Restoring British Orthodoxy: Volume II

In 1994, through the creative vision and passionate spiritual outreach of the late Pope Shenouda III, the former independent jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of the British Isles entered into full communion with the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and was renamed the British Orthodox Church. This account begins with an initial contact in 1936 with the Coptic Orthodox, later fruitful contacts in the 1980s and the detailed negotiations under which the union was finally concluded, with its redesignation as the British Orthodox Church. Although its foreign extensions did not all follow the same course, the British Orthodox Church not only extendeded its ministry in the United Kingdom but also played a notable rôle among the Coptic and other Oriental Orthodox jurisdictions in the British Isles but also enjoyed significant contacts with its sister churches (notably Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, Malankarese and Eritrean) both in their homelands and the diaspora.