U.S. Leader’s Outfit for Millennium : Robes Reflect Russian Tradition

Embroiderers in a Los Angeles factory worked for more than five weeks to make a sumptuous set of robes for the head of the Orthodox Church in America to take with him for ceremonies marking the 1,000th anniversary of Christianity in what today is the Soviet Union.

Festooned with hand-painted icons on gold-leaf panels, the $23,000 silk outfit is now somewhere in Moscow with Metropolitan Theodosius, the New York-based spiritual leader of 250,000 Orthodox Christians, whose religion traces back to the faith of the ancient Slavs.

The ceremonial garb is decorated with angels, crosses and onion-dome Russian churches in gold and silver thread. It will be on display during 10 days of celebrations beginning Sunday.

Icons and Rhinestones

The bulbous headpiece is adorned with mini-icons and rhinestone brooches in the shape of crowns. A broad belt, a stole draped in front and in back and a gold-tasseled shield that hangs from the waist help complete the outfit.

The actual design was dictated by strict tradition. On the crown, the icon on the front must show Christ. Mary and John the Baptist go on the left and right sides, with a Crucifixion scene at the back. Miniature portraits of the Apostles Peter and Paul and of Russian Orthodox saints fill in the spaces.

On the broad white sleeves, 14 hand-painted, 4-inch gold-leaf panels show the Archangels Michael and Gabriel and saints including Herman of Alaska, Basil the Great and Innocent the Apostle of America.

“Our biggest problem was getting all the buttons and loops in place,” said William Turbay, president of Martinez & Murphey, a 5-year-old Los Angeles firm that made the garments.

‘Everything Is Prescribed’

“There’s no room for free expression in the design,” he said. “Everything is prescribed according to tradition, and you don’t muck about with their tradition.”

That tradition goes back to the year 988, when a Prince Vladimir is said to have accepted the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity for himself and all his people, known then as the Rus, whose capital was the Ukrainian city of Kiev.

The power of Kiev faded over the centuries, and when Russia re-emerged as a world power the czars had established their capitals at Moscow and St. Petersburg, now Leningrad.

But their religion was still the incense-laden ritual of Eastern Christianity, which Russian explorers and colonizers introduced into North America through their colonies in Alaska and Northern California, starting in 1794.

The church broke its ties with the hierarchy in the newly established Soviet Union in 1924 and reorganized as the Orthodox Church in America after the Moscow Patriarchate declared it autocephalous (independent) in 1970.

Eye for Beauty

“Since that time we have been in communion with the Russian church . . . but we are not dependent in any way,” said Father Leonid Kishkovsky, an official of the church’s headquarters on Long Island, N.Y.

At its services, which are held in English or in the ancient language known as Old Church Slavonic, worshipers stand for hours in ornately decorated sanctuaries that are designed with an eye to involving all the senses in a spiritual experience.

“There is a very strong stress in the Orthodox church on beauty,” Kishkovsky said.

“Things can be seen and touched and the incense is smelled and the music is heard. The music is supposed to be beautiful--sometimes it isn’t, but it’s supposed to be--and the robes are part of that spectrum.”

Drab Reality

In the Soviet Union, he said, the contrast with the often drab reality of daily life gives believers an experience that many would say is “heaven, or at least a taste of heaven,” on Earth.

The contrast is less striking in the United States, but the church has nevertheless attracted so many converts that it is no longer dominated by ethnic Russians.

“I’ve been in this church and there has never been a time when someone is not undergoing instruction to join,” said Father Alexander Lisenko, rector of the Holy Virgin Mary church in East Hollywood.

In fact, seven of the denomination’s 12 active bishops were not born into the faith but joined the church as adults.

While the Orthodox Church in America has about 250,000 dues-paying members, as many as 900,000 worshipers show up for prayers on Easter, the major holiday.

Byzantine Politics

Tracing its history as it does to Eastern Orthodox monks sent from Byzantium, the Orthodox Church in America has found itself involved in some appropriately Byzantine politics over the years.

A rival group, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, founded after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, claims to be the true successor to the church of the czars. This group will have nothing to do with the Moscow Patriarchate, which it sees as a tool of the Communist regime.

Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, exiled head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church who has lived in Rome for 40 years, has denounced the celebrations in the Soviet Union as the usurpation of a historic anniversary that is rightfully Ukrainian, not Russian.

And Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I, the Istanbul-based leader of world Orthodoxy, announced in May that he will not attend the millennial celebrations in the Soviet Union because of the presence of the American and Japanese delegations, both of which were granted autonomy by Moscow without the approval of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Seen as Challenge

“In the eyes of other Orthodox churches, the Russians’ unilateral actions (in chartering the American and Japanese churches) are seen as an attempt to challenge the ecumenical patriarch’s authority and dominate the course of Orthodox Christianity,” a senior Greek Orthodox churchman was quoted as saying.

All these theological complications do not bother Turbay or his partner, Richard G. Rock, both of whom were teachers at Catholic high schools in Los Angeles before they founded Martinez & Murphey.

“We do work for 27 religions, but we’re not a religion ourselves,” said Turbay.