount to denominations within Eastern Orthodoxy. This word refers to a purported doctrine of craven submission to the communist and atheistic government of the former Soviet Union on the part of the Hierarchy of the Orthodox Church of Russia, led by the Patriarchate of Moscow and All Russia. The "Sergi" of Sergianism is the late Patriarch Sergi of Moscow who, while deputy locum tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, issued an encyclical letter which announced that henceforward the joys of the Soviet communist homeland would be the joys of the Church and the sorrows of the Soviet communist homeland would he the sorrows of the Church. 

On July 29, 1927, Patriarch Sergius issued his famous Declaration where he professed absolute loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Soviet Union and to its government's interests. The Declaration, albeit well-intended, sparked an immediate controversy among the Russian churchmen, many of whom (including many notable and respected bishops in prisons and exile) broke communion with Sergius. Later, some of these bishops reconciled with Sergius, but many still remained in opposition to the "official Church" until the election of Patriarch Alexius I in 1945.

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ROCOR

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (Russian: Ру́сская Правосла́вная Це́рковь Заграни́цей, Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov' Zagranitsey), or ROCOR, also until 2007 part of True Orthodoxy's Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, ROCA, historically also referred to as Karlovatsky Synod (Russian: Карловацкий синод), or "Karlovatsky group", or the Synod of Karlovci,[clarification needed][2] is since 2007 a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). The ROCOR was established in the early 1920s as a de facto independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Eastern Orthodoxy initially as a result of some of the Russian bishops having lost regular liaison with the central church authority in Moscow due to the Russian Civil War and subsequent exile, a situation that was later effectively institutionalised by their rejection of the Moscow Patriarchate′s unconditional political loyalty to the Bolshevik regime in the USSR formally promulgated by the Declaration of 20 July 1927 of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), deputy Patriarchallocum tenens. Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky), of Kiev and Galicia, was the founding First Hierarch of the ROCOR.[3]

After decades of separation, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia officially signed the Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate on 17 May 2007, restoring the canonical link between the churches effecting a split with the much diminished Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA) which remained within the True Orthodoxymovement.

The jurisdiction has around 400 parishes worldwide and an estimated membership of over 400,000 people.[4] Of these, 232 parishes and 10 monasteries are in the United States, with 92,000 adherents and over 9,000 regular church attendees.[1]ROCOR has 13 hierarchs, with male and female monasteries in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe and South America.[5]

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