phyletism
phyletism noun: the doctrine and practice of organizing churches along exclusive and nationalist lines, condemned as heretical by the Council of Constantinople in 1872.
Noun
phyletism (uncountable)
- The doctrine and practice of organizing churches along exclusive and nationalist lines, condemned as heretical by the Council of Constantinople in 1872.
- Its progress in the past years shows that the heresy of phyletism is bound to rescind and that all those who really desire Orthodox unity—without losing anything which is precious and positive in their ethnic traditions—will join us in our common Orthodox witness to the world of today.1977 May, John Meyendorff, “Blind Phyletism”, in The Vision of Unity, published 1987, →ISBN, page 77
- [Soloviev] lamented that phyletism, the division of the church along ethnic, national, or linguistic lines, had become Orthodoxy’s governing ecclesiology despite its official condemnation in 1872.2017, A. Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate, →ISBN, page 375
- Synonyms:
- ethnophyletism
Synonyms of phyletism
Origin of phyletism
Borrowed from Greek φυλετισμός (fyletismós), from φυλέτης (fylétis, “tribesman”) + -ισμός (-ismós, “-ism”).
Questions about phyletism
- What does phyletism mean?
- Phyletism means the doctrine and practice of organizing churches along exclusive and nationalist lines, condemned as heretical by the Council of Constantinople in 1872.
- What part of speech is phyletism?
- Phyletism is a noun.
Words near phyletism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: phyletism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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