PHYLETISM

PHYLETISM. The word is derived from the Greek word for tribe, phyle. Phyletism, or “tribalism,” was condemned as a heresy by a local council held at Constantinople (q.v.) in 1870. The specific cause of the council’s condemnation was the appointment in that year of a Bulgarian exarch (q.v.), who claimed jurisdiction over all Bulgarians in Ottoman territories independent of the Ecumenical Patriarch (q.v.). The council thus reacted to the principle of national jurisdictions and the appointment of bishops with exclusive ethnic constituencies. At issue was the question whether the bishop should be the focal point of the unity of all believers within a given territory, or instead the religious ethnarch (q.v.) of a national group. Its decision has since been accepted by all local Orthodox churches as the correct response to nationalism as it applies to church government. While the theory of unity of the local church in its bishop was thus preserved, the situation in the Orthodox Church today all too often fails in practice: Phyletism in fact, if not in law, is quite alive.