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The church has been troubled by the ongoing emigration of Christian Arabs to the West, as well as by tensions between the church's Greek-dominated clerical hierarchy and the Arab lay population.

About 200 Arab Orthodox protesters led midweek demonstrations against what they say is the clergy's neglect of local church needs for religious schooling, church development, and financial support.

"This is an opportunity for us to show the Orthodox world our dissatisfaction at what is going on here in the Holy Land," says Fuad Farah, chairman of the Orthodox National Council. The council is a lay group that says the church hierarchy has squandered millions of dollars it earns annually from selling and leasing its extensive land holdings to Israeli concerns. Orthodox leaders also must deal with believers who have been shuffled and displaced by the mass population movements of the last century. No longer are Greek, Russian, and Balkan churches neatly organized according to ethnic affiliation in the old strongholds of the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, and eastern Europe. Instead, they are increasingly mixed and dispersed throughout Western Europe and the Americas."

There is a new Orthodox diaspora emerging," Jann says. "And we have to come to grips with that."

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February 7 2000, Vol. 44, No. 2