Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Archdiocese of America has been, to put it mildly, controversial since his enthronement. Marching with BLM, advocating multiple spoons at communion, seeming to endorse Joe Biden during a prayer at the DNC, and now his speech on The Future of Orthodox-Catholic Relations in the U.S.A. There has been a lot of reaction to the speech. You can read it and/or watch the speech here. The speech has gotten both positive and negative reviews. Some of those defending the speech said that while many barriers to union exist, it is good for us to at least be on a journey together with the Roman Church. Those questioning the speech are often concerned that the Ecumenical Patriarchate is trying to push through a union with Rome that will compromise the Orthodox Faith.
We will leave the discussion on the wisdom of ecumenical dialogue with Rome for another day, as concern over it was not really our first reaction to this speech. Our first reaction was sheer confusion. How can the Greek Archbishop hope to unite with Rome, when we can’t even bring unity between multiple Orthodox jurisdictions in North America? For a century now, we have had multiple Orthodox bishops ruling over the same cities while their parishes pretend, for the most part, as if their fellow Orthodox Christians do not even exist.
Father Josiah Trenham, in an insightful video, had this to stay about our current jurisdictional nightmare:
As long as we continue to live in these unorthodox jurisdictions, we are trivializing ourselves in the face of the American nation and we are showing that we do not have the love that is sufficient, which is the love of Christ, for each other. We have made no progress towards Church unity. The state of the Churches today, the Orthodox Churches, in relationship to each other in America is far worse than when I converted almost 30 years ago. And it was already going down from the 70’s, which was kind of a peak. I encounter this question of our divisions with our converts constantly. Many converts are simply turned away once they find out that we are content to live apart from each other. That Orthodox believers who hold the same faith don’t actually live together, pastorally speaking, in a common diocese because there are multiple bishops in all of our cities, all of our major cities. This is a humongous false witness .It’s a witness to a faith that is not Orthodox. This is intolerable.
When a priest who has devoted his life to converting Americans to the Orthodox Church describes her situation as “intolerable,” then we all need to pay attention. But it is precisely this “intolerable” situation that no one seems to be addressing. The Greek Archbishop happily spends an hour talking about the need to unite two religious bodies at odds for a millennium over a host of Theological and dogmatic issues. But His Eminence never seems to find the time to discuss uniting disparate jurisdictions who actually all share the same Orthodox Faith.
Whether ecumenical dialogue with Rome is a good idea, a bad idea, or just an idea, our separation from Rome is not “trivializing ourselves in the face of the American nation.” Dividing Orthodoxy into multiple, competing jurisdictions is. The divisions harm evangelism, retard the development of viable local communities, make Orthodoxy appear “foreign,” keep our Church in America focused on foreign events, tie up financial resources through duplication of efforts, and ironically, harm Roman Catholics. The ongoing collapse of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has encouraged many traditionalist Catholics to consider converting to Holy Orthodoxy. As soon as they make that interest known, they are frequently challenged by other Catholics with the question, “Which Orthodox Church are you going to join?” Whether we are united in one Faith or not, our differences are turning away hurting, lost people who desperately need the Orthodox Church.
And we apparently are just fine with this situation, even though we shouldn’t be. As Father Josiah made clear, our current situation is unorthodox and it is intolerable. As the Orthodox Faithful, we have to stop accepting an intolerable state of affairs and pretending it is just normal. We all know it isn’t.
In the United States, we are facing daily riots. We are facing church restrictions or closings in many states, even as other states open up fully. The coming election promises to bring more violence and confrontation. Mainstream political operators and commentators are actively talking about potential civil war or an attempted “color revolution” resulting from an indecisive, contested election. Millions are out-of-work, the economy is struggling, and social pathologies from addiction to suicide ideation to child abuse are exploding.
But did you know that none of what is happening in America is addressed on the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops Website?
If you look at the Assembly website (pictured above), you will see that the Successors to the Apostles don’t have much to say about what is happening in America. Police Officers are being shot while cities burn, but no one in a Mitre seems willing to comment. But fortunately, the bishops did take notice of an explosion in Beirut and the conversion into a mosque in Istanbul of a former church building that was lost in 1453 A.D.
The need for reunion with Rome is not nearly as serious a problem as the fact that our bishops appear to have no connection to each other or to the nation in which they find themselves serving the Risen Christ. “Out-of-touch” does not begin to describe this situation. We, the Faithful, just shrug our shoulders and carry on. We even make excuses for the situation, so desperate are we to just live the Faith in our parishes.
Maybe Archbishop Elpidophoros doesn’t understand this, but we don’t live in a remote, mountain village somewhere in an Orthodox country. In the United States and Canada, becoming Catholic is 100 times easier than becoming Orthodox. We all drive past local Catholic parishes on our often torturous commutes to find canonical Orthodox ones. Many of us either were Roman Catholic, or at least considered converting to Roman Catholicism before choosing the much, much harder route of joining the Orthodox Church. We aren’t ignorant of the Roman Catholic Church. We know it, and we have consciously chosen to not be a part of it. We don’t want to attend Roman Catholic liturgies with folk music. We don’t want to partake in Roman Catholic sacraments. We don’t want to expose our children to modern religious “art.” The Orthodox Church is not the same as the Roman Catholic Church, and we know that firsthand.
We have chosen to be Orthodox Christians, and we want our bishops to focus on building our Church in this nation, our homeland, for the Glory of Christ’s Kingdom. We are here. What happens here matters to us, and to our children, whom we are sincerely trying to rear as believing, practicing Orthodox Christians.
Archbishop Elpidophoros called out the issue of mixed-marriages in his speech:
Finally, allow me to speak of a more difficult and painful situation in the life of many of our faithful: the question of mixed or inter-Christian marriages. Allow me to clarify my views on this question, as I remember that my statement back in February of this year at the Leadership 100 Conference generated much controversy. Today, the 63% of marriages that take place in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese are marriages between an Orthodox and a non-Orthodox Christian. These numbers may even be higher because our data does not take into account Greek Orthodox Christians who marry outside of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.
Multiple contributors to this blog had spouses convert to Orthodoxy prior to marriage. One of us has a son whose fiancée is a catechumen. She will enter the Church prior to the wedding. We always thought this was how it should be. The Orthodox Church is the foundation of Western Civilization. It is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. That is how we presented the Faith to our future spouses. Why would you not want to be a member of the one, true Church founded by Jesus Christ?
But Archbishop Elpidophoros just assumes that Orthodoxy is something you are born with like your hair and skin color. Instead of worrying about how to handle mixed marriages pastorally, why are we not concerning ourselves with how to evangelize non-Orthodox spouses so as to convert them? Sure, in the “old country” converting to Orthodoxy could carry heavy consequences. But we aren’t in the old country, are we? While you may not be able to convert to being “Greek,” you can certainly convert to Orthodoxy. The emphasis should be on how to grow the Church, not on how to solve “mixed marriages” that ideally should not even exist.
Our current jurisdictional horror show is not solely the fault of the immigrant communities. It is not solely the fault of the bishops, many of them foreign-born. It is not solely the fault of the ethnic cradle Orthodox who still think of their parishes as cultural centers, rather than as living Christian communities. It is not solely the fault of rich donors or politicians. Nor is it solely the fault of foreign hierarchs who use their American communities too often as piggybanks and, in some cases, as means to gain influence with powerful political and business interests.
No, there is plenty of blame to go around. Those who collaborated on this article are adult converts to the Faith who are raising, or have raised, cradle Orthodox children. We have contributed to this problem as much as anyone else. Every single one of us is guilty before God. We have all failed Him.
Each and every single one of us. It is time we stopped. If we can’t have enough love in Christ to unite with our own Orthodox Brethren, then talking to anyone else is simply a waste of time that leads to even more bitter divisions. It is time that the Orthodox in this country put our own house in order.
Orthodox Reflections Contributors from Greek Archdiocese of America, Orthodox Church in America, and Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America
The issue with Orthodoxy in America is that it has been intellectualized by intellectual converts. It lacks the simple, deep faith found in other countries. We Americans rely too much upon reason and emotions. We know little of true repentance. God has judged us for our lack in faith. Like Babel, we want unity made by us instead of unity found in Christ. This division will save us in the long term until we can truly fight against modernism. Let us look to the saints who have graced our shores. Let us look to the examples of Fr. Seraphim Rose and the Aleut martyrs who defied our pagan culture.
Sadly, there are those within the our [and most of the country] Orthodox community who offer an escape and refuge for Her members who make erroneous, uninformed emotionally based decisions and choices when pressures of external troubles burden their inner disposition seeking an ‘Orthodoxy with ease’, that is, a pseudo-Orthodoxy where there is no accountability, where one can remain anonymous, that is, to remain an individual with no connection to others within the community, where “stability and loyalty” –of which the Fathers highly esteemed as great virtues – are brushed aside; where struggling, suffering, and “pain of heart” –that is, no sacrifice, no metanoia – the change of heart and mind necessary for acquiring the phronema and ethos of the Church – are dismissed. There is no being forged in ‘the purifying fire of lived repentance’ – no growth, no maturing in the faith. No steadfastness. No resolve to be united. No ‘one mind, one heart, one doctrine, one fellowship.’ This is a tenacious and sinister process of spiritual corruption, this is a Christianity without the Cross –a leprosy – a septicity of the soul so characteristic of our contemporary society that all Orthodox must combat it.
I am a cradle Orthodox Christian who was born in Greece and emigrated to Toronto with my parents in 1964. Now that my children are grown and marrying non-Greek persons, I understand exactly what this article is talking about. One of our future sons-in-law has already converted to Orthodoxy, in our Greek church. The sacrament was done in English for him but in Sundays he is lost in the Greek. It is very hard to find an English speaking Orthodox Church in Toronto that does not use the multiple spoons because the OCA has adopted them. If the multiple spoons are an Ecumenist innovation, it does not make the language issue for Converts in Canada any easier.
In addition, our own children who were born here, do not have the same command of Greek that they do of English and they, too, would benefit from more English in all of the ethnic Orthodox churches, in my humble opinion, which would then be more conducive to the participation of converts as well.
Recently, my Hispanic friend who recently converted to Orthodoxy brought her Nigerian boyfriend to our Greek Orthodox Church. Our ethnocentric fellow parishioners looked at him so askance that he never came back. I can’t say that I blame him. Unfortunately I don’t think that only the Greek people are ethnocentric.
We also have the problem of corrupt hierarchs. Archbishop Sotirios is a known Freemason. What power does the laity have to remove him? Not much. In addition, a friend of mine recently had a personal tour of the Tombs if the Patriarchs in Constantinople by one of Patriarch Bartholomew’s auxiliary bishops. When the Auxiliary Bishop found out that my friend was from Toronto, he commented that Sotirios is highly favoured at the Patriarchate because of how much money he sends them on a regular basis.
So, you can understand how a Freemason gets himself promoted from Bishop, to Metropolitan, to Archbishop, and why he would not be interested in being anything other than a GREEK Archbishop. His position depends on it.
Therefore, we are all responsible for the current state of affairs in North America, at least we, the ethnic Orthodox are. I had such high hopes for the OCA, the Orthodox Church of America, but they adopted the multiple spoons without batting an eye. Even Ancient Faith Radio, to which I subscribe seems oblivious to the crisis we are enduring. In Canada, the Greek Orthodox Church is on the brink of a schism and The OCA is oblivious to it. The message we get from them is that it’s no big deal so get over it. They seem to be just as ethnocentric (or maybe I should say self centred) as the rest of us.
My personal thoughts are that if things go from bad to worse, there will eventually be a false union with Rome, and after the wheat is separated from the chaff, then there will be a restructuring from the ground up – a reset if you will. This will be a very trying and painful process, but we may all have to walk through this fire to become the Bride that Christ wants us to be.
What can and should we do?
What an article! First of all Fr. Josiah Trenham is a great confessor and evangelist. The Orthodox Church is fortunate to have such a talented man. He is the brightest light of American Orthodoxy. May his ministry be eternal.
I think Orthodox Christianity in America is in a very difficult position. There is no question that Fr. Trenham’s observations are correct. Additionally, because this is a ‘Protestant’ nation, the most devout in nearly every case become Evangelical Christians, who due to their tradition, look askance at traditional ‘high church’ So the Orthodox is left with a few converts, who are often very devout, but because of numbers and the landscape, can only really practice the faith as best as they can in a small way. There are no 20,000 person processions here as there are in other countries. Feast days are unheard of. Fast days are unheard of. The culture just doesn’t even consider, in the least, the Orthodox faith.
So what to do? Pray for God to enlighten. Be ready to defend and promote the faith if the chance arrives. Live a devout, faithful and pious life. Speak up when appropriate, but perhaps we must realize that God’s ways are not our ways, and in a culture that has abandoned God how fortunate we are to have the access to Orthodox books, prayers, akathists etc.. so that we can be firm in our faith and not listen to people like Leo who call Orthodox Christians extremists. We can know the truth as taught by the whole church.
Let’s encourage and build up, in our own small way, and hope for God’s mercy. Let’s us endure to the end.
Trenham is an extremist, I hardly think he should lead any charge, less you want the schism to grow between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Russian controlled cult pseudo churches.
Hey Leo – Father is Antiochian. We always found him inspiring. Why do you think he is extreme? What are Russian controlled pseudo churches? Also, do you agree or disagree that we should be seeking unity for all canonical bishops in this country?
Well, this hit home. Especially since I’m a convert from Catholicism. I have zero desire to be reunited with Rome unless they convert wholesale to Orthodoxy. And as being a convert from Rome of mixed European descent in GOARCH, it rings even more true for me. I’m lucky to be in a parish that has a good percentage of converts as well, but I can see the vines probably better than many, and they aren’t bearing good fruit.