Washington, USA - The Antiochian Orthodox Church has decided to leave the National Council of Churches because it says the Council has adopted a liberal “political agenda.”
“Unfortunately, the NCC USA started to adopt an agenda and positioning that appeared to depart from the primary purpose of spreading and witnessing the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Father George Kevorkian, Assistant to Metropolitan Philip Saliba - the denomination's senior cleric - said Friday. “It seems to have taken a turn toward political positioning.”
The delegates to the Orthodox Church’s 47th General Assembly in late July voted to reject “all extremist positions that are contrary to the teachings of the Holy Orthodox Faith,” which meant they would be leaving what they saw as a far left-leaning organisation.
The decision marks the first time in over a decade that a church decided to rescind membership from the historic National Council of Churches, and highlights the tensions running through the left-and-right church divide.
“Very few denominations have pulled out of the NCC, and it’s admirable that the Antiochian Orthodox Church would leave on its own," said Mark Tooley of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, a Washington-based conservative think-tank and critic of the NCC. "I hope other Orthodox churches can be inspired by the [Antiochian Church's] example."
The NCC is the ecumenical counterpart to the conservative National Association of Evangelicals; denominations must choose to align with one or the other - not both.
However, not all the NCC constituents are liberal, and the Council doesn't believe "liberal" or "left-wing" are correct characterizations.
“There are member groups who will consider themselves as quite conservative, quite evangelical, and quite determined to uphold moral values,” explained Phillip Jenks, Communications Director for the NCC. “It’s very difficult to paint the NCC with such a wide brush.”
Still, many of the nation’s most liberal protestant churches – such as the Disciples of Christ, the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church – belong to the NCC.
The United Church of Christ's recent decision to officially back gay marriages played a part in the Antiochian Orthodox Church's withdrawal. Another disconcerting issue for the Orthodox Church was the Episcopal Church’s consecration of an openly gay bishop.
However, Kevorkian explained, these are all just peripheral issues.
“I want to emphasise that the UCC position is disturbing,” he said. “But I don’t think a single distraction from a single jurisdiction within the NCC would have made us take the action we took."
According to Kevorkian, the “straw that broke the camel’s back” was a recent NCC fundraising letter in which he said the NCC’s general secretary asked churches and member denominations to fight “right wing attacks.” It is this political positioning at the leadership level that concerned him the most.
“It is the broader-based representation of the NCC leadership that became a repress,” he said, referring to the NCC’s General Secretary Bob Edgar. “The action we took began when the core leadership started to develop and document political positions.”
Rev. Edgar was unable to be reached for comments.
NCC communications director Leslie Tune said the Council had not yet received an official statement from the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and that the President of NCC, Thomas L. Hoyt, Jr, may meet with the Church's representatives next week to “work something out.”
Kevorkian confirmed that the “correspondence to the NCC is being prepared.” However, he added, “a reversal is highly unlikely.”
Instead, Kevorkian says, the Orthodox Church may form relationships with other ecumenical bodies.
“I want to say that this does not represent a signal that we will be withdrawing from ecumenical groups,” he said. “We have limited energy and resources, and this will allow us to focus those resources on groups and activities that are more aligned with the primary mission, which is spreading the word of Jesus Christ.”