Alexander Schmemann

Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann (Алекса́ндр Дми́триевич Шме́ман, Aleksandr Dmitrievich Šmeman; 13 September 1921 – 13 December 1983) was an influential Orthodox priest, theologian, and author who spent most of his career in the United States.

Born in Estonia to émigrés from the Russian Revolution, he grew up primarily in France, where there was a large émigré community in Paris.

Alexander Schmemann was born as one of twin boys in 1921 in Tallinn, Estonia, into a family of Russian émigrés from St. Petersburg.

His twin brother was named Andrei Schmemann.

Their grandfather Nikolai Schmemann had been a Lutheran of Baltic German ancestry, who served as a senator and a member of the State Council in St. Petersburg, along with numerous other foreigners.

After Schmemann married a Russian Orthodox woman, their children were raised in that tradition, as required by the state.

His father Dmitry was studying law when interrupted by the First World War.

He served as an officer of the Imperial Life-Guards, also in St. Petersburg.

After the Revolution broke out, Schmemann fought with the Life-Guards and other anti-Bolshevik forces, but they were ultimately pushed into Estonia, where they disbanded.

When Schmemann was a child, his family moved to Paris, France, where, like most children of the large émigré community, he was first educated in Russian-language schools.

There were tens of thousands of Russians in Paris, generally gathered in St. Petersburg and Moscow-affiliated communities.

But Schmemann also chose to go to a French lycée.

During this period, he served as an altar boy and subdeacon at Saint Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, participating in the liturgy and building his life in the church.

In college, he studied the Orthodox church and Christian history related to the Byzantine and Roman churches more deeply.

At the University of Paris (1940–1945), he wrote a thesis on theocracy and the Eastern Roman Empire.

He began graduate studies at St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute, also in Paris.

In 1943 Schmemann married Juliana Osorguine (also spelled as Osorgina) (1923–2017), whose family after the Revolution had been expelled from their estate, which included the village of Sergiyevskoye (now Koltsovo) south of Moscow.

Her family were also émigrés in Paris, where Russians gathered in St. Petersburg and Moscow-related communities.

The Osorguines attended a small Russian Orthodox Church in Clamart near Paris, known as Saints Constantine and Helen Church.

The couple had three children together in France: a daughter born in 1944, a son Serge Schmemann born in 1945, and another daughter, born in 1948.

All grew up speaking and identifying as Russian, although they also drew from French and American cultures.

After their marriage, Schmemann completed his five-year program of theological studies in 1945 at the St. Sergius Institute.

He studied with the noted Russian theologian, Archprist Sergei Bulgakov, among others.

He also was influenced by major thinkers involved in the theological revival of French Roman Catholicism, such as Jean Daniélou, Louis Bouyer, and several others.

After being educated there in both Russian and French schools and universities, from 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris.

That year he immigrated with his family to New York City to teach at Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary.

On 22 October 1946 Schmemann was ordained to the presbyterate of the Orthodox Church by Vladimir (Tikhonicky).

From 1946–51 he taught church history at St. Sergius Institute in Paris.

Schmemann was invited by Father Georges Florovsky, who had briefly taught in Paris after being rescued in 1947 from Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia, to join the faculty of Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, which had been established in 1938 in New York City.

They moved to the United States in 1951.

Serge Schmemann later became a journalist.

His assignments included working for the Associated Press (AP) and The New York Times in the Soviet Union and, after the dissolution, in Russia for several years.

He and his family immigrated to the United States in 1951.

After moving to the United States (see below), he completed his doctorate at St. Sergius Institute in 1959, with Fr. Nicholas Anassieff and Fr. John Meyendorff acting as examiners.

In 1962 he was selected as dean of the Seminary, serving in this position until his death.

For 30 years, his sermons in Russian were broadcast by Radio Liberty into the Soviet Union, where they were influential as a voice from beyond the Iron Curtain.

Schmemann was among the leaders in forming the Orthodox Church in America as an autocephalous institution, which status it gained from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1970.

While identifying strongly as Russian, Schmemann sought to make the OCA independent of any ethnic or national group, and open to all peoples.

He believed the Orthodox Church had a mission to the West.

In his teachings and writings, he explored the many ways that Christian liturgy was an expression of Christian theology.