N-C-C ya later!
July 31st, 2005 ~ La Vida IglesiaVia Mere Comments and Orthodoxy Today: The Antiochian Orthodox Church has withdrawn from the National Council of Churches.
Good job, yo? It’s a sad thing to have to part company with something that sounds like good medicine for this ailing world, but why is it that when these organizations go nationwide and worldwide, they always start leaning left? And not just leaning — more like just lying down on that side altogether and talking about how balanced and fair they are. The NCC Web-site has an enthusiastic news brief about how they’re right in step with the World Council of Church (WCC) dictum to “to reflect a global perspective rather than an ultra-patriotic ‘culture club.’” And in case you’re not quite sure what that means, WCC General Secretary Dr. Samuel Kobia spelled it out at a speech in Oregon:
Kobia noted that the world is afraid of U.S. policies like the doctrine of pre-emptive war and the Bush administration’s reluctance to support international initiatives against global warming, or the Millennium Development Goals.
Uh, gotcha. So we’re to show how international we are by leaving terrorism alone (which was working really well for the world for the last couple decades. I don’t know what we were thinking!) and by sticking corks in our cows’ butts so that their methane gas doesn’t melt the North Pole and make Dennis Quaid make any more bad movies. Yay, global perspective!
(Oh, and the fourth headline on the NCC’s headline section was this speech by globally-chic lunkhead Jesse Jackson, who doesn’t accuse Bush of being a racist bigot bent on overthrowing the black right to vote until the second paragraph, causing no end of high suspense.)
So thank goodness Metropolitan PHILIP is a gutsy guy. I can’t imagine anything we care about that would come from the hopelessly liberal WCC and NCC. But, um, how about the rest? According to Orthodoxy Today, the OCA is considering pulling out. But Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox (that’s different from the Antiochian? I probably don’t want to know), and SCOBA are all still listed as members on the NCC Web-site.
I think we should start our own organization and call it the Worldwide Organization of Churches that Aren’t Lame (WOCAL) and issue statements saying that we wouldn’t have to be a super-patriotic culture club if the rest of the world’s churches could grow a backbone and stand up to the rampant liberalism that’s undermining any hope for religious people around the world to keep their integrity.
Yep, I think that would be good.
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August 1st, 2005 at 7:25 am
I’m not sure what you are getting at, Grace… could you be more specific?
:) 40x
After all the press the Antiochians get for being “liberal and modernist”
its interesting that they are the ones who step up to this plate and hit the home run. Nice Job MP Phillip!
s-p
August 3rd, 2005 at 9:18 am
Well, would you expect anything less from the Antiochians? After all, they’ve got all the money…
August 3rd, 2005 at 8:08 pm
kinda like the “Antiochian NY Yankees”? :)
August 4th, 2005 at 11:57 am
I better explain that Greg-the-Husband’s comment was based on us hearing that pronounced as some kind of known conventional wisdom when we were in an OCA church. It struck us as kind of funny, since I hadn’t had the feeling that the other two Antiochian OC churches we had belonged to were exactly rolling in dough, but y’know, … whatever.
I have noticed some differences between OCA and Antiochian, and I notice the ways that Antiochian is a little more relaxed with some of the things that IMHO aren’t very important (headcoverings, letting women and children chant, slightly different antiphons, etc.). But our current OCA church doesn’t really stick to the rules (and BTW, if our bishop is reading this, that parish would be. um, St. Franistan’s Church of Tasmania.) so I don’t see where it makes a big difference at the laity’s level. I think there are bigger differences further up the food chain, and I tend to wish that there were more like Mpn. PHILIP.
August 6th, 2005 at 1:05 am
LOL! Yeah, the OCA thinks EVERYONE is rich compared to them. :)
The Antiochian and Greek parishes I know have some well to do’s but so did most protestant churches I attended. I know what you mean about the AOC and OCA, I’ve been in both too. You pick your “local” bishop and you pick your “issues” and liturgical rubrics, it doesn’t matter what archdiocese you are in.
November 25th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
[…] The Russian Church may leave the World Council of Churches (WCC) (HERE) — Remember back HERE when the Antiochians got out of the NCC and I wondered why the other Orthodox archdioceses couldn’t do the same? Am I right in thinking the NCC is connected to the WCC? Or is it connected to the kneebone? Well, in any case — hooray! It’s obvious that these “worldwide church organizations” have just become political organizations that preach a secular-progressive ethos from the pulpit. If we can’t turn that around, we need to make it obvious that we don’t agree with policies that “turn the WCC into a rostrum for promoting feminism, the rights of sexual minorities, ideas which erode the principle of national sovereignty, and certain political programs,” in the words of Moscow Patriarchate spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin. […]