@hesgen Not all Russian Orthodox churches use the old calendar for anything beyond Easter calculations!
@spacehobo I wasn't aware of that, only the differences between the Russian and other Orthodox sects.
@hesgen Incidentally, the Greek church I was also raised in hosted a lot of exile groups' services through the 80s. I remember particularly the Ethiopian services held by people fleeing the famines, and Romanian services when the Hungarian Route opened up.
The Romanian ones were kind of tragic, as it was all fathers, alone: Ceaușescu let them escape, and ransomed their families to them.
@hesgen Anyway, when I was young "calendrics" was one of those "oh man don't get into it" kinds of arguments. My favourite way to needle an old-calendarist was to catch them on what their calendar actually *meant*.
OC: I prefer Christmas in January, when it's separate from the Western commercialism.
Me: But it isn't! It's December 25th!
OC: NOT ACCORDING TO THE CALENDAR USED BY THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS!!!
Me: No, look, there it is, 25 December. It just says that 25 December is 13 days later than the Gregorian calendar claims. Are you using the new calendar to *name* the dates? What does your spiritual father think of that practice?
But I didn't do this very often, as that was basically Fighting Words.
@hesgen Anyway, one reason the entire Orthodox church uses the old calendar to calculate Easter is that the Last Supper was for Passover, and using the new calendar can cause Easter to happen before Passover.
@hesgen There aren't technically that many. I was raised both Greek/Russian Orthodox (long since apostate), and the main difference was the languages the services were held in. The Orthodox view was largely that the Roman Catholic Church was one of five patriarchates that split off and started getting weird a thousand years ago. So there's this "we're all Eastern Europe together" vibe about it sometimes.
That said, there was a minor schism in the Russian church during the existence of the USSR. There was an "Exile Synod" that declared independence from the patriarchate of Moscow, as they feared it was compromised by the Bolsheviks. They called themselves ROCOR in English-speaking countries (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) and they stuck to a lot of Old Ways (old calendar for everything, only Slavonic in services, etc.)
There are a lot of these "preserving the old ways" sects abroad. Here in London, they often refer to them as "Autocephalous", such as the Serbian church by Gunnersbury Station. This just means they're not in communion with the larger council of patriarchates.
By contrast, the church my parents were married in was built with large donations from the local Greek church, and was named St. Spiridon in honour of that patronage. It also built crescents under the crosses on the roof, as a symbol of gratitude for the religious tolerance of Christianity under the rule of the Ottoman Turks.
That said, a lot has happened in Russia in the past few decades that I haven't kept up on, and it seems that the church is a real focal point for fascism these days. It was a different feeling during the cold war, really.