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American Greek Orthodox sue archdiocese
Nearly three dozen Greek Orthodox worshipers, including several prominent figures, are suing the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and Archbishop Demetrios for what they say are violations of its 1978 governing charter.

The suing parishioners are backed by the Orthodox Christian Laity, a group founded "to restore and strengthen the role of the laity in the life of the Orthodox church, and the renewal of the Apostolic Lay Ministry," and that wants to see "the creation of a united, autocephalous Orthodox Church in the United States." Thus, while the legal issues at stake are whether church officials violated the old charter by creating a new charter in 2002—without the approval of the American church's Clergy-Laity Congress—the real issues are over the power of the laity and the autonomy of the American church.

The Los Angeles Times, for example, notes that Orthodox Christian Laity leaders " repeated their call for all U.S. metropolitan bishops to be elected by the American church, without involvement by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. They also want to require the patriarchate to choose the American archbishop, when the time comes, from a list of three people approved by the U.S. church." Those are not issues raised in the suit (see the bottom of this OCL page), but they're key issues for the OCL.

"The genius and success of the Orthodox Church in America is in the harnessing of the energies and the dedication and the faith of lay people," Baltimore parishioner Peter Marudas, a member of the Orthodox Christian Laity board, told the Chicago Tribune. "We would hope that the patriarchate would recognize that and not suffocate it to its own detriment."

The plaintiffs aren't seeking monetary damages; they just want the court to force the church to reinstate the old charter, which gives the American laity more authority.

As many Eastern Orthodox readers often point out any time Weblog notes a news item on an Orthodox church, Weblog doesn't know much beyond the basics of Eastern Orthodoxy (what I've learned comes largely from reading Frederica Mathewes-Green and a Christian History issue on the subject), so the internal politics of the church are out of Weblog's depth. Maybe The Onion Dome (yes, The Onion meets Orthodoxy) will help sort it all out.

It would therefore be helpful for someone who's not a partisan in this debate to explain the similarities and differences between this debate and other similar debates going on between American churches and their global counterparts.

There's a trend piece lurking here. The Episcopal Church USA turned its back (there's a much ruder metaphor that would be far more appropriate here) on the global Anglican Communion when it ordained a homosexual bishop. The Southern Baptist Convention is planning to take its ball and go home, withdrawing from the Baptist World Alliance simply over its accepting the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as a member. American Catholics are constantly bucking Rome, saying the Vatican's authority and teachings don't play in the unique U.S. context. In other words, there does seem to be a kind of American Revolution going on in religion these days, a kind of Superpowerism that demands that ecclesiastic power reside in the U.S. In some cases, the American foot seems to be saying to the rest of the Body, "I don't need you."

It may or may not be fair to bring the Orthodox churches into this. There's something slightly different at play: Where Anglicans and Baptists are struggling over what it means to be global, the Greek Orthodox are fighting over what it means to be Greek Orthodox. Nor is it fair to suggest that the Greek Orthodox power struggle is happening in the various churches. The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America has been granted full independence by its Syrian parent, for example. Is this an example or a counter-example to the Religious American Revolution?

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February (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48