Breaking News: Orthodox Leave NCC

Breaking News: Orthodox Leave NCC Dearborn, Michigan. July 28, 2005.This afternoon the Archdiocesan Convention of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America voted overwhelmingly to leave the National Council of Churches USA. The Archdiocese is holding its annual convention this week in Dearborn, Michigan.

The action was not a temporary “suspension” of membership, but a formal withdrawal from the NCC. The clergy unanimously approved the withdrawal, followed by a unanimous vote of the lay delegates supporting the move. An announcement of the final vote was met with thunderous applause by the Convention.

Reasons given for the withdrawal include the general liberalism of the NCC, whose General Secretary, Bob Edgar, withdrew his signature from a statement defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Metropolitan PHILIP, head of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, was reportedly outspoken in calling for the church to withdraw from the NCC, stating that the relationship had proven fruitless.

The National Council of Churches USA has listed on its website "36 member communions and denominations." It now has 35.

Note: An interview about this vote and its consequences with the Very Rev. Olof Scott, the newly-elected chairman of the Department of Interfaith Relationships, is scheduled to air on Ancient Faith Radio this coming Sunday, July 31, 2005, at 5 PM EDT.

The decision should be out any day now. I will let you know.

The one million-member Orthodox Church in America (OCA) is examining a proposal to remove itself from both the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches. The proposal will be reviewed by the OCA All-American Council, which meets in Toronto July 17-22.

According to the position paper Orthodox Relations, "The most advisable course for the Orthodox Church in America would be to eventually withdraw from the NCC and the WCC." Any withdrawal would be done in consultation with those Orthodox churches that remain members of the councils.

Among the reasons cited in the report for withdrawing from the church councils are the increasingly political agendas that they pursue. "The very politically-oriented theologies of many Protestant denominations have often threatened to derail the agenda of councils away from dialogue and unity, and towards political advocacy and activism," says the report. "The ecumenical organizations in which we participate, in their theological and social views, are oriented towards policies which are not in harmony with Orthodox views."

The document emphasizes that withdrawal from the church councils would not mean a retreat from developing ecumenical relations with other Christian bodies. "In the end, we have no option of truly 'withdrawing' from inter-Christian engagement," says the proposal. "...To the contrary, the announcement of our withdrawal should be framed in the context of a defense of the proper and necessary ecumenical vision."

The report delicately disputes claims by the NCC and WCC that the councils are the "preeminent" and indispensable expressions of the ecumenical movement. It points out that there are more Protestants and Pentecostals, both in the United States and internationally, outside the NCC and WCC than within those councils. Also noted is the fact that neither council can claim the Roman Catholic Church among its members. The proposal recommends that "ecumenical Christian relations should be sought with conservative Christian bodies," and that other "ecumenical streams or contexts that hold theological promise" should be encouraged.

In recent years, the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest member church in the World Council, has criticized both the WCC and some of its member bodies for supporting practices contrary to Orthodox teaching. In 2003, the Moscow Patriarchate cut ties with the Episcopal Church USA, in response to its consecration of an openly gay man as a bishop. And in June 2005, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II expressed concern about the influence exercised within the WCC by churches taking a "free interpretation" of Christian sexual morality.

At the 1998 World Council of Churches Assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe, a Russian Orthodox representative criticized some WCC member churches for "adopting Western liberal values and throwing out traditional Christian values, one after the other." He warned, "If the structure of the WCC is not radically changed, other Orthodox churches will also leave the WCC."

Should the proposed OCA resolution be adopted, the Orthodox Church in America would be the first Orthodox body to leave the WCC since the special commission report. The OCA is currently the only Orthodox church in North America that is a member of the World Council of Churches. Many other Orthodox North American bodies are represented through patriarchs residing in their countries of origin.

My most sincere congratulations to the Orthodox group for separating themselves from the evil, wicked NCC.

Here are the remaining 35:

African Methodist Episcopal Church The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Alliance of Baptists

American Baptist Churches in the USA

The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America

Diocese of the Armenian Church of America

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church

Church of the Brethren

The Coptic Orthodox Church in North America

The Episcopal Church

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Friends United Meeting

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Hungarian Reformed Church in America

International Council of Community Churches

Korean Presbyterian Church in America

Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church

Mar Thoma Church

Moravian Church in America Northern Province and Southern Province

National Baptist Convention of America

National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc.

National Missionary Baptist Convention of America

Orthodox Church in America

Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Polish National Catholic Church of America

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.

Reformed Church in America

Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and Canada

The Swedenborgian Church

Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch

Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America

United Church of Christ

The United Methodist Church See also: The Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA)

Stick to your guns Bulldog.
2Th 2:15 "Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle."

"I wish for a return to a liturgy that is representative of an organic development of the traditional mass, but not exactly the same as the traditional mass." Oh? So hey there, lawyer worshipper, what's wrong with the Divine Liturgy that Jesus Himself gave us? See Canon XXXII Council in Trullo.

Bulldog, did you know that in Europe, when St. John of Shanghai & San Francisco was the Bishop of Gaul and the Netherlands (ROCOR), he brought Tridentine Rite parishes into the ROCOR? That is to say, he allowed them to ease themselves in to Orthodoxy. I'm not saying that's a good idea, but the Patriarchate of Antioch and the Synod of Milan both allow the Latin Tridentine Mass, but fixed up a bit, i.e. no use of azymes and no filioque in the Nicene Creed.

I to was raised in the Novus Ordo as I am a young man with a young family. But after sitting through one to many Love Love sermons, priests running around with Bagels telling my kids on their communion that he is going to pray over the bagel to make it God, and allowing family and people who did not know whether to sit or stand or kneel and have not been to church in 10 years and most likely not in a state of grace receive our Lord without a statement at the begining, as is done each week at the Traditional Mass, it was enough and time to high tail it out of the Novus Ordo. The yapping in the back of the chuch, the "bringing up of the gifts", not allowed to kneel to receive our Lord as per the new "GIRM", my family and I had seen enough destruction. Yeah I hear the old song and dance that "well I have a conservative priest and my church who does...". Oh really, well that is not enough for me, as goal is to protect my family and for us to obtain salvation, and them being taught RCIA and their catechism by some nun who dresses like my old aunt and most likely believes in contraception and possibly abortion is to much risk for me to take. Or worse get taught their catechism by a twice divorced mother of 5 living in sin with another man in her house, as my nephews are at St Anthony here in NY. Not for me, Tradional church where Priests talk and look like priests, nuns who look like nuns and actually TEACH, and moral children and parents.

Next time you get a change-look at how many John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, pro abortion bumper stickers you see in your Novus Ordo parking lot. I think that tells the ENTIRE story

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