NCC

Why Do Eastern Orthodox Churches Continue Enabling Opposition to Orthodox Values on Abortion, Sexual Morality?

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It’s biting criticism folks — but all true. From the essay:

What I have observed rather consistently (and had this confirmed by other trustworthy observers) is that Eastern Orthodox leaders participating in NCC meetings have shown little to no interest in openly defending Christian values (particularly on life and sexuality) when confronted by the aggressively secular values of Liberalprotestantism, instead choosing to remain meekly passive. This includes what I have observed of those few Eastern Orthodox individuals who have obtained staff or leadership positions in the council.

My response to the full essay (published on Juicy Ecumenicism) blog is reprinted below. The essay is excerpted. Read the full essay on the Juicy Ecumencism blog.

Source: Juicy Ecumenicism | John Lomperis

Christian churches of any sort are right to be careful and thoughtful about the specific causes and organizations to which they do and do not give their public support, as such decisions are important part of what they tell a watching world about their faith and about the triune God. And if a church cannot or will not take the time to examine what a given organization actually does, it makes little sense to bestow a blank-check ecclesial endorsement on the organization’s activities.

So what exactly is accomplished by most of Eastern Orthodoxy in the United States being affiliated with the National Council of Churches (NCC)?

First, we must ask what the effective purpose of the NCC is today. Its member communions include neither the Roman Catholic Church nor more than an increasingly narrow fraction of American Protestants. Given its growing narrowness, penchant for divisive rhetoric, and the rather unloving, disdainful ways in which NCC leaders take pains to distance themselves from other Christians, especially evangelicals, it is clear that the NCC’s noble founding goal of Christian unity is not much of a priority for current NCC leaders.

The NCC has served a purpose in the past with its New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) Bible translation and its annual Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. But the former is a fait accompli while the latter represents only a tiny fraction of the NCC’s work. So neither of these is the council’s raison d’être.

No, the first and foremost effective purpose of the modern NCC is to promote the values of theologically liberal/heterodox Protestantism and to use the name and resources of churches as a politically convenient tool to promote partisan public-policy agendas, including ones that directly oppose clear Scriptural teachings.

Devout Eastern Orthodox prize their church’s identity as the bearer of what they see as unbroken Christian tradition. Of course, important parts of this tradition’s moral teachings are the basic Christian moral values of valuing the lives of unborn children and honoring the God-given boundaries of sex only within man-woman marriage.

Yet over the years, IRD has documented numerous instances of the NCC defending abortion and/or homosexual practice while demonizing those who stand up for Christian values (at least nominally shared by Eastern Orthodox leaders) on such issues. To say nothing of the over-the-top interpersonal rudeness that NCC staffers have been known to aim at Christians who do not share their liberal Protestant values.

[. . .]

Do Eastern Orthodox leaders really have no problem with the direction and values of a church council of which they are a part being shaped by the input of people who deny the divinity of Christ, while Protestants who actually believe in the Nicene Creed are often disproportionately excluded from such discussions in the NCC? Do Eastern Orthodox leaders really have no problem with their name, through the NCC, being associated with a radical group’s work to promote religious support for abortion and sexual immorality?

If Eastern Orthodox leaders choose to remain silent, this would tragically be consistent with their past behavior.

[. . .]

As any Greek readers may discern from my last name, Eastern Orthodoxy is part of my own family heritage. So I really do sympathize with how important it must have been decades ago for religious leaders of struggling new immigrant communities in an often very intolerant America to be invited to have a seat at the table with leaders of the cultural mainstream. But after a century of an established presence of Eastern Orthodoxy in America, shouldn’t such church leaders want more than merely being seen but not heard?

Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and other Eastern Orthodox members of the NCC could follow the example of their Antiochian Orthodox brethren by withdrawing their membership in the NCC and pursuing other areas of ecumenical engagement, a move that would be enthusiastically cheered by countless conservative Protestants within and beyond NCC member communions (including this United Methodist writer). Or they could try to use their seats at the table to seek genuinely meaningful dialogue by respectfully yet firmly challenging tablemates who have recently strayed from biblical moral values. At the very least, they could pro-actively make sure that as long as the council uses their names, the NCC will not say or do anything against Eastern Orthodox moral teaching.

[. . .]

But America’s NCC-endorsing Eastern Orthodox leaders (with the notable exception of the Antiochian Orthodox) have, by and large , chosen none of these things. Instead, they choose to continue their path of having no discernible moderating influence on the council (and having little to no apparent interest in doing so) while offering a blank-check endorsement of the NCC’s work, which the NCC’s Liberalprotestant staffers are all too eager to tout as a tool to shield the council from being dismissed as the decaying, ideologically narrow, Liberalprotestant dinosaur that it is.

[. . .]

Of course, I understand that Eastern Orthodox polity is fundamentally different from any Protestant body, and that, to the disappointment of the NCC and its allies like the Unitarian-led Religious Institute, no official Eastern Orthodox body is going to formally vote to, say, endorse abortion. And for what it’s worth, it is now widely agreed that the United Methodist Church is unlikely to change our official, conservative position on homosexuality for at least the foreseeable future.

But in both cases, there is a huge crisis of integrity when the church leadership chooses to shrink back from defending the very church values their offices charge them with promoting, and even passively allow their church’s name to be used to promote agendas directly contrary to the church’s own teachings.

Among U.S. leaders of both the United Methodist Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, there appear to be a number of leaders who love the Lord and accept the authority of Scripture, to whom God has given great opportunities to be witnesses for Christ and Christian truths affirmed in the on-paper position statements of both churches, but who inexplicably choose to bury their talents in the ground.

Read the entire article on the Juicy Ecumenicism blog.

My response:

This is a very fair critique of Orthodox involvement in the NCC. I would only add this clarification: most lay Orthodox simply have no knowledge of the NCC. They wouldn’t know what you were talking about if you mentioned it to them.

Nevertheless, it is still irresponsible for Orthodox leaders to lend the imprimatur of legitimacy to an organization that aggressively champions policies that violate the Orthodox moral tradition. The NCC’s love affair with tyrants is well known to anyone who has followed them over the years. In fact, after Communism fell then NCC General Secretary Joan Campbell Brown issued a collective apology for not doing enough to help the persecuted under Communist oppression.

Lomperis is also correct in his claim that the Orthodox who remained on the NCC have no moderating influence on NCC leadership. There were historical reasons* for Orthodox involvement in the NCC but they have long faded from relevance. The only reasonable explanation for continued involvement is that the leaders don’t mind being used (they trade the Orthodox imprimatur for the false patina of constructive cultural engagement) or they are simply clueless about the contribution that the Orthodox Church could and should make to the renewal of Christendom’s cultural foundations especially in America.

*I wrote an essay for Touchstone Magazine a while back that explains some of the historical reasons for early NCC involement that fits well with Lomperis’ fair and informed critique:

NCC Exit Poll: Why One Orthodox Church Left the National Council of Churches

Soros Money to Fund NCC Lobbying Efforts

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Source: Institute for Religion and Democracy

The National Council of Churches will be using grant money from atheist billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute to power its political agenda on Capitol Hill.

Even while sinking financially, the National Council of Churches – a group with the ostensible mandate to engender unity between disparate Christian denominations – continued its leftward track last week as its governing board met in New York City to discuss its advocacy initiatives for the coming fiscal year. The NCC has been forced to pare down its staff roster and budget for years in order to account for declining revenues from member denominations and foundations, and has had a history of making up these deficits by soliciting grants from politically charged, liberal institutions (to download IRD’s exposé of the NCC’s financing, click here).

Several left-leaning resolutions, including those aiming to promote relaxed immigration policies, were passed and other positions, such as its largely pacifist stance on the use of American military force and opposition to federal austerity measures, were affirmed. The grant from Soros’ Institute would be used specifically for its advocacy efforts to restructure the U.S. criminal justice system through the National Criminal Justice Commission Act (S. 306).

Pacifism Endorsed

Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary of the NCC, reiterated the Council’s opposition to U.S. conducted anti-terrorist operations.

Kinnamon lauded the World Council of Churches’ Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV), an initiative that was by and large very critical of U.S. military intervention in most of its forms over the past decade, particularly its anti-terrorist activities. Several representatives from the NCC were present for the WCC’s International Ecumenical Peace Convocation which began in Jamaica last week. The convocation aims to be a capstone to the WCC’s campaign to “eliminate global violence” – an initiative that has heavy-handedly scrutinized the U.S.’s military role in the world while largely skirting that of terrorist organizations and oppressive dictatorships.

“I hope that this convocation will remind us that peace is the message of all of our communions, not just the Friends, Brethren, and Mennonites,” said Kinnamon.

“There are various dimensions to our agenda that play in this” convocation, Kinnamon continued, citing causes the NCC has promoted such as the complete disarmament of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, scaling up of gun controls in the U.S., and the push to end U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The NCC will be presenting its study paper released last year, Christian Understanding of War in an Age of Terror(ism), which treats the Christian historical teaching of just war with skepticism and “seeks to make selective conscientious objection a priority for education and advocacy during the next five years.”

Attached to the paper is a study guide written by several NCC-affiliated members from Church of the Brethren, Mennonite and Quaker traditions.

“US military spending is more than 40% of the world’s total – equal to the next sixteen countries combined,” reads the study paper. “What future do we see for the cozy relationship between American Christians and the American imperial project?” The paper goes on to criticize the War on Terror as a “conflict with no clear beginning, without demarcated boundaries, against multiple (often invisible) adversaries… In this war, we soon encounter the limits of violence.”

Kinnamon noted that this was not the first time the Council has advocated conscientious objection. “I was told this of course would be a real stretch,” he said, “only to learn that the governing board of the National Council first endorsed selective conscientious objection in 1967, in the middle of the War in Vietnam.”

“We have struggled with this issue over the years, let’s struggle with it again,” Kinnamon said.

Specific resolutions spelling out the NCC’s “conscientious objector” stance on military service will be set before the Council during its September governing board meeting that will reflect conversations held at the Jamaican convocation, said Kinnamon. “We are likely to hear repeated assertions out of the anniversary of 9/11 of our need for security. What can we say about it?” he said.

Although historically critical the U.S. War on Terror, the NCC did release a statement following bin Laden’s death, calling it a “significant moment” in history but insisting the church should not “celebrate the loss of life under any circumstances.” While noting that “ultimate justice for this man’s soul – or any soul – is in the hands of God,” the statement did not explicitly address the state’s historical role in administering God’s justice.

The Council similarly never released a statement condemning or supporting Obama’s decision to involve the U.S. in the conflict in Libya.

Links to George Soros

The Justice and Advocacy Commission (JAC), the NCC’s lobby office in Washington, was busily at work on the Hill this year. According to the JAC’s report, the Commission pushed heavily for ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), wrote letters to the president condemning Israeli settlements in Palestine, and helped pass a resolution calling for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

The NCC’s Faith and Action Criminal Justice Working Group was awarded a grant from leftist billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute to advocate on behalf of a bill that would seek to restructure the current U.S. criminal justice system. The money would specifically be used to cover all expenses, including air travel, for faith activists to promote the legislation on Capitol Hill on June 15^th and 16^th this year.

The working group also advocated for tighter control laws to cut down on domestic gun violence.

“Tackling that problem is going to be a priority for the National Council of Churches,” said NaKeisha Sylver, advocacy officer and staff member of the NCC’s Racial Justice Working Group. According to the JAC’s report before the board, the NCC has organized two national conference calls pushing for more stringent gun laws since adopting a gun control resolution last May.

“Circle of Protection” Promoted

Michael Livingston, former NCC president and current director of the NCC’s Poverty Initiative, heartily endorsed the religious left’s push to maintain government spending levels, naming the NCC as a cosigner of the “Circle of Protection” campaign driven by evangelical left pundit Jim Wallis and other religious activists in Washington.

Livingston fretted about congressional measures to bring down the deficit, complaining that the discussion has been focusing on budgetary austerity measures “that will unleash across-the-board cuts on government’s affecting the most vulnerable among us.”

“What the religious advocacy commission in Washington DC is trying to do is to change the nature of that discussion, so that we’re not talking exclusively about what in the domestic and international arena can be cut,” said Livingston,” but rather ways of generating revenue so that, honestly, not one single dollar of cuts to these programs really needs to be made.”

John McCullough, CEO of Church World Service, likewise called the proposed cuts “entirely too much, too deep for a nation that commits less than one percent for humanitarian assistance and poverty-focused foreign aid.”

Immigration Summit Planned

The Council passed a motion that would reconstitute its immigration task force, which will be charged with setting up a summit to gather advocates for relaxed U.S. immigration controls. The original group, created in 2008, was a joint task force of the NCC and Church World Service established to “disseminate theological and educational materials to congregations, support churches in serving immigrants, and [to] encourage churches to advocate with government for improved immigration policies,” which has usually translated into measures for general amnesty.

The task force counts immigration activist and United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño among its members and has thus far operated without internal funding from the NCC.

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Progressive Christianity’s habit of ‘Embracing the Tormenters’

Orthodoxy: A Fertile Faith

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When a recent coffee hour conversation turned, unexpectedly, to politics and what if anything the Church has to say about public issues and then all of the “God talk” in the current presidential contest, a friend said, “Oh, that’s politics. The Orthodox Church shouldn’t get involved in politics. Nothing good can come of it.”

Well, yes and no.

If we’re talking about partisan politics then yes, of course, the Church must stay out of it. The Church was not founded to endorse candidates for office or advance a political ideology. But if we’re talking about the political dimensions of important moral issues, then yes, of course, the Church may quite properly speak to these. Did we notice that there is something going on in California about marriage? Were political institutions involved? Do we recall the 2003 Statement on Moral Crisis on Our Nation issued by SCOBA?

I wonder if some Orthodox Christians wish that the faith could somehow remain removed from politics and other worldly issues. That it stand apart, a walled-off sphere of piety that you visit for a couple hours a week as if you were visiting some sort of Museum of Religion. To be clear about it, the Church does not exist to issue opinions about every political or policy question under the sun, nor is it competent to do so. But on significant moral questions, it’s voice must be heard. Does that drag the Body of Christ into the mud of politics? Here’s a better way to ask the question: Is abortion a political issue? (Remember something called Roe v. Wade?) How about war, or poverty, or the death penalty, or business ethics, or pornography, or the morality of popular culture. Any of these affected by politics?

I have a theory, or really just a hunch, about the reticence among some Orthodox Christians to discuss political or policy issues through the lens of Church teaching. Maybe it’s because these discussions will lead to conclusions and positions that look a lot like those of other conservative Christian groups. Dare I say it? The Christian Right. Wouldn’t that throw the Orthodox in with the wrong sort of conservatives? What would our progressive co-members at the National Council of Churches say to such an unvarnished display of conservative sentiment? Where is the nuance!

In his “455 Questions and Answers” book, published by Light & Life in 1987, Fr. Stanley Harakas took on the subject of the Moral Majority, and the lack of support among Orthodox Christians for its programs. But, paradoxically, he also pointed out how many of its moral positions on issues were consistent with the moral tradition of Orthodoxy. A clear divergence, however, was the Moral Majority’s uncritical support for Israel, something that Fr. Stanley said is opposed by many Greek, Lebanese and Arab Orthodox Christians.

He concludes his observation with this:

The main point I have tried to make is that I think that it is time we Orthodox Christians formed our own organization to speak to these public moral issues from an Orthodox Christian perspective. I would very much like to hear from priests and lay people about this idea.

Well, Fr. Stanley, your wish has come true. The American Orthodox Institute was founded “to speak to these public moral issues from an Orthodox Christian perspective.”

Olivier Clement, in an essay published in 1973, warns us against an “orientalized” or ritualistic conception of the Church:

The Orthodox Church again is by no means a museum of the first thousand years of Christianity. The dimension of fatherhood, so strong in Orthodoxy (which, thank God, frees it from any evolutionist idea of Tradition) may tempt her to think that the Fathers have said everything and that is only remains to repeat them. This doubtless explains the excessive confidence of some prelates for whom truth is an object possessed. But Father Florovsky reminded us, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of Palamas, that the notion of ‘father’ is not at all limited to the period called ‘Patristic,’ that Saint Gregory Palamas was a ‘Church Father’ in the fourteenth century, and The Fathers beget us in the faith that we in our turn might become fathers, that is free creators, in the continuity of the same Spirit. The word of the Fathers is a logos spermatikos: it does not crush, it fertilizes.

You fertilize things that are alive and growing. You do not fertizile things that are dead or petrified. And if the Tradition is to make sense to us in the here and now, we must till the soil and plant the seeds of a living faith. It is a big garden. It is not a museum.

A note to readers: The AOI team is preparing to launch an all new Web site for Clarion Review, with new features and exclusive online content. We are also working on a redesign of the main site, less than a year from its initial launch. The Monitor, the new AOI newsletter which will debut in the coming days, already has a hundreds of readers opting in for free subscriptions (you can sign up on the AOI main page), And you will see this blog is expanding its reach with new writers and timely posts on Orthodox Christian life in the “public square.” Stay tuned!

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