Orthodox Christian church kicks off national conference in Baltimore

基督教最古老的教堂之一的管辖权将在本周在巴尔的摩举行民族大会，这是本月第二次是著名的基督教信仰传统在城市举行了最重要的定期聚会。

The Orthodox Church in America — one of the largest jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox church in the United States — kicks off its “All-American Council” on Monday at the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor.

更多的than a thousand officials, bishops, clergy members and parishioners of the 228-year-old branch of the worldwide church are expected to attend the five-day conference, where they’ll address business concerns, network, hear from delegates from its 14 dioceses and might consider resolutions on issues such as the ongoing war in Ukraine.

美国东正教教会总理亚历山大·伦特尔牧师说，代表们将处理诸如养老金计划和新官员之类的奥卡纳，但更广泛地将“仔细看”，以持续不断的牧师短缺the involvement of young people and making sure to hear from some of the jurisdiction’s more “far-flung” dioceses, including those in Alaska and Mexico.

伦特尔说，美国教区大约有五分之一的东正教教堂缺乏全职牧师，他称这种情况为“职业危机”。他说，代表们将在整个会议期间考虑解决问题的补救措施。

The conference agenda makes no reference to the war in Ukraine, now in its sixth month, but that doesn’t mean delegates won’t develop and present a resolution on the subject from the convention floor, Rentel said, a practice he calls common at conferences.

Either way, the OCA has made clear it opposes the invasion by Russian Federation forces of the adjacent Orthodox nation. The head of the jurisdiction, His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon, issued in February a statement condemning the action. Church officials have repeatedly done likewise since, and the branch has raised more than $730,000 for Ukrainian refugees.

大都会蒂科恩在三月份的一份声明中说：“在面对遭受痛苦的情况下，任何基督徒都能保持公正或不冷不热，或者在面临犯罪的邪恶时保持沉默。”

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经过some measures, the Orthodox Church in America is a modest branch of the Eastern Orthodoxy, a communion that claims about 220 million adherents around the world. The jurisdiction’s approximately 90,000 baptized followers place it second in North America, far behind the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, which claims between 450,000 and 2 million, depending on the method of counting used.

但是，OCA在整个非洲大陆的700个教区，包括美国的550多个教区，是任何东正教分支机构的最多，它黯然失色，使希腊东正教（约525）和安提阿基安东正教（275）分支机构黯然失色。

In many ways, it reflects the unofficial motto of its adopted nation: “e pluribus unum,” or “out of many, one.” Immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Albania and other mainly Eastern European countries have founded OCA parishes. It’s one of the few Orthodox branches in North America to be unaffiliated with any national or ethnic group, and its official liturgical language is English.

教堂追溯了其成立至1790年代，当时一小群俄罗斯东正教僧侣在阿拉斯加的科迪亚克（Kodiak）进行了任务。它在下一世纪散布了南方和向东。俄罗斯东正教教会在1970年授予该分支机构的自治权，并赋予其现有名称。

Jurisdiction leaders and members have held churchwide meetings every three years since 1907, with a few exceptions. This week’s is the first to be held in Baltimore, which is home to St. Andrew Orthodox Church. Located in Butchers Hill in Southeast Baltimore, the 82-year-old congregation is one of seven OCA parishes in the state. The others include the Orthodox Church of Saint Matthew in Columbia and Holy Archangels Orthodox Church in Annapolis.

伦特尔说，管辖权选择了巴尔的摩，部分原因是该市位于华盛顿特区教区内，大都市是大主教的教区。

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该会议原定于去年7月举行，但由于当时的冠状病毒大流行仍在席卷该地区，教会官员决定将其推迟一年。

推迟还带来了计划的变化。The theme of last year’s event was to be “hope in an age of despair,” but Tikhon, a 56-year-old Boston native whose secular name is Marc Raymond Mollard, said in a virtual talk last year that he believes most Americans “lived” that theme for a year and a half while dealing with the pandemic.

He and church officials changed the theme to “becoming vessels of grace” — a nod, Tikhon said, toward the OCA’s need to commit every resource it can toward strengthening its witness as an embodiment of Christ. That, he said, has to do with the need to educate and support more priests but also means OCA believers must commit to its mission, from the faithful in the pews to the leaders at the jurisdiction’s headquarters in Syosset, New York, and beyond.

蒂科恩说：“我们需要牧师才能为我们施洗，结婚，埋葬，坦白，安慰，咨询，教导，支持和帮助我们的忠实忠实。”“我们需要鼓舞禁欲主义和不断祈祷的音乐家，教学家，僧侣。最重要的是，我们需要准备成为的基督教人教会对我来说，这确实是全美议会以非常明显的方式表达的。”