Yes and no. Most of them are, but not all.
When you walk into St. Michael’s here in Beaumont, you’re part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Drive down to Houston and visit a Greek Orthodox parish, and you can receive communion there. Head over to an OCA parish in Dallas, same thing. That’s because these churches are “in communion” with each other. But if you stumble across a small Old Calendarist chapel somewhere, you can’t. They’ve broken communion with the rest of us.
So what does “in communion” actually mean?
What Communion Means
It’s not just a nice word for “we get along.” In Orthodox ecclesiology, being in communion means something concrete. It means our bishops recognize each other’s authority and can serve the Divine Liturgy together. It means we share the same faith, the same sacraments, the same understanding of what the Church is. Most importantly, it means our people can receive the Eucharist in each other’s parishes.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote that the Eucharist doesn’t just symbolize unity. It creates it. When we commune, we’re entering into the life of the Trinity itself, becoming one Body in Christ. That’s why we can’t just share communion with anyone who asks. Communion expresses an existing unity in faith. It’s not a tool for creating unity where none exists.
This is different from how a lot of Protestants think about it. Many evangelical churches practice open communion because they see the Lord’s Supper as an individual’s personal moment with Jesus. Some mainline Protestant denominations use communion as a way to build unity, hoping shared bread will bring people together. We see it the other way around. The unity has to be there first, lived out in shared faith and life. Then communion expresses that reality.
It’s also different from the Catholic model, though closer. Catholics emphasize visible unity under the Pope’s authority. We emphasize sacramental unity through shared faith and conciliarity. Our bishops govern together through councils, not under one universal jurisdiction.
The Jurisdictional Mess
Here’s where it gets confusing for newcomers. You’ve got Greek Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox (ROCOR), the Orthodox Church in America, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian. Different names, different bishops, sometimes different languages. Are these different churches?
Not really. They’re different jurisdictions within the one Orthodox Church. Think of them as administrative districts, not separate denominations. The Antiochian Archdiocese traces its authority back to the Patriarch of Antioch, one of the ancient apostolic sees. The Greek Archdiocese relates to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. The OCA is autocephalous, meaning self-governing. But we all share the same faith, the same sacraments, the same apostolic succession.
This setup is messy. It’s a historical accident, really, caused by immigration patterns and ethnic communities trying to preserve their languages. In an ideal world, there’d be one Orthodox bishop in Beaumont, not multiple jurisdictions overlapping. We’re working on it. But the messiness doesn’t mean we’re not in communion. Our bishops recognize each other. You can go to any canonical Orthodox parish and receive the Mysteries.
Who’s Not in Communion
But there are groups that call themselves Orthodox who aren’t part of this communion. Old Calendarists are the most common example. These groups split off over the calendar change in the 1920s when most Orthodox churches adopted the Revised Julian Calendar. Some refused and broke communion. There are various Old Calendarist groups, some more schismatic than others, and the situation varies by country.
There are other splinter groups too. Some formed over jurisdictional disputes. Some over theological controversies. Some over personality conflicts that spiraled out of control. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has written about how tragic these breaks are, how they wound the Body of Christ. But they’re real. And if you’re a catechumen, you need to know that not every church with icons and incense is canonical Orthodox.
Your priest is your guide here. If you’re traveling and want to know whether a particular parish is in communion with us, ask. Don’t assume.
When Communion Gets Complicated
Even among the mainstream jurisdictions, things can get tense. There have been recent disputes over autocephaly, over who has authority where, over geopolitical issues that shouldn’t affect the Church but sometimes do. Bishops sometimes suspend communion with each other over these disputes. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens.
This can be unsettling for converts who come from traditions with clearer organizational charts. You want to know: who’s in charge? Who decides? The Orthodox answer is that Christ is in charge, the Holy Spirit guides the Church, and the bishops work it out together through councils. Sometimes that process is smooth. Sometimes it’s not. We’re a hospital for sinners, remember, not a museum of saints. Even bishops are human.
But here’s what matters for you as an inquirer or catechumen: the vast majority of Orthodox Christians worldwide are in communion with each other. When you’re received into the Orthodox Church at St. Michael’s, you’re joining something that stretches from Beaumont to Beirut to Belgrade to Brisbane. You can visit an Orthodox parish almost anywhere in the world and be home.
That’s not triumphalism. It’s just the reality of what communion means. One faith, one baptism, one cup. We guard it carefully because it matters. Because it’s not ours to negotiate away. Because when we say “in communion,” we mean something real.
If you want to understand this better, pick up Fr. Thomas Hopko’s “The Orthodox Faith” series or Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s “The Orthodox Church.” Both explain how unity works in Orthodoxy without a pope, without a central headquarters, without the organizational clarity Americans tend to expect. It’s messier than we’d like. But it’s held together for two thousand years by something stronger than bureaucracy.
