Ancient Christian Witness

Quote:
"Jonah’s insistence that his church address the pressing issues of the day is a gauntlet thrown down before the feet of his fellow Orthodox leaders, and it has not sat well with the OCA’s governing bodies. In the last week of February, Jonah faced a revolt among his own bishops at a conclave in Santa Fe, N.M. According to an OCA news release, Jonah kept his job but was relieved of several duties and sent on a two-month retreat during Lent.

In reporting on the Santa Fe meeting, the news Web site Orthodox Christians for Accountability — an opposition voice against Jonah — assailed Jonah’s “leadership style, decisions, practices or actions.” Although many of the decisions in question had to do with internal church matters, the first one listed was Jonah’s move to Washington.

In an earlier interview, Web site editor Mark Stokoe, who is also a member of the church’s Metropolitan Council, or executive body, spoke out against the move. He called it “a major decision that should be considered carefully in the context of the finances and the strategic plan by the entire church. To play the game in Washington takes a lot of money, and the OCA is not a wealthy church.”

And Jonah says his mind is made up. The church’s drafty Syosset headquarters building, originally a summer cottage, is racking up enormous utility bills. And Washington, he adds, is the perfect home base for “a united Orthodox voice speaking out against iniquity or advocating good things.”

But just as not everyone believes the Orthodox should be speaking out, not everyone believes they need to be united."

Quote:
"In the United States, the 1 million Orthodox are vastly outnumbered by about 68 million Catholics. The Orthodox took longer to anchor themselves in America than Catholics did, with multiple countries establishing their own national Orthodox churches on American soil, none of them wishing to merge.

In 1970, the Russians made their daughter church independent, naming it the Orthodox Church in America in the hope that other Orthodox bodies would unite under that title. The move infuriated several other Orthodox churches, especially the Greeks, the largest of America’s Orthodox branches at 477,000 members.

Of the top American Orthodox branches, the OCA, with about 85,000 members, has the highest percentage of Sunday service attenders at 40 percent weekly and has grown the most in the past decade, at 21 percent. Much of the growth has come from converts — evangelical Protestant ones at that — whose presence has helped steer the OCA in a more conservative direction."