Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, Canadian chapter

The fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius (FSASS) was founded in 1928 in St. Albans, England following a Student Christian Movement “Anglo-Russian Student Conference”. It followed earlier contact with the Orthodox Church in England, largely of western converts and, by the 1920s, refugees from the Russian Revolution.

The FSASS is dedicated to contact between Eastern and Western Christians, especially Anglicans and Orthodox. It focuses on study and personal contact, with yearly conferences in the UK, and on sharing Eucharistic services. It publishes and distributes a journal, Sobornost.

The Canadian chapter began in 1955 but applications were not sorted out until the following year, when it was officially set up at Trinity College. Beyond Toronto, the FSASS was mainly active in Ontario, with some involvement by the rest of Canada. It seems to have suffered from organizational and administrative difficulties in the early 60s and again in the early 70s, and is currently defunct. It ceased to meet at some time in the mid-1980s, with record-keeping ending before that point.

Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russian, large numbers of Orthodox Christians left Russian and settled in western Europe, where they came into contact with other Christian denominations. One of these refugees, Nicolas Zernov, working with the Student Christian Movement, organized a series of conferences in the English town of St. Albans to bring together Christian students from the Eastern and Western traditions to discuss their similarities and differences. The conference of 1928 is considered to be the origin of the Fellowship, beginning the tradition of an annual conference that features alternating daily Orthodox and Western celebrations of the Eucharist. The two saints chosen as the name of the fellowship reflect the two traditions: St. Alban was England’s first martyr; St. Sergius was a great Russian monastic leader of the 14th century. From its beginning, the Fellowship was primarily a point of contact between Anglicans and Orthodox Christians.
In 1955, a Canadian branch of the Fellowship was established. The honorary presidents were the Lord Bishop of Niagara and Bishop Nikon of the Russian Church. Most of the members were part of the Trinity College community.

2020/05/07