The Role of Archpriest Eugene Popov in Enhancing of the Anglican-Orthodox Dialog

Abstract

The article is devoted to the insufficiently studied aspects of Russian prominent cleric Archpriest Eugene Popov, rector of Russian Embassy Church in London from 1842 to 1875. His Ministry on the English soil coincided with the deepening of the dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Anglican Churches, which was the result of religious transformations in England in the 1830s and 1840s. Father Eugene in the period under consideration actually became a connecting link between the Russian Church authorities and the anglicans-initiators of the union of the two Churches. He had done a great job by popularizing Orthodoxy in England and by familiarizing the Russian Church community with the doctrine and structural features of Anglicanism. The study, first of all, is based the letters of Archpriest Yevgeny Popov to the chief prosecutors of the Holy Synod N. A. Protasov and A. P. Tolstoy, which were original reports on the current state of the Anglican Church, it’s religious trends, and the efforts made by certain Church circles in England to get closer to Orthodoxy. The fruits of his activities were important in the following decades, when the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue reached the Church-state level.