Incredible as it seems,
for nineteen and a half centuries she has continued in her
undiminished and unaltered faith and practice. Today, her
apostolic doctrine, worship, and structure remain intact.
The Orthodox Church maintains that the Church is the living Body
of Jesus Christ.
Many of us are surprised to learn that
for the first 1054 years of Christian history there was just one Church.
It was in the eleventh Century that a disastrous split occurred, resulting in
the Western Church, under the pope, separating itself from the Orthodox Church.
The papacy sought to establish itself over all of Christendom and finally
succeeded in the West, but the rest of the Church rejected this innovation,
knowing no so-called “universal head” apart from Jesus Christ himself.