Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann (Russian: Алекса́ндр Дми́триевич Шме́ман, romanized: Aleksandr Dmitriyevich Shmeman; 13 September 1921 – 13 December 1983) was an influential Orthodox priest, theologian, and author who spent most of his career in the United States.

For 30 years, his sermons in Russian were broadcast by Radio Liberty into the Soviet Union, where they were influential as a voice from beyond the Iron Curtain.

While identifying strongly as Russian, Schmemann sought to make the OCA independent of any ethnic or national group, and open to all peoples.

[1][2] Their grandfather Nikolai Schmemann had been a Lutheran of Baltic German ancestry, who served as a senator and a member of the State Council in St. Petersburg, along with numerous other foreigners.

When Schmemann was a child, his family moved to Paris, France, where, like most children of the large émigré community, he was first educated in Russian-language schools.

During this period, he served as an altar boy and subdeacon at Saint Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, participating in the liturgy and building his life in the church.

In 1943 Schmemann married Juliana Osorguine (also spelled as Osorgina) (1923–2017), whose family after the Revolution had been expelled from their estate, which included the village of Sergiyevskoye (now Koltsovo) south of Moscow.

He also was influenced by major thinkers involved in the theological revival of French Roman Catholicism, such as Jean Daniélou, Louis Bouyer, and several others.

His assignments included working for the Associated Press (AP) and The New York Times in the Soviet Union and, after the dissolution, in Russia for several years.

[3] Schmemann was invited by Father Georges Florovsky, who had briefly taught in Paris after being rescued in 1947 from Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia, to join the faculty of Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, which had been established in 1938 in New York City.

When the seminary moved to its present campus in Crestwood, New York in 1962, Father Alexander was selected for the post of dean, which he would hold until his death.

From beginnings related to colonial Russian missionaries in Alaska, it had expanded through the 20th century to incorporate new immigrant Orthodox populations from Greece and southeastern Europe.

Originally prepared as study guide for the National Student Christian Federation in 1963, it was published anonymously by the underground samizdat in the Soviet Union.

In 2018 the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at St. Michael's College in Toronto offered a course The Liturgical Theology of Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983).