The history of conflict between prophets of Yahweh and the prophets and priests and priestesses of the Canaanite idols and the civil religious apparatus supporting the pantheons of the larger adversaries of Israel (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, etc.) provides a helpful framework for assessing the arguments and behaviors of the devotees of the modern revival of these idols.

Whether the climate control zealots (devotees of the Storm Baals), the LGBTqwerty orthodox (devotees of Astarte), Death Angel Margaret Sanger inspired abortion zealots (devotees of Moloch), or enthusiasts for the messianic warfare/welfare state (various flavors of devotees to the many idols in the pantheon of civil religion, particularly the war gods – Ps 20:7), all of these competing religions appeal to one facet or another of fallen humanity. The ability of the prophets of these human-constructed images of the divine to make progress in wresting control of any center of institutional power, whether civil or ecclesiastical is vividly chronicled in the biblical histories, and in the later history of the Christian communions.

Evidently, Orthodox educational and ecclesiastical institutions have some of the same vulnerabilities as their counterparts in the rest of our polity. How many of their institutions of higher learning have avoided submitting to the regulation of the federal Dept of Education? Has the temptation of access to state-subsidized funding in one form or another (e.g., federal student loan and grant programs) forced open the door to widespread influence within these institutions of representatives of the competing religions? Two references from a non-Orthodox source may helpful in finding escapes from (or at least properly identifying) these threats to cultivating “good soil” for reproduction of the true Word.

I’m not a great fan of Dr. North, whose rhetorical hero is Martin Luther (as illustrated by the excerpts from the blurbs to the free versions of these references). However, his historical references and assessment of their practical significance of resisting the overreaching policies and proponents of our polytheistic messianic state are worth getting to know.

Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church
https://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/243a_47e.htm (for free PDF-formatted version)
https://www.amazon.com/Crossed-Fingers-Liberals-Captured-Presbyterian/dp/0930464745
Crossed Fingers serves as a handbook for the diagnosis and defeat of the same liberal forces that have captured American Christianity. How did they do it? With a vision, with a plan, and with other people’s money. Crossed Fingers shows how they achieved victory in what had been the most theologically conservative large Protestant denomination on earth. It also shows what the conservative Presbyterians could have done, and still have not done, to immunize the Church.

Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism
https://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/21f2_47e.htm (for free PDF formatted version)
https://www.amazon.com/Political-Polytheism-Pluralism-Gary-North/dp/093046432X
In Political Polytheism Dr. Gary North sets forth a challenge to the reigning political philosophy of our day, a philosophy which says that God’s people must remain politically silent, that neutrality is a valid religion, and that the King of history must confine Himself to the home, the church, and the funeral parlor. Everything else belongs to autonomous man, this religion asserts.
Not so, say Dr. North. Everything belongs to the God of the Bible, and the only way that mankind can build a free society and maintain it is to honor this principle in every area of life. Political Polytheism pulls no punches. It takes on all comers: humanists, Christian philosophers, and historians. Especially historians. Dr. North, himself a trained historian, shows how a conspiracy of silence has joined with another conspiracy-first, to capture the government, and then to rewrite American history.
Political Polytheism challenges the myth of neutrality, the myth of political pluralism, and the myth of the Constitutional Convention. There has never been a book like it. The book is designed to launch the hottest political debate since 1787. It asks the most controversial political question that can be asked today: If there is no such thing as neutrality, then whose law should rule supreme, God’s or man’s? For two centuries, American Christians have refused even to ask the question, let alone answer it.

Yes

From ancient times, homosexuals have held that marriage between man and woman is a very inferior thing compared to homosexual unions. Homosexuals can get the State to marry them, so why do they further demand that the Church do it, except to subvert some teaching of the Church? So if homosexual unions can be “married” within the Church, then how does this change the imagery of Christ as bridegroom and the Church (female entity) as bride? Would it eliminate the echatological vision of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb altogether? These subverters are presenting issues to the Church piecemeal in order to slowly change it. I think we need to look deeper to see what their ontological end game is and fight them from there.

Years ago, when I was living in Miami, I met an Orthodox female convert after the Liturgy who was on her way to an Orthodox convent to become a nun. She told me her story of how she was a feminist who was planning to become an Episcopal “priestess.” I cannot recall the entire story but I remember vividly one thing she said. On a piece of paper an Orthodox friend of hers drew the globus cruciger (a cross atop a circle), the symbol of Christ’s dominion over the world, also used by Christian monarchs. Then her friend inverted the symbol which showed the world over the cross, which happened to be the gender symbol (Venus) for woman. She told me when she saw that she was horrified and changed her feminist attitude. She converted to Orthodoxy and entered the monastic life. Funny how God speaks in various ways to get His point across.

It is interesting to observe that virtually the same folks who are pushing for “dialogue” also support women deacons (and some want women priests), also despise conservative Orthodox priests — who rightly teach the Orthodox Church theology and Scriptural truth — calling them “fundamentalist homophobes”, “women hating misogynists”, and comparing them to ISIS, also believe that “homosexuality is not a sin,” believe in a “gender spectrum” (not man and woman anymore), and many of them are pushing for same-sex couples to be “included into the sacramental life of the Church.”

One of the leaders of this rebellion against God and nature is a defrocked priest (Giacomo Peter J. Sanfilippo) who self-identifies as “gay” and uses the term “same-sex love” and “conjugal love” when talking about “normal love” between homosexuals to confuse the young and teach insanity as normative. Sadly he is supported and celebrated by many other pro-LGBT activists, including some priests and bishops (according to his own boasts.)

2 Peter 2 comes to mind:

2 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber. (2 Peter 2)

18 For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. 19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.

20 For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. 21 For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.” (2 Peter 2)

Maria McDowell apparently finally gave up trying to argue the Orthodox Church to come her way. She’s now an Episcopalian priest and I believe quite married as well. To a woman, of course.

She actually visited the parish I attend now a couple of years ago. I recognized her from Facebook. One of our parishioners is friends with her on Facebook and shares her political and theological opinions; I believe she came to our parish for that reason. But she was Episcopal by then.