All teaching of religion in public schools was forbidden; par ents were not allowed to teach their children religion ; only can didates for the priesthood, if over 18 years of age, might learn theology. No minister of religion could enjoy full civil rights. No religious association could hold property, and all property of existing religious associations was confiscated to the State, which might at its pleasure lend buildings for religious worship. Monasteries were to be converted to useful purposes. Most of the bishops who have not escaped from Russia and have not been put to death have been interned in or about Moscow, or in monasteries in the far north. And the only organization that has been found possible is a synod of 15 Russian bishops which holds its sessions outside Russia, at Belgrade. The patriarch Tikhon died in 1925, and a makeshift for the patriarchate has been devised in the shape of a locum tenens. The passive resistance of the Russian peasantry has been the great obstacle to the Government's endeavour to suppress Christianity, and the so-called reformed Russian Church, a body encouraged by the Soviet power, has so far been a failure for the same reason. In Georgia, the Church is in, as great con fusion as in Russia ; since the first revolution the tendency has been towards independence in ecclesiastical matters. (The transla tion of an official summary of Soviet legislation against religion is given in the Church Times, Oct. 30, 1925; see also Nov. 20, 1925.) Post-War Turkey, with its curtailed frontiers, has as its aim the creation of an entirely Muslim State ; and among other things the Turkish Government desires the abolition of the Oecumenical. Patriarchate. But the European Powers, while restoring Constan tinople to Turkey, prevented this, and at Lausanne the Turkish delegates made a formal declaration of their Government that the Patriarchate would be allowed to continue. Yet, as far as Turkey is concerned, the Patriarchate is little more than "the shadow of a shade." By the Treaty of Lausanne all Greek Orthodox residents in Constantinople before Oct. 30, 1918, are exempt from expul sion. All other Greeks in Turkey, however, are liable to expulsion, and those in Asia Minor have been settled in the new Greece and elsewhere, in many cases in change for Muslims. Only Turkish subjects can be metropolitans in Turkey, and therefore the epis copate has to be recruited from the comparatively few Greek resi dents in Constantinople. Outside modern Turkey the Oecumenical Patriarch, not the Metropolitan of Athens, has jurisdiction in Macedonia, Western Thrace, Epirus, Crete and the Aegean Islands, and this is an exception to the rule about ecclesiastical independ ence mentioned above. (See an informative series of four articles on The Orthodox Churches, by Dr. Greig, Bishop of Gibraltar in Theology, March, April, July, Aug., 1925.) Yugoslavia, called in the Treaties the Serb-Croat-Slovene State, is now re-organizing its Church, which includes the former Serbian Church, the Karlowitz Serbian Church, that of Dalmatia and Cattaro, that of Bosnia and Hercegovina (these three formerly in Austro-Hungary) and Montenegro. During the World War many Serbians were in England; over 600 refugees, young ordi nands, were there instructed and prepared for the Orthodox priest hood under Serbian priests. (The Christian East, 48 f, 51 f, 54.) Many others were in France, engaged in secular pursuits, and in other countries. This will be a convenient place to remark on the changed ecclesiastical conditions in both Yugoslavia and Rumania. Before the War Rumania and Serbia were inhabited practically by Orthodox alone. But the enlarged boundaries have brought in many Roman Catholics and Lutherans, and this has complicated the problem of national religions. The former idea of one country,
one church, has to be given up, and religion and politics cannot have the same close connection that they had before. Moreover, the greatest hindrance to the reorganization of the Orthodox Church in the Balkans and in Rumania is the exaggerated national feeling and jealousy of each country against the others. This jeal ousy is much more felt between the different branches of Ortho doxy than between them and the Roman Catholics or Lutherans. (Greig in Theology, ii., 8, 66.) To the former Rumanian Church, with its two metropolitans, is now added the Transylvanian Church (formerly in Hungary), with its metropolitan at Hermannstadt, and suffragan bishops at Arad and Kazansebes; and also the Churches of Bukowina and Bessarabia.
The old metropolitanate of Athens has not been greatly affected. For Macedonia, etc., see above ; but it is hard to see how the Oecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople can under the changed conditions exercise an effective supervision over these districts. Salonika has now become once more a Christian city, and the mosques which had originally been Christian churches have now been restored to Orthodox worship.
Bulgaria has lost the Aegean coast to Greece, and part of the Dobruja to Rumania. Otherwise the Church has not been much affected. It has, by the official census of 1920, about 4,000,000 members, almost all of Bulgarian nationality, out of a total popu lation of nearly 5,00o,00o, of whom about 700,000 are Muslims, chiefly Turks.
Among the smaller communities in Asia and Africa which were once under Turkish rule, the Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem. now under British mandate, consists of about 30,00o Arab and Greek Christians and a few Russians : the chief obstacles to prog ress are the jealousies between Arabs and Greeks, and the financial difficulties of the monasteries. The Orthodox patriarchate of Antioch, now under French mandate, suffers from the same diffi culties as that of Jerusalem. It has some 300,00o members The Orthodox ("Melkite") Patriarch of Alexandria has only a small following of about 1 oo,000, as has been the case since the Mono physite schism in the 5th century. Under him is the Archbishop of Nubia. The autocephalous Churches of Cyprus (with about 200,000 Orthodox) and Mount Sinai have not been greatly affected by the War.