Orthodox Church of Estonia

Orthodox Church of Estonia
Founder	—
Independence	1923
Recognition	1923, 1996 by Constantinople
Primate	Stephanos of Tallinn
Headquarters	Tallinn, Estonia
Territory	Republic of Estonia
Possessions	—
Language	Estonian
Members	20,000
Website	Orthodox Church of Estonia

The Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church (Estonian: Eesti Apostlik-Õigeusu Kirik) is an Orthodox church whose primate is confirmed by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Under Estonian law it is the legal successor to the pre–World War II Estonian Orthodox Church, which in 1940 had had over 210,000 faithful, three bishops, 156 parishes, 131 priests, 19 deacons, two monasteries, and a theological seminary; the majority of the faithful were ethnic Estonians. Its official name is Orthodox Church of Estonia.

The current primate of the church is Stephanos, Metropolitan of Tallinn and all Estonia, elected in 1999.

Orthodox missionaries from Novgorod and Pskov were active among the Estonians in the southeast regions of the area, closest to Pskov, in the 10th through 12th centuries. In the beginning of the 13th century, however, Estonia was conquered by the Northern Crusades, and thus fell under the control of Western Christianity. Little is known about the history of the church in the area until the 17th and 18th centuries, when many Old Believers fled there from Russia to avoid the liturgical reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Estonia was a part of the Russian Empire. In the 1850s a rumour spread that the Orthodox Church promised to provide everybody who converted to Orthodoxy a piece of land of their own somewhere in Russia. Some 65,000 Estonian peasants were converted to the Orthodox faith in the hope of obtaining land, and numerous Orthodox churches were built. Later, when the rumour turned out to be a hoax, a great part of the new Orthodox peasants returned to the Lutheran Church.

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