Response of the Parishioners, 2

The delegate from among the laity:
a) A majority of the people who responded were in favour of Dimitri Popov being appointed, as he is bi-lingual, and although a member of the Harvard Road parish he attends services at Brookwood and at the Convent and is known by these three communities - the largest in the country, and the ones with the most frequent services.
b) As the Archbishop had suggested Fr Andrew be the clergy delegate because he was already attending the conference as a speaker, a majority of our people were also willing that Michael Knupffer should be the delegate because he is eligible to attend in any case having been a delegate at the earlier All-Diaspora Council in the seventies.
c) John Harwood and James Merritt were suggested as delegates by a small group of our people.
d) None of our people felt able to approve the suggestion that Paul Lisitsin be the delegate, because he is completely unknown to our communities. None of the people in our three communities have ever met him and it appears that he is a relatively recent member of our church with little knowledge of any of the parishes or communities in this country except Harvard Road, and perhaps with little knowledge of the history of our church in this country.

Ancillary Matters:
Naturally in canvassing responses in the way we have done, as also in a freely held meeting, people commented on the desirability or otherwise of the rapprochement process. We will not comment on that here because it is something with which presumably the delegates themselves should be charged in good time. However other matters, springing directly from the Archbishop’s letter, arose and are worthy of mention:

a) Many of our people were disturbed by the strong implication in the Archbishop’s letter that there was a kind of two-tier membership within our Church: Russian and non-Russian. In Brookwood, the congregation which started in 1982 as a small group of converts to Orthodoxy, now regularly includes Bulgarians, Cypriots, Georgians, Greeks, Macedonians, Moldovans, Romanians, Russians, Serbians, Ukrainians (listed alphabetically), as well as peoples from the indigenous peoples of the British Isles. Now the majority of the people worshipping here on Sundays are from the former Eastern Bloc countries (about 66%). At the Convent, we have a similar, if perhaps less broad mix of nationalities, although of course there we also have Arabs. At Ryde, the regular congregation is English, but we are often joined by Russians and by some Greeks. In none of these communities do we ever make a distinction on grounds of ethnicity between the various peoples who attend. Indeed we try, as best our faulty capabilities allow, to welcome them all, by using their various languages in our Liturgies. In all these places we also have a Bishop who is a German. Further, we now have a situation in Britain where many of the converts have been communicant members of the ROCA diocese for longer than many who are ethnically Russian, indeed many of them have been Orthodox longer than the Russians. Bearing this in mind, many of our people expressed abhorrence that any preference should be showed to any one particular ethnic group (see 1 Cor. 10:16-17).
b) Secondly, members of our communities were dismayed that preference seemed to have been given to the parish in Harvard Road, over all others in the country. In fact, in conversation some Russian parishioners from Harvard Road have expressed the same view themselves. It is arguable whether the regular congregation at Harvard Road on a Sunday is any larger than that at Brookwood, and at Brookwood we have daily services. Members of the Harvard Road parish often come to Liturgies at Brookwood when there are none at Harvard Road (even on the days of Russian saints), and so our people were bewildered as to why such precedence should be given to Harvard Road.
c) Also some confusion has arisen as we hear reports from parishioners from Harvard Road who are under the impression that two clergy and two lay delegates might attend the Council. This appears to be in complete contradiction to the Synodal decision regarding the British Diocese, and our people are disturbed that again it seems that Harvard Road has been allowed to make such provision while the majority of the parishes in this country will have no say in the matter and have not been consulted. Surely if we wish the Synod to change its decision regarding the representation from the British Diocese, it should be brought to the attention of all the parishes here and they should agree on that proposed change before petitioning the Hierarchs.
d) If, following from the above paragraph, Fr Andrew will not be going as our delegate but only as a speaker at the Council, our people would wish Fr Alexis to be the delegate from the British Diocese and to go with Fr Andrew. Our choice for the two lay delegates would then still remain Dimitri Popov and Michael Knupffer.

Addendum: We have made no mention of responses from the parishes and missions in Felixstowe, Birkenhead, Congleton and in Ireland, because these communities will have made their own responses to the Archbishop’s letter. On receiving this report His Grace Archbishop Mark replied swiftly, and, at the time of going to press, a correspondence with him on the matter has been opened and plans are currently being put in place to more fairly choose delegates.