Greek Orthodox Missionary Activity

It has come to my attention that unlike Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches, the (Greek) Orthodox Church never made real attempts. There were some Russian Orthodox missionary activity in Siberia and China but that's pretty much it. The Greeks had more interest in assimilating the non-Greeks, while various Serbs and Bulgarians had at best, conversion of non-Christian Orphans left in the country after a rebellion or war.

With a PoD not earlier than 1756, Have the Greek, Russian and/or Arab Orthodox Churches have missionary Activity around the globe. On the same level as the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches.

How successful would they be in converting Native Americans, Asians and Africans?
 

Philip

Donor
Russian missionary efforts extended into Alaska where they had some success converting the natives.

The difficulty in this challenge is that other Europeans will not welcome Orthodox missionaries into their colonies. For a more widespread missionary effort you need more Orthodox colonies. That largely leaves the Greeks and Arabs on the sidelines.
 
If Ethiopia can go orthodox, so can other parts of Africa, I'd say.

Ethiopia is Oriental Orthodox, not Eastern. Different sect, and it's been Orthodox since Roman times. And other parts of Africa were Oriental Orthodox-Nubia, Egypt(the Copts), most likely Yemen and the Horn of Africa coast- but that changed when Islam came to be and converted most of these.

Eastern Orthodoxy has a problem in which its core territories have difficulty accessing the larger oceans without going through the lands of heretics. To access the Atlantic, Russia has to go through the Catholic-controlled Baltic; Greek missionaries would have to go through the Catholic Western Mediterranean or the Muslim Maghreb. To get to the Indian Ocean, the south and east are Muslim-controlled areas, and what Christian populations there are of a different sect, Oriental Orthodoxy along the Nile, the Church of the East in Assyria & India, and the Armenian Church in Armenia. Russia is the only major player in a post-1756 PoD.
 
Ethiopia is Oriental Orthodox, not Eastern. Different sect, and it's been Orthodox since Roman times. And other parts of Africa were Oriental Orthodox-Nubia, Egypt(the Copts), most likely Yemen and the Horn of Africa coast- but that changed when Islam came to be and converted most of these.
Any ideas on how Ethiopia could go Eastern Orthodox?
 
Any ideas on how Ethiopia could go Eastern Orthodox?

The closest thing you can get is mending the schism in the east: reconciling the Eastern Patriarch of Constantinople with the Oriental Patriarch of Alexandria and then getting the church leaders in Ethiopia to agree because trying to convert them outright and proving them of their heresy is probably going to fail; the Greeks, again, do not have easy access to anywhere outside of Greece.
 
The closest thing you can get is mending the schism in the east: reconciling the Eastern Patriarch of Constantinople with the Oriental Patriarch of Alexandria and then getting the church leaders in Ethiopia to agree because trying to convert them outright and proving them of their heresy is probably going to fail; the Greeks, again, do not have easy access to anywhere outside of Greece.
Could we have one of the Desert Fathers end up in Ethiopia?
 
While Greek Orthodox Monasticism is a thing, it doesn't have a proselytizing entity like the Jesuits to mold it and new converts together, nor do any Greek Orthodox states have the kind of power projection to make such a thing possible.

Perhaps the one exception is if Russia tried seriously at converting Manchuria and Northern China more broadly. This would run into problems of its own, however.
 
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