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Father Alexander Schmemann

© Steve Hayes

For many centuries Orthodox Christianity has hardly been known in the English-speaking world, and the few books on Orthodoxy that were available in English tended to be expensive specialist publications. Father Alexander Schmemann, for many years Dean of St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, USA, changed that by writing about Orthodoxy in a way that was understandable to English speakers.

In this article I want to reflect on the significance of this, and say something about how Fr Alexander's writing affected me. I hope that others will respond in the discussions by telling their own stories about how Father Alexander's writings affected them, and which parts were most significant for them.

Before becoming Orthodox I was Anglican, and went to St Chad's College, Durham, England, for postgraduate study in theology from 1966-1968. In the secular sixties many western theologians were glorying in secularity and modernity, and trying to adapt their theology to fit in with what they saw was the worldview of "modern man". Some, who did not like this trend, were fighting a rear-guard action against it, and were making a stand for "tradition" (which they seemed to understand as the theology of 50 years previously). Both viewpoints seemed very unsatisfactory to me. Those who sang the praises of the secular status quo seemed to miss the fact that the status quo for many in the world was one of injustice, oppression and cruelty, but the status quo ante that the reactionaries were trying to retain didn't seem to have a great deal to be said for it either.

During a vacation I went to a seminar on Orthodox theology for non-Orthodox theological students at the World Council of Churches Study Centre in Bossey, Switzerland, which culminated in the Holy Week and Pascha celebrations at St Sergius in Paris. That sparked my interest in Orthodox theology, and a couple of months later I came across Father Alexander's book The world as sacrament (later revised and expanded with the title For the life of the world). This book seemed to express precisely my dissatisfaction with current western theology, and also presented the alternative that I had been groping for. Over the next few years I reread it several times, and the more I read it, the more I was drawn to Orthodoxy. So for me it was truly a life-changing book. If you would like to know more, there is more on my literary pilgrimage page.

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