St. Andrew's Church in Moscow is a community of Christians who seek to
- nurture the development of our faith through an Anglican form of worship, providing regular services which communicate the Gospel of Christ;
- apply our Christian beliefs to our daily lives;
- develop a community to support each other while living in Moscow;
- encourage ecumenical initiatives and activities;
- serve the community
Anglican Orthodox Centre
In 2003, St. Andrew's Anglican Church received a grant from the Fellowship of St. Alban & St. Sergius in Oxford in the United Kingdom to renovate the tower of the church building for use as a library by the Biblical Theological Institute of St. Andrew. Called by the Russian acronym, BBI, the institute maintains a library of some 5,000 theological books by authors including Orthodox, Catholic, Mainline Protestant and Anglican theologians. These volumes, many of them in the English language, are today housed in the bell tower of St. Andrew's Anglican Church.
Prior to the Russian revolution, the Victorian and Edwardian English community in Moscow had used this same bell tower of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church for storage, and especially as a vault for valuables. Bells had never been installed in the tower, as the ringing of bells by non-Orthodox churches was not allowed. During the Russian Revolution the vault boxes were confiscated and one of the tower rooms used as a machine gun nest by the Bolsheviks. Bullet holes still scar the window frames in what today is a quiet reading and meditation room with a panoramic view of central Moscow and the Kremlin.
BBI's library at St. Andrew's today comprises a reading room, an office and rooms where books are stored for retrieval by a staff librarian. In addition to its unique library, BBI also translates into Russian and publishes the works of major theologians outside of Russia, including those of the current and former Archbishops of Canterbury.
It was against this background that St. Andrew's Anglican Church, BBI, and the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius undertook to engage in a dialogue to create an Anglican-Orthodox Education Centre — the very first in Christendom! Since 2006, this dialogue has resulted in series of public lectures bringing together noted theologians and scholars from Russia and abroad to discuss current theological issues and foster understanding between the Orthodox and the Anglican Communions.
Persons interested in the Anglican-Orthodox Education Centre are invited to contact the chaplain.
BBI (Biblical-Theological Institute of St Andrew) have their own website.
