ZERNOV, NICHOLAS

ZERNOV, NICHOLAS, apologist, educator, theologian, ecumenist (9 November 1898–25 August 1980). From 1925 to 1932 he was secretary of the Russian Student Christian Movement in exile. From 1933 to 1947 he was secretary of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (q.v.). From 1936 to 1939 he was a lecturer at the School of Slavonic Studies, London, and professor of Eastern Orthodox culture at Oxford University in 1947. He was the first to hold the Spaulding Lectureship for Eastern Orthodoxy at Oxford, to be succeeded in the post by (now) Bishop Kallistos Ware (q.v.). An ardent, if not always judicious, advocate of the ecumenical movement (q.v.) and an enthusiastic proponent of Orthodoxy (q.v.), his life even more than his writings left an indelible impression on the many who came to know him.

Zernov was one of the first of the Russian emigre theologians to publish widely in English. His publications include the still-valuable study, The Russian Religious Renaissance, with sketches of the remarkable stream of theologians and religious philosophers of the late 19th c. and early 20th c. (most of whom he had known), the first and only short history on the Russian Church in English, The Russians and Their Church, the first long study of the Orthodox Church in English by an Orthodox writer, and many articles, reviews, etc. His reminiscences, Sunset Years, were published posthumously (1983).