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Published by
The Weekly Standard,
August 29, 2005
Three Cheers for the Syrians
(...the ones who just left the National Council
of Churches) |
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By Mark Tooley
LAST MONTH, FOR THE first time in years, a
member denomination withdrew from the National
Council of Churches (NCC). The spunky,
400,000-member communion is the Antiochian
Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America,
and its decision to quit the reflexively
left-wing NCC was based on a unanimous vote of
clergy and lay delegates.
According to one church spokesman, a recent NCC
fundraising letter helped spark the departure.
It asked supporters to fight "right-wing
attacks" on the controversial church agency. The
letter named President Bush, Rush Limbaugh,
James Dobson, and the Heritage Foundation as
insidious forces that must be opposed.
"It got to be too much," Antiochian spokesman
Rev. Thomas Zain told Ecumenical News
International. The NCC, said Zain, has "lost its
goal of Christian unity on a doctrinal basis.
The goal seems to be including everybody and
[promoting] niceties."
Homosexuality, increasingly the bellwether issue
that divides religious traditionalists from
liberals, was also a big factor for the
Antiochians. The Episcopal Church and United
Church of Christ, both pillars of the NCC, have
largely accepted same-sex unions and openly gay
clergy.
Officially, the NCC does not have a stance on
homosexuality. But NCC chief Bob Edgar, a former
Demo-cratic congressman and liberal Methodist
seminary president, leaves little doubt that he
favors same-sex unions. "We just feel we don't
have much in common with the churches" in the
NCC, said Rev. Zain on behalf of the
Antiochians.
Historically comprising mostly Syrian-American
Christians, the Antiochians have in recent years
attracted a number of Protestant converts
impressed by the history and mysticism of
Eastern Orthodoxy. These newcomers are
especially anxious not to follow the liberal
path of mainline denominations.
The NCC's preference for liberal politics, and
its indifference to Christian doctrine, have
made it unappealing to the Eastern Orthodox for
some time. Mainline Protestants founded and
dominate the 55-year-old NCC. The Orthodox
originally saw the group as an avenue for
integrating their ethnic communions into
America's religious mainstream. But the mainline
is no longer mainstream. Only about a quarter of
America's church members belong to NCC
denominations now, as Methodists, Episcopalians,
and Presbyterians shrink in numbers, and
conservative churches grow.
The NCC's relations with its own more
conservative churches have been increasingly
cool for several years. When the NCC nearly went
bankrupt in the late 1990s, the wealthy Orthodox
churches--the Russian, Greek, Serbian, and
Ukrainian, along with other Eastern communions
like the Armenians and Copts--declined to come
to the rescue in any significant way. Although
NCC members from nearly the beginning (the
Antiochians were a founding NCC member), the
Orthodox churches provide almost no funding to
the NCC. Most of its denominational support
comes from United Methodists, Presbyterians, and
Episcopalians.
The mainline Protestants bailed out the NCC and
installed Edgar as the new general secretary six
years ago, hoping he could work fundraising
magic. Although the NCC's income has fallen from
over $10 million to $6 million, Edgar erased the
deficit-spending that was choking the NCC.
Aware that the denominations would provide no
more financial rescues, Edgar changed the NCC's
system of financial support. Instead of
depending on the churches, the NCC is
increasingly funded by left-wing philanthropies,
like the Tides Foundation and the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund, and political advocacy groups,
like the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org.
From the start, Edgar also stressed outreach to
non-NCC constituencies, such as Roman Catholics,
Evangelicals, and Pentecostals, groups that,
unlike the NCC churches, are actually growing.
But the outreach stumbled five years ago when
Edgar quickly withdrew his signature from an
ecumenical "Christian Marriage Declaration,"
which defined marriage as the union of one man
and one woman, and which was endorsed by the
Roman Catholic bishops and the National
Association of Evangelicals.
Under pressure from the NCC's gay caucus, Edgar
explained, "I support more than marriage the
love between two people, and I don't
differentiate whether it is between a man and a
woman or a woman and a woman or a man and a man
or whatever."
Edgar's backflip on marriage was not forgotten
by the Eastern Orthodox and was among the
reasons for the Antiochian decision. The
delegates cheered as the hierarch of the church,
Metropolitan Philip Saliba, announced withdrawal
from the NCC.
"It's the liberalization of the mainline
Protestant denominations over the last several
years," explained the Antiochian interfaith
affairs spokesman Rev. Olof Scott to a radio
interviewer. "Their agendas are driven by gay
issues, the radical feminist agenda, same-sex
marriage. They compromise so much. Our voice has
been totally lost."
Scott complained that the NCC under Bob Edgar
has adopted a "politicized agenda" that "we feel
should not be part of the proclamation of the
church." Edgar's "liberal-left agenda" doesn't
appeal to "people who live in flyover country
who are conservative Christians," noted Scott,
who called the NCC's latest fundraising letter
the "straw that broke the camel's back." The
letter, although sent to churches, says little
about Christianity and a lot about fighting the
"right."
With the NCC increasingly reliant on liberal
foundations and direct-mail campaigns for
funding, Edgar is unlikely to let up on the
shrill political rhetoric. Meanwhile, the
Antiochian withdrawal could have a ripple effect
on other Orthodox churches in the NCC.
The 1 million-member Orthodox Church in America
(Russian Orthodox) convened its All American
Council last month in Toronto, where it received
a proposal to withdraw from the NCC. "The very
politically-oriented theologies of many
Protestant denominations have often threatened
to derail the agenda of the councils away from
dialogue and unity, and towards political
advocacy and activism," said the report from the
church's ecumenical affairs committee. Bishops
of the church will deliberate over the proposal
this fall.
"We don't need the NCC," the Antiochian Church's
Rev. Scott told a radio interviewer. "We are
strong. We are vibrant. We are growing." That is
considerably more than Bob Edgar can say about
the troubled NCC and its declining mainline
members.
Mark D. Tooley directs the United Methodist
committee at the Institute on Religion and
Democracy |
