Apostolic Succession: What It Is, and What It Is Not

Apostolic succession is one of the most misunderstood and abused concepts in modern Orthodox discourse. Too often it is reduced to a talking point, a credential to be flashed, or a weapon to exclude. That is not what apostolic succession is, and it is not how the Church has ever lived it.

According to the American Orthodox Catholic Church, apostolic succession is the living continuity of the apostolic faith, preserved through the laying on of hands and safeguarded by the Holy Spirit within the life of the Church. It is not an abstract theory. It is not a bureaucratic endorsement. It is a reality that exists where the Church exists.

This understanding is not modern. It is ancient.

Irenaeus of Lyons writes:

“We can enumerate those who were established as bishops in the churches by the apostles, and their successors down to our own time… by this succession the tradition and preaching of the truth have come down to us.”
(Against Heresies, III.3.1)

Succession, then, is about continuity of faith, not institutional domination.

The AOCC stands fully Orthodox by continuing in an unbroken line of episcopal succession received originally through the Russian Orthodox Church, historically transmitted, canonically preserved, and publicly documented. These lines are not symbolic. They are recorded. They are traceable. It is what the Church has always maintained through what is commonly called the scroll, the documented lineage of bishops stretching back through the ancient sees to the apostles themselves.

This is not mythology. It is how Orthodoxy safeguards memory.

As Eusebius of Caesarea demonstrates throughout his Ecclesiastical History, the Church preserved legitimacy not by abstract claims, but by recorded episcopal succession within living communities.

Our bishops did not emerge in isolation. They were consecrated by bishops who themselves stood in apostolic succession, under canonical authority, and within the recognized Orthodox life of this land. Apostolic succession does not disappear because empires fall, governments change, or administrative centers withdraw.

The canons themselves assume this reality.

Canon 34 of the Apostles states:

“The bishops of every nation must acknowledge him who is first among them… yet neither let him who is first do anything without the consent of all.”

Notice what is assumed: local churches, local bishops, local governance, bound together synodally, not ruled as colonies.

The early Church never functioned as a global bureaucracy.

Local churches were fully Orthodox, fully catholic, and fully apostolic while governing themselves in their own lands. Autocephaly was not rebellion. It was ecclesial maturity.

For us...

Our See is here.
Our soil is here.
Our pastoral responsibility is here.

The AOCC is the American Orthodox Church, not an ethnic enclave and not a colonial extension. This does not place us in opposition to our Orthodox brothers and sisters throughout the world. We honor them. We recognize them. We pray for unity with them. But apostolic succession does not require perpetual subordination to a foreign ecclesiastical administration in order to remain valid.

Cyprian of Carthage makes this unmistakably clear:

“The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each bishop in its entirety.”
(On the Unity of the Church)

Authority is shared, not centralized into supremacy.

Apostolic succession is not broken by geography.
It is not revoked by politics.
And it is not erased by non-recognition.

But succession is not proven by documents alone.

The true test of apostolic succession is the life of the Church itself.

It is seen where the Divine Liturgy is offered faithfully.
Where the sacraments are administered.
Where sins are forgiven.
Where marriages are blessed.
Where children are baptized.
Where the dead are buried in hope.

This is precisely why Saint John Chrysostom warned:

“The Church is not walls and roofs, but the faith and life of the people.”

A dead institution can preserve paperwork.
Only a living Church preserves the apostolic faith.

The AOCC is alive in its parishes, clergy, and communities. Apostolic succession is not an artifact we display. It is something we live.

To add to that, the diversity of clergy within the AOCC is not a weakness. It is evidence of the Gospel itself. The Church has never been sustained by ethnicity, nationality, or bloodline.

As the Apostle Paul proclaims:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
(Galatians 3:28)

This catholicity is not to be mistaken for modern inclusivity. It is apostolic Christianity.

This is not innovation.
This is not reinvention.
This is continuity.

The AOCC continues in the apostolic faith, apostolic ministry, and apostolic succession of the Orthodox Church, without foreign domination and without apology. We exist to serve the people of this land with the fullness of Orthodoxy, faithfully received and faithfully preserved.

Apostolic succession lives where the apostolic faith lives.

And the faith lives here.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen