After the rise of the Bishop of Rome in the fourth century, tensions developed between European Christians in the Latin east and the Greek west. While there were distinct philosophical, racial, cultural, liturgical, and patriarchal concerns between the two branches of European Christianity, both groups accepted the virgin Mary as the Mother of God as decreed by the Council of Ephesus in 431. Political and ecclesiastical rivalries increased tensions until, in 1054, Pope Sergius of Rome and Michael Cerularius the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other. A theological issue which unites both the Roman and the Eastern Orthodox churches is their adoration, devotion, and worship of the virgin Mary.

Claiming to be "the direct heir and true conservator" of the early church, Eastern Orthodoxy has struggled for existence through seemingly endless wars and political upheaval in its host countries. A recent visit to Bosnia confirms this point, as the countryside between Tuzla and Sarajevo is scattered with Eastern Orthodox church buildings which are covered with bullet holes and mostly abandoned. Nearly all ethnic branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church have established dioceses in the United States, composed mostly of immigrants and their descendants. There are more than three million Eastern Orthodox church members in the US, with around one hundred million worldwide.

Theologically, the place of the virgin Mary in Eastern Orthodox doctrine is nearly identical to the traditions and superstitions of Roman Catholic theology. As Wilhelm Niesel stated in The Gospel and the Churches: A Comparison of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism,

The veneration of Mary occupies as important a place in the Orthodox Church as it does in the Roman. This reverence is due to her as the Mother of God and Perpetual Virgin.

The Orthodox churches also venerate Mary as an intercessor for humanity. On the belief of Mary's immaculate conception and her bodily assumption into heaven, the Roman and Orthodox churches have a variation of emphasis, as the Roman Catholics assert that Mary was conceived without original sin and was therefore assumed to heaven sinless upon her death. While the degree of acceptance of these beliefs vary with lay people in the Orthodox churches, official Eastern Orthodox teachings place an emphasis on Mary's perpetual purity and her role as an intercessor.

While both Roman and Eastern Orthodox devotees bow their knees in adoration to images of Mary, the Orthodox liturgy adores icons and not carved statues. Both practices violate the second commandment of not making or bowing to images (Exodus 20:4-5), which was simply summarized in the New Testament by the Apostle John when he stated, "Keep yourself from idols" (1 John 5:21). In Eastern Orthodoxy, an icon is an aid to worship which depicts some prominent figure, often the virgin Mary. While some icons are crude and readily available, other icons are elaborately decorated with jewels and are very expensive. Eastern Orthodoxy endorses a type of "mystical union" between an individual and an icon, often representing Mary. According to Wilhelm Niesel,

The image is not to be separated from the original; a mystical bond unites them. The image shares the nature of the original and the original is present in the image and reveals it. There is a mystical unity of being between what is depicted, and the icon itself; the former inhabits the icon."

The three million Eastern Orthodox in the United States, and the one hundred million worldwide, are taught to attribute to Mary the same mythological superstitions and goddess attributes as those promoted by the Roman Catholic Church. They accept and embrace pagan titles for Mary, such as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven. They impose upon her the attributes of a deity in claiming her to have been sinless, able to answer prayer, and as an object of adoration and worship. This worldwide Eastern Orthodox devotion to a Mary who is foreign to the Scriptures is supported by the numerous reports of icons dedicated to the Virgin, which weep oily tears or drip blood. An example of such an icon is the famous Syrian Madonna and Child icon, commonly referred to as "Our Lady of Damascus," which has numerous accounts of an oily substance oozing from the image and its devotees.

The New Dictionary of Theology, edited by Ferguson, Wright, and packer, describes Eastern Orthodoxy as follows:

It has a strongly mystical flavor, and fights shy of dogmatic definition as much as it can. Its authority is derived from tradition, which includes both the scriptures, decisions of the councils, especially the Nicene Creed, and the Greek Fathers…. Also important are the testimony of the liturgies, which have not been changed for a thousand years, and the veneration of icons, which is more theological in tone than any comparable devotion in the west.

As Eastern Orthodoxy developed over the centuries, the biblical portrait of the mother of Jesus as a simple handmaid of the Lord (Luke 1:48) became overwhelmed. The Mary of the New Testament knew nothing about weeping icons, perpetual virginity, or accepting veneration as the mother of God. Some Eastern Orthodox scholars admit that devotion to Mary has gone too far. For example, R. Langford-James said in A Dictionary of the Eastern Orthodox Church,

The devotion of the Greek Fathers to Our Lady is well-known. The terms they, and the Orthodox theologians after them, use of her are even open at times to the charge of extremism.

Before their separation in 1054, the corruptions that infected Christendom in relation to the mother of Jesus were present both in the western Roman Church and in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The same spoiled seed has blossomed separately in the east and west, yet creating almost identical Marion goddess type devotion, which is totally foreign and contradictory to the Mary of the Bible. Whether in eastern or western European Christendom, historic and contemporary adoration of Mary has more in common with worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis, the Greek goddess Artemis, or the Roman deity Venus, than with the biblical mother of Jesus. Observe the titles given to Mary, and their historic dates, as recorded by C.S. Calian in Icon and Pulpit: the Protestant-Orthodox Encounter.

In Orthodox services Mary is often mentioned, and on each occasion she is usually given her full title: Our All-Holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary. Here are included the three chief epithets applied to Our Lady by the Orthodox Church: Theotokos (Mother of God), Aeiparthenos (Ever-Virgin), and Panagia (All-Holy). The first of these titles was assigned to her by the Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, 431), the second by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 553). The title Panagia, although never a subject of dogmatic definition, is accepted and used by all Orthodox.

A recent phenomena within Eastern Orthodox theology is a whole-hearted support of the worldwide Marion apparition movement. Numerous Eastern Orthodox countries have special affection for the apparitions which occurred in their native lands. For example, the visionaries of Mary in Medugorje in the former Yugoslavia (now Bosnia) are visited by thousands of neighboring Eastern Orthodox Christians each year, from such places as Macedonia, Kosovo, Greece, Albania, Romania, and others. Another example is from the former Soviet Union. In the Ukraine in 1987, a twelve year old girl claimed to see an apparition of Mary on a balcony and later upon an Eastern Orthodox Church dome. Tens of thousands of rural Ukrainian peasants also claimed to see something supernatural. Many Eastern Orthodox Christians claim that these apparitions continue to this day in open-field shrines throughout the Ukraine. But the most influential Marian apparition in an Eastern Orthodox region occurred between 1968-1970 in Zeitun, Egypt.

The people of St. Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church in Zeitun, Egypt accept the legend that their city was the location at which Joseph, Mary, and the child Jesus stopped at while fleeing from the maniacal rage of King Herod (Matthew 2:13-14). Beginning in April of 1968, there was a glowing image seen among the exterior domes of the Coptic Orthodox Church building. The image was of a woman, with glowing lights surrounding her head. Numerous photographs were taken of this event, with thousands of eyewitnesses present. Over the two years of sporadic apparitions, over forty million people visited the site, mostly Eastern Orthodox devotees and a large number of Moslems. Although the apparition did not speak, the local Patriarch validated the experience, stating that in fact Mary had appeared.

The Mary of Roman Catholicism and the Virgin of Eastern Orthodoxy are essentially the same. Rome bows to Marian statues while the Eastern Orthodox bow to her icons. Both traditions adore her, pray to her, and venerate her in gestures of adoration and worship. Both sides accept either weeping statues or icons as legitimate messages from a divine Mary. Both the Roman and Eastern Orthodox traditions eagerly accept Marion apparitions as legitimate revelations from Mary as the Queen of Heaven. In each tradition, Mary is honored in her roles as Mother of God and an intercessor and mediator for humanity. The motto, "To Jesus Through Mary" cries forth from both traditions. Neither Rome nor Eastern Orthodoxy accepts the biblical portrait of Mary. The humble peasant woman of Nazareth has been gradually transformed by accepting into Christendom elements of pagan mythology and superstition. The Mary eagerly embraced by these two traditions is not the same Mary of the New Testament. Rather, she is a historical compilation of heathen goddess attributes absorbed into Christendom by the non-discerning forefathers of both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. These theological aberrations continue to be promoted today.

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