From Russia, with (Christian) love

I’m standing in the pointed stone archway of a small chapel. Before me are candles, bells, icons, and a trickle of Christian devotees: mostly women in headscarves. On the opposite side of the nave, a bearded man in a chasuble sings liturgical hymns and chants psalms from a pulpit. To my right, his fellow priests prepare the altar, hidden behind an iconostasis — a tall, wide screen of images of Christ and the Apostles. To my left, light pours in through a stained rose window. I smell lavender, basil, mint and rosemary from a little table nearby. Soon they will be flooded with the deep, rich odour of incense, but for now that floral aroma will remind the growing congregation of how it must have smelt in the empty tomb of the Theotokos.

Maybe I lost you with that last word. It means the Mother of God, the title given to the Virgin Mary by Orthodox Christians. My last editor disliked my weakness for French terms and I doubt she’d be any happier with Greek creeping in, but if you’re at all familiar with Western forms of Christianity, that will often be your experience of its Eastern type: islands of alienation in a river of familiarity. Sometimes the flow of the faith will carry you along; at others, it’s easy to get stranded when you don’t know your antiphon from your antidoron.

I’ve travelled to Wallasey to find out about St Elisabeth’s, a community of Russian Orthodox worshippers on the Wirral Peninsula. It’s a Thursday morning, but also the feast of the Dormition — the falling asleep, or death — of the Theotokos. Equidistant between the swings where I’ve just left my son in the care of his grandmother and the ASDA I once went on a school field trip to, it seems a strange place to contemplate eternity, even if it is in the middle of a cemetery.

As I linger nervously in the doorway, another priest walks towards me. He has a much more prodigious beard than his fellow clergyman and wears finely brocaded vestments, but his face is friendly. Father Paul tells me I am welcome to attend the Divine Liturgy — the Orthodox worship, broadly equivalent to a Catholic mass or Sunday service for Protestants. He warns me that some of it is in Russian.

“And it is also very, very long,” he says with an indulgent smile.

Most readers might be surprised to learn that Eastern Orthodoxy has around 250 million adherents, more than any individual Protestant denomination — for context, there are about 90 million Anglicans. The Orthodox are spread over more than a dozen autocephalous — semi-autonomous — communities, each with their own patriarch: Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, Georgian, etc. To Orthodox worshippers, theirs is the original, unchanged version of Christianity clarified at the Councils of Nicea in 325 AD and Chalcedon in 451. (They not to be confused with Oriental Orthodox Christians, who accept Nicea but not Chalcedon, but Merseyside has these too: St Mary and St Cyril's Coptic Orthodox Church in Stoneycroft, for example, or the St Thomas Indian Orthodox Christians who worship on Mill Lane in West Derby.) 

The history of the Eastern Orthodox faith on Merseyside goes back two hundred years. The first adherents were not Russian, but Greek: refugees from Chios, a small, kidney-shaped island off the coast of modern-day Turkey. (And, incidentally, one of the “seven wealthy towns [that] contend for Homer dead” — a candidate for the ancient bard’s birthplace.)

In the early 1820s, around 100,000 Chiots were massacred or enslaved by Ottoman troops, with a further 20,000 driven away. According to SB Williams’ book, The Greek Community of Liverpool: A History, those who escaped made their homes in port cities: Marseille, Livorno, Trieste, and, by the 1850s, Liverpool.

Thanks to their millennia of mercantile experience and strong family ties, by that point the Chiots were no longer desperate pilgrims but successful merchants looking to trade in cotton and other goods. By 1860, 57% of all tonnage entering British ports from the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea was handled by Greek merchants, and most of their commerce involved Liverpool. Those who stayed in the city needed a place of worship.

In 1870, the first Divine Liturgy was celebrated in St Nicholas’, the grand Greek Orthodox church on the corner of Princes Avenue and Berkley Street. Like the nearby St Philip Neri’s Catholic Church, St Nicholas’ is Neo-Byzantine in style, incorporating columns, domes, mosaics and rounded arches. But while St Philip Neri’s is deliberately redolent of Italian Byzantine — churches you might find in Ravenna, one of the important Western outposts of the Eastern Roman Empire – St Nicholas’ is actually an enlarged remake of the Church of St Theodore in Constantinople itself, and unapologetically Eastern. (Since the Ottoman conquest in 1453, St Theodore’s has been the Vefa Mosque in Istanbul.)

St Nicholas’ grandeur is a testament to the success of Liverpool’s 19^th century Greek merchants. To this day, the church serves Liverpool’s Greek Orthodox, many of whom are Greek Cypriots whose families settled after the Second World War. 

For the Russian Orthodox on Merseyside, the story is very different. Historically, most Russian immigration to Liverpool was Jewish, those fleeing pogroms in the 19^th century. Although in recent years some Orthodox Slavs have moved here since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there was never a historical exodus comparable to the Chiot or Jewish migrations.

St Elisabeth’s in Wallasey is a ROCOR: Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. ROCOR was founded in the 1920s by Russian emigres who came to believe the Moscow Patriarchate — the official church hierarchy inside of Russia — was too deferential to Soviet rule.

The two organisations were reconciled in 2007, and ROCOR became a part of the Russian Orthodox Church. By that time, the ROCOR community that now meets at St Elisabeth’s had already been going for 14 years. Originally, they were English converts who met in the basement of a private residence, beautifully redecorated as a chapel. Many were Father Paul's family, or some of his former parishioners from when he was an Anglican vicar in Congleton.

Eventually, they found a home in what used to be the chapel for Earlston Park cemetery on Rake Lane. The building — owned by Wirral Borough Council — had been closed due to neglect in 2006, and the community found it in a state of vandalised disrepair. They raised over £40,000 to restore it to the Russian Orthodox church I now stand in, where they’ve been based since their first liturgy here in 2009. Now, I count between thirty and forty celebrants on a rainy Thursday morning — some English, but also Russians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians. Apparently, St Elisabeth’s can expect twice as many on a Sunday.

As the Liturgy begins with chants and the spreading of incense by a gold thurible, I take my place facing the iconostasis. To my left, a cadre of worshippers are led in hymns. To my right and behind me, believers cross themselves persistently and from right to left — the opposite of the way I’m used to.

Over the next two and a half hours — Father Paul did warn me — I notice a lot more movement than in a Mass. People come and go. They bow before, kiss, and light candles by the icons. Some of the parts in English are more worldly — Father Paul prays for Patriarch Kirill, the leader of Russian Orthodoxy who has attracted controversy for his support of Vladimir Putin, but also “the long-suffering lands of Ukraine.” When the subject turns to heavenly matters, the deep, sincere devotion and active participation is moving, even beautiful. I understand why the envoys of Vladimir the Great in 1110, sent out into the world to help decide what religion the Russian people should be, reported back from a Liturgy in Constantinople that: "We knew not whether we were in Heaven or on Earth.” But I will admit to being frequently lost.

To explain the differences between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western forms of Christianity would be an undertaking far larger than this article. To some, the schism — when the two churches broke away from each other, usually dated to 1053 — is the decisive moment when the Western and Eastern worlds were defined.

By a process analogous to convergent evolution, Catholic and Orthodox have come to agree on a number of issues — the sinlessness of the Virgin Mary, for instance, or the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist — albeit expressed differently. Both venerate tradition, but in the Orthodox case this is perhaps best spelt with a capital-T to distinguish it from mere traditionalism. (To quote a Lutheran convert to Orthodoxy: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.") Differences are often in emphasis: Catholics stress the importance of Christ’s sacrifice, Orthodox focus more on the resurrection.

Where they depart are the same sticking points as in 1053. For example, when reciting the Nicean Creed, the Orthodox leave out the bit about the Holy Spirit proceeding “from the Son” — the Filioque clause. At communion, the Eucharist is leavened bread, rather than the unleavened wafers in a Catholic Mass. Obviously, the Orthodox also do not recognise Papal supremacy or infallibility. The doctrine of Original Sin, derived from Saint Augustine, does not feature in their theology. To atheist or non-church going readers, these may seem like trivialities, but to the Orthodox, they are new (late 6^th century, in the case of the Filioque) additions not welcomed in their unsullied Tradition.

And then there are more serious historical sore points. In 1204, Catholic Fourth Crusaders sacked Orthodox Constantinople, which some historians point to as the real moment of schism and an event that precipitated the collapse of Christendom in the East. This is an event most Western Christians have no knowledge of, but the Orthodox remember bitterly. (As a woman remarks to me after the Liturgy, “history is forgotten by the victors.”)

Once the Liturgy is ended, and we’ve all been liberally spattered with holy oil, I am once again richly welcomed by Father Paul and the congregation at large. As someone used to hiding in a pew and slipping out the side door after communion, this is both touching and nerve-wracking. 

Handed a large slice of cake (Divine Liturgies will often end with food, as many of those gathered will not have eaten since the previous evening as part of their Eucharistic fast) I look to speak with some converts, fascinated to know why this version of Christianity speaks to them. Just like Catholicism, Orthodoxy has seen a recent influx of young male converts attracted to what they see as its masculinity or even chauvinism. Sometimes called “Orthobros”, these influencers have caused disputes among those raised in the faith about Tradition versus traditionalism. Could this phenomenon have made its way to Wallasey?

Although she only moved to the Wirral five years ago, Helen has been Orthodox for sixteen years. Prior to then, she and her husband were Catholics.

“We were actually advised by our priest to explore ‘the other lung of the Church,’” Helen says.

She and her husband began celebrating the Orthodox Divine Liturgy and attending Catholic mass, but gradually the former spoke to them more — its mystic emphasis but also its surety and fidelity to Tradition. One homily, given by her Catholic priest, was a crucial moment.

“He said, ‘sometimes I get up in the morning and wonder what it’s all for,’” she quotes. “And I thought, if you think that…!”

What happened when Helen told her priest she and her family were becoming Orthodox?

“He just stood up, without saying anything, and walked out of the room.” 

Helen has never regretted her decision. The community at St Elisabeth’s is like an extended family to her. I think about how I’ve been welcomed and encouraged already, and how different that is from my experience at larger, Western congregations.

I also speak with Serafim, a tall, broad young man in a long black cassock. He is a reader — an entry level cleric — who was recently married at St Elisabeth’s.

“I was in the Orange Lodge,” he tells me in a Scouse accent. This is a Protestant organisation that once held massive social and political influence on Merseyside. But one 12^th July march, he had a Damascene moment. “I looked around and thought, these are the kind of people who would smash up an image of the Virgin.” (Perhaps this is slightly hyperbolic, but it’s fair to say that Loyalist Protestantism does not adhere to the same level of Marian devotion as Catholics or Orthodox.)

Serafim later tried Unitarianism and Catholicism — even attending a Papal Mass in Rome. But he was more impressed upon discovering a small Russian Orthodox church a short walk from the Vatican. “There was just this little old lady selling flowers there,” Serafim says. Next to the pomp and grandeur of St Peter’s, the humility of Chiesa di Santa Caterina Martire and its lone elderly disciple impressed him on a deep spiritual level.

We get talking about ecumenical matters, a subject on which Serafim takes a dim view. I admit that, although a practicing Roman Catholic, I struggle with Catholic doctrine and liturgy. “That’s because they got Protestants in to tell them how to do it,” Serafim says, a somewhat alternative view of Vatican II. 

Somewhat staggered by Serafim’s torrential didactic conversation and mastery of Biblical references, I try to keep up as we talk about patriarchal figures such as Aaron, the first high priest of the Israelites, or St Peter, the first Pope, and how their mistakes did not preclude them from holy responsibility. 

“The whole point is you can be a broken, foolish person and still come to God’s grace,” Serafim says, with a magnanimity that I sense does not come naturally to him but that he is learning through his ordination.

When I thank him for making me feel welcome, Serafim looks pleasantly surprised. “I thought I was dissuading you, to be honest.”

I also speak with Father Paul. In his quiet, warm manner, he’s how I imagined Father Zosima, the benevolent stárets (elder or teacher) in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. We talk briefly about points of Orthodox theology, which I don’t pretend to understand (“I don’t understand it either,” he says modestly), and the community at St Elisabeth’s. He introduces me to people from all over, some of whom have travelled from Liverpool or North Wales to celebrate the Liturgy.

Soon, this will be a logistical issue for Father Paul as the church returns the favour. In November, St Elisabeth’s will be receiving the Blessed Mother of Kursk, a highly venerated icon that has existed for over 700 years. Rather than simply keeping the icon in the chapel, Father Paul will be driving all over the northwest to take the venerable object into the houses of the faithful. I try to imagine the Catholic equivalent — a parish priest being trusted to carry a holy relic or Titian painting around the neighbourhood, perhaps — but can’t quite manage it.

Before I leave, Helen hands me a small plastic bag. Inside are cuttings from the plants I smelled when I first entered. “Use them in your cooking,” she says.

Over the last few decades, the sectarian Catholic and Protestant alignments that once defined Liverpool’s citizens have fallen away. Class politics replaced identity politics, religious observance declined, and Everton and Liverpool FC became the “new gods”. Historian Keith Daniel Roberts details this in the latter chapters of his doctorate paper, and how a shared Scouse identity grew out of this decline in Christian practice.

But has this left a “God shaped hole” in Liverpool’s landscape? Many, like Helen and Serafim, seem dissatisfied not with Christianity itself but with the compromised — or, to some, politicised — modern forms of it. I wonder if Orthodoxy could fill that gap for others, too, or whether the cultural or linguistic barriers are too great.

Certainly, the ministry of Father Stavros, the current parish priest at St Nicholas’, is not limited to Greeks.

“I’ve got Russian [worshippers], I’ve got Bulgarian, I’ve got Romanian,” he tells me over the phone in his Greek-Scouse accent. Father Stavros says he can frequently expect 300 celebrants of the Sunday Liturgy, a number he says has gone up over years.

“I’ve also Christened quite a few newcomers — atheists, Catholics,” he says, but is hesitant to speculate as to why. “I don’t study other religions; I just study my own.” 

Although Father Stavros’ congregation participates in regular “faith walks” with people from other religious denominations, “We’re just friends. We don’t compare.”

As for St Elisabeth’s, it might be that the relative smallness of the community is one of its primary strengths. But considering the strange power of its Tradition, and the welcoming attitude of its clergy and laymen, it wouldn’t be surprising if they were once again looking for a larger chapel. 

In the contemporary Western world, even speaking about the spiritual direction of individuals or societies is a niche pursuit. The Reformation, Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, and Industrial Age seem to have left no space for the soul in modern life. The philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist has written about how our civilisation has become “left-brained”: literal, detail-orientated, and obsessed with rational process, leaving poetry, art and prayer devalued or even regarded with contempt. Despite our sectarian history and reputation for creativity, this is as true on Merseyside as anywhere else. But as the right-brain cannot be fully lobotomised, progressive narratives of humanity’s slow emergence from superstition don’t quite ring true either. We will always seek for that which mere technology, politics and society cannot provide. At the same time, so many people now feel uprooted from place and disconnected from their own culture. In that scenario, a faith that prioritises mystery, rootedness, fidelity and Tradition may have an attractive advantage.