The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, with a membership of some two million under the leadership of Archbishop Iakovos, suspended its relations last June with the National Council of Churches. This came as welcomed tidings to all who are serious about authentic belief in Christ. In an explanatory letter to the NCC bosses, the Primate of North and South America cited the “extreme liberties” taken by the NCC, “which identifies itself with the most liberal Protestant denominations,” making “our association and membership impossible.” At the same time the Archdiocese broke off ecumenical talks with Episcopalian and Anglican theologians. Among the horrors impelling this latter move were, according to Archdiocese ecumenical officer Father Milton Efthimiou, recent Episcopalian ordinations of a female “bishop” and female “priests,” including a lesbian, and more blasphemies from Episcopalian Bishop John Spong of New Jersey, who in his latest book identifies St. Paul as a closet homosexual.

Some people never saw why the Greek, Syrian, Serbian, and other big Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States (including the Orthodox Church in America, a predominantly Russian communion that appeals heavily to American converts) ever saw fit in the first place to affiliate with the NCC and WCC (the World Council of Churches), whose objective has been to stir Christianity into an ecumenical stew with such ingredients as Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, and (of late) even animism and the chic New Age necromancy. That is, these ecumenical gangs have been stirring this cauldron when not busy campaigning with the militant “gays,” radical feminists, and the abortion caterers at Planned Parenthood International; when not promoting the gnostic variety of environmentalism and other statist domestic activities; when not trashing Columbus’ discovery of America as an “invasion”; and, at least until the ongoing collapse of the Soviet empire got well under way, when not funneling collection-plate receipts to Soviet-surrogate terrorists, supporting the Soviet-front “peace” movement unilaterally to disarm the Free World, and providing cover for religious persecution behind the Iron Curtain—all of which is massively documented and widely known.

But better late than never, and many are, as I noted, pleased with the archbishop’s new wisdom. Just don’t imagine (not yet anyhow) that you are witnessing some Orthodox version of the Counter Reformation. NCC membership has, after all, become an embarrassment in recent years, as millions of adherents have left the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and other “mainline” denominations, many of them scandalized over anti-Christian NCC activities bankrolled by their donations. The archbishop, who has a name for practicality and who would not at all like to see a similar hemorrhaging of his (relatively) conservative communicants, has, to put it crudely, acted to protect his turf This, no doubt, was part of his motivation, and was certainly good reason for his actions. Nevertheless, there are central tenets of the faith that render Orthodox participation in the so-called ecumenical movement objectionable to begin with: canons explicitly requiring the Orthodox, particularly their hierarchs, to avoid the kind of joint worship with the non-Orthodox that perforce occurs at NCC gatherings, lest the Faith be compromised.

But note that Archbishop Iakovos’ move to suspend (rather than resign from) NCC membership, pending an autumn meeting (not yet convened as of this writing) of the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops, to date amounts to no more than a protest and threat. Members of the Standing Conference (it consists of the prominent Orthodox national jurisdictions in the Western Hemisphere) theoretically stand on an equal footing. But the all-too-human fact is that the Standing Conference’s two biggest constituencies, the Greek Archdiocese and the Orthodox Church in America, have long vied informally for informal Orthodox hegemony in America. And considering that the Reverend Leonid Kishkovsky of the OCA currently serves as the president of the NCC, some feel that the archbishop’s moves were, among other things, an effort to put the OCA’S leadership of the NCC in a disreputable light.

Lending weight to this reading was a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, this past May, at which the Greek Archdiocese announced its determination to remain active in the WCC. This was in apparent reaction to threats made by other Orthodox jurisdictions, at the WCC’s February 1991 powwow in Canberra, Australia, to resign from the world body owing to the WCC’s insistence on whoring after strange gods. (The WCC bosses at Canberra, for instance, allowed a Korean female “theologian” to summon up the spirits of her ancestors in a homemade ritual confabulated from parts of Buddhism, Christianity, animism, and radical feminism.) Since the positions and activities of the WCC and NCC display no qualitative differences, it is hard to discern (theo)logicality in the archbishop’s reaffirmation of membership in the one and his suspension of membership in the other a few weeks later.

But God works in strange ways, and, even though some Byzantine maneuvering appears operative here, the move by the American Greeks (and indeed the restiveness of the other Orthodox) is certainly encouraging. Even if he accepts whatever sops are offered him and resumes full NCC membership. Archbishop Iakovos has at the least further exposed the NCC’s determinedly anti-Christian thrust. And if he eventually goes to the point of resigning from the ecumenical body, perhaps taking other Orthodox groups with him, the loss of prestige attending the defection of the ancient Orthodox jurisdictions would only clarify NCC—and WCC—status as a failed movement bent on engineering a lowest-common-denominator world religion in which anything and everything is tolerable and permissible.