Churches

The Orthodox Church as a concept is the unity of what are called local autocephalous or autonomous churches. These words mean simply that these churches govern themselves, electing their own bishops and organizing their own lives. Each of the churches have their own tradition, liturgy etc but are united in faith. It is nothing other than this communion in faith which unites all Orthodox Churches together into one world-wide body. In this sense, there is no one dominating authority in the Orthodox Church, no particular bishop or see which has authority over the churches.
It should me noted that the present Orthodox Church is divided into two.

• Byzantine Orthodox Churches which accepts the synod of Chalcedon which asserted that Christ is one person in two natures, undivided and unconfused.
• Oriental Orthodox Churches which rejects the synod of Chalcedon. These churches prefer the formula of St. Cyril of Alexandria, who spoke of  'the one incarnate nature of the Word of God' .

The faith of Oriental Orthodox is not monophysite in nature, though we are accused so. We reject the classical monophysite position of Eutyches, who held that Christ's humanity was absorbed into his single divine nature. According to Oriental Orthodox, to say that Christ has two natures was to overemphasize the duality in Christ and to compromise the unity of his person. The Church believes that Christ is full God and full human and the two natures combined to form 'the one incarnate nature of the Word of God' as explained by St.Cyril of Alexandria and hence the two natures cannot be separated and at the same time they never mixed.

Recent dialogues between both the families have proved that the faith of both the churches are one and the same and there is no reason for the churches to remain separated. The confusion arose because each one failed to understand the vocabulary used by other party to define their position. The common declaration of re-establishment of intercommunion is expected soon.

Below listed are the member churches in both the families.

Oriental Orthodox

• Coptic Orthodox Church
• Syriac Orthodox Church
• Armenian Orthodox Church
• Malankara (Indian) Orthodox Church
• Ethiopian Orthodox Church
• Eritrean Orthodox Church

Byzantine Orthodox

• Patriarchate of Constantinople
• Patriarchate of Alexandria
• Patriarchate of Antioch
• Patriarchate of Jerusalem
• Orthodox Church of Russia
• Orthodox Church of Serbia
• Orthodox Church of Romania
• Orthodox Church of Bulgaria
• Orthodox Church of Georgia
• Orthodox Church of Cyprus
• Orthodox Church of Greece
• Orthodox Church of Poland
• Orthodox Church of Albania
• Orthodox Church in the Czech and Slovak Republics
• Orthodox Church in America
• Orthodox Church of Mount Sinai
• Orthodox Church of Finland
• Orthodox Church of Japan
• Orthodox Church of China
• Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church
• American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church
• Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA and Diaspora
• Russian Orthodox Exarchate in Western Europe
• Albanian Orthodox Diocese of America
• Belarusan Council of Orthodox Churches in North America
• Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada