I found this article interesting because it enlightened me as to the on the ground realities of Orthodoxy and reminded me of schisms in the Baptist and Methodist polities.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-ugly-politics-of-orthodoxy/Quote:
Some background: Orthodox Christian ecclesiology is pretty much a confederacy of national churches, all believing the same things, and worshiping in the same way, but administered by national hierarchies. The Russian Orthodox Church is the Orthodox Church in Russia. The Greek Orthodox Church is the Orthodox Church in Greece. And so forth. They're all normally in communion with each other. If you're a Russian traveling in Greece, you can go to communion in a Greek Orthodox parish, no problem.
It's confusing to Americans, because we have so many different Orthodox churches here in the US. It's not supposed to be that way, but that's how it happened, with each immigrant group bringing its own hierarchy over. We're supposed to have a single Orthodox church in our country, but it hasn't happened, and might never happen. We're all in communion with each other, though.
------
That's probably about to change, and for ugly reasons.
The two great rival churches in Orthodoxy are the Greeks and the Russians. This goes back many centuries. In Orthodox ecclesiology, the Patriarch of Byzantium has historically been considered the first among equals. Orthodoxy does not have a pope; it's ruled collegially, by synods. The Byzantine patriarch is more like the Archbishop of Canterbury in that way. After Byzantium fell to the Ottomans, the Moscow the Russian church became the de facto great power in world Orthodoxy. The Byzantine patriarch now called the Ecumenical Patriarch has continued on all these years as a figurehead. The current one, Bartholomew, lives in a small quarter in Istanbul. Unlike Moscow, he has no money, but he does have the power, by virtue of his office, to grant "autocephaly" the right to self-rule to national churches in communion with his See.
(I have probably oversimplified this explanation. Forgive me. It's complicated.)
So, the crisis coming to a head right now threatens to split world Orthodoxy. Since Russia and Ukraine began fighting, a large number of Ukraine-based Orthodox parishes have wanted to break away from the Moscow Patriarchate and form a Ukrainian Orthodox patriarchate a national church independent from Moscow. Moscow has fought this hard. For one, a huge number of parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church are in Ukraine. To lose them would be a big, big blow to Moscow. For another, Ukraine is the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy, in the 10th century. It is hard to overstate how much this means to Russian Orthodoxy, on an emotional and symbolic level.
But if the breakaway Ukrainian Orthodox bishops ask the Ecumenical Patriarch for autocephaly, he can grant it and, according to this report today, is moving very quickly to do that. If this happens, there will almost certainly be a schism between Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. World Orthodoxy will likely split along lines of those faithful to the EP, and those who align with Russia. It will be a severe wound to the body of Orthodoxy, and highlights Orthodoxy's greatest weakness: its lack of unity.
------
The Moscow Patriarchate, aka the Russian State Church, has a disproportionate number of its believers and parishes in the Ukraine. Ukraine wants as much separation as possible from the Putin kleptocracy, to include its servant church. As per this AP report last month:
The nexus between Russia's intelligence and religious establishments survived the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and the KGB's reorganization into the FSB, according to Moscow-based political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin. "Our church leaders are connected to the FSB and their epaulettes stick out from under their habits," Oreshkin said. "They provide Vladimir Putin's policy with an ideological foundation."
Their solution? Apply to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople (Istanbul) for a tomos of autocephaly that would mean independence from the KGB church in Moscow.
This request, brought personally by the Ukrainian head of state and spurring a visit from Patriarch Kyrill to Istanbul in response, gives Constantinople the first bit of leverage it has had in years against the state-supported Russian church. The attempt at an Oeceumenical Synod last year the first steps toward union with Rome were blocked by the Slav churches in obedience to Moscow and at the anything-but-universal Synod by anti-ecumenist bishops from Greece who refused to recognize the papist heresy as a "church" akin to the Orthodox Church. The Ukraine tomos possibility gives Constantinople, essentially toothless in any political or ecclesial battle with the well funded Russian State Church, a chance for payback and to assert its claims to 'first among equals' status in the Orthodox world.
-------
Here's the thing.
What you find is that it is all about politics, demographics, money, and power.
Autocephaly, though, is supposed to be granted in recognition of a daughter church's maturity in the faith, i.e., that it producing wonder working saints, an Orthodox culture, and a distinct aspect of Christ unique to its part of the world.
This is what made the Russian State Church's awarding of autocephaly to the Metropolia, now 'The Orthodox Church in America,' during the Vietnam War such a comi-tragic farce. It was a pay-off for tribute and the transfer of the Orthodox Church of Japan to Moscow's control, not a token of American sanctity or Orthodox maturity.
Everything has to be politics now, not just the reporting, but in the Church leadership itself. They don't even bother to pretend that the tomos would be in recognition of anything spiritual.
As an Orthodox monk shared with me:
It amazes me how utterly political all of these matters are to the prevailing "Orthodox world." There was a time when autocephality[cephaly] was, at least ideally, akin to a recognition of a local Church's spiritual maturity and status. Today, superficial issues of demographics, power alignment, and even ecumenical consensus from heterodox voices obtain. Analogous would be the tonsuring of a Great Schema monastic because he or she has a sufficiently well-sewn or brightly colored analabos for the ceremony of tonsure. No need for an new name. Just use the largely unused "church name."
Anyway, there are a bunch of links below that show just how bad the political infighting is between the equivalents of the Vatican in the Orthodox world. Note especially the fears in Istanbul that Patriarch Kyrill would poison Bartholomew in some kind of FSB hit.
The Catholics have it bad, that's for sure. But in these end times, the figurehead leaders of Orthodox, Inc., are at least as worldly and disconnected from anything of Christ as Francis and company.