Orthodox Church in America

In “Orthodox bishop on hot spot,” Terry Mattingly looks at the improbable rise of Metropolitan Jonah — in the span of about 10 days — from newly consecrated assistant bishop of Dallas to head of the Orthodox Church in America. Snip:

If nationwide change is going to happen, said Jonah, it will have to grow out of respect and cooperation at all levels of the church.

“Hierarchy is only about responsibility, it’s not all of this imperial nonsense,” he said. “Thank God that we’re Americans and we have cast that off. We don’t need foreign despots. We are the only non-state Orthodox church. In other words, we are the only Orthodox church that does not exist under the thumb of a state — either friendly or hostile.

“So the church is our responsibility, personally and collectively, individually and corporately. What are you going to do with it?”

In June, Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America delivered a talk on “Episcopacy, Primacy, and the Mother Churches: A Monastic Perspective” at the Conference of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius at St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary. The audio of the talk is available on Ancient Faith Radio along with the other presentations from the conference. The PDF version of Metropolitan Jonah’s presentation is available on the OCA site, where the Church is also archiving his articles and speeches.

On the subject of the Mother Churches and the “Diaspora,” Metropolitan Jonah has this to say:

… almost all national Churches have extended their jurisdictions beyond their geographic and political boundaries to the so-called diaspora. But Orthodox Christians who are faithful to the Gospel and the Fathers cannot admit of any such thing as a diaspora of Christians. Only ethnic groups can be dispersed among other ethnic groups. Yet the essential principle of geographic canonical boundaries of episcopal and synodal jurisdiction has been abrogated, and every patriarchate, every mother Church, now effectively claims universal jurisdiction to serve “its” people in “diaspora.” Given this fact, on what basis do we object to the Roman Papacy?

This situation arose in reaction to the mass emigration of Orthodox from their home countries, and is continued as a means of serving the needs of these immigrant communities. It is perpetuated as a means of maintaining ethnic, cultural and political identity for those away from their home country; but also as a means of financial support for the mother churches from their children abroad.

The confusion of ethnic identity and Orthodox Christian identity, expressed by competing ecclesiastical jurisdictions, is the incarnation of phyletism. Due to this confusion of the Gospel with ethnic or political identities, multiple parallel communities, each with its own allegiance to a foreign mother church, divide the Orthodox Church in North America and elsewhere into ethnic and political denominations. This distorts the Apostolic vision, and has severely compromised the catholicity of the Orthodox Churches, in which all Christians in a given territory are called to submit to a local synod of bishops.

The problem is not so much the multiple overlapping jurisdictions, each ministering to diverse elements of the population. This could be adapted as a means of dealing with the legitimate diversity of ministries within a local or national Church. The problem is that there is no common expression of unity that supersedes ethnic, linguistic and cultural divisions: there is no synod of bishops responsible for all the churches in America, and no primacy or point of accountability in the Orthodox world with the authority to correct such a situation.

Terry Mattingly has been following the news coverage (non-coverage?) of the election of Metropolitan Jonah to lead the Orthodox Church in America and flags a story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Reporter J.M. Brown offered this:

Longtime friends from Santa Cruz County said the 49-year-old bishop has the ability and humility to serve the entire church, which means ironing out a well-publicized financial scandal involving misuse of church funds and bridging gaps between various sectors of the orthodox faith, including the Greek, Arab and Russian Orthodox churches.

“His election points to a very strong determination to change the way things have been done in the past,” the Rev. Mel Webber, the pastor of Prophet Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Santa Cruz for 11 years, said in a phone interview from Pittsburgh Thursday. “He’s got the skills to become one of the most enlightened leaders this church has seen in a long time.”

The Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute, based in Berkeley, Calif., has released what it is calling “the first national survey based study of the laity, ordinary church members, in the two largest Orthodox Churches in the United States: the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOA) and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).”

To a significant degree, PAOI said, the study reflects the profile of an entire Orthodox community in the United States.

“The Orthodox Church Today” study addressed four broad questions:

— What is the “image” of the Orthodox clergy in the eyes of the “people in the pews?”
— To what extent do the social and religious attitudes of the ordinary parishioners reflect those of their parish priests?
— What do church members think about patterns of Church life in their local parishes?
— What do laity think about various issues dealing with “Democracy and Pluralism in the chirch,” “Changes and Innovations in the Church,” and “religious “Particularism’ and Ecumenism?”

PAOI also compared Orthodox Church life to Roman Catholic and various Protestant Churches in the United States.

From the highlights summary:

1) The common stereotype is that the Orthodox Churches in the USA are “ethnic” Churches of certain immigrant communities. The study shows that this not the case anymore. Nine out of ten parishioners in both GOA and OCA are American-born. Further, today, more than one-quarter (29%) of the GOA and a majority of OCA (51%) members are converts to Orthodoxy – persons born and raised either Protestants or Roman Catholics.

2) Not all Orthodox are equally “Orthodox.” The study found that the gaps between the “left” and the “right” wings in American Orthodoxy are wide and that American Orthodox Christians are deeply divided among themselves in their personal “micro-theologies.” Answering the question “When you think about your theological position and approach to church life, which word best describes where you stand?” the relative majority (41%) of church members preferred to be in the safe “middle” and described their theological stance and approach to church life as “traditional.” At the same time, quite sizeable factions identified themselves as
being either “conservative” (28%) or “moderate-liberal” (31%).
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