Posted on 08/03/2005 10:50:34 AM PDT by Polycarp1
The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese has voted to withdraw its membership in the National Council of Churches.
Principled decision, I hope. Any explanation for it?
Hopefully the OCA and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese will follwow. The Orthodox haven't been happy camper for a while now when it comes to NCC and WCC. Praise the Lord the RC's never got entangled in this group. The last time I checked on the meaning of ecumenism it didn't mean a watering down of one's beliefs.
The vote from the clergy was unanimous. The move itself is probably the first in a series of Orthodox exits from the NCC and WCC and a shifting in focus to ecumenical dialogue with conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Sadly some of the communities of faith within the NCC and WCC are so far afield from historic Christianity that what is billed as "inter-church" dialogue has actually become "inter-faith" dialogue and what can be gained by "dialogue" with heresies we've already addressed centuries ago? No sense throwing good money after bad.
On a personal level I think that there are many converts, especially Clergy, in the Antiochian Archdiocese from some of the NCC "churches" and they are very aware of the depth of the departure from the Faith of the places they've left and the futility of trying to "dialogue" with them.
On a larger scale we simply felt that no good purpose could be served by spending time and effort with endless "minority reports" trying to speak for things that are so obvious to us and so marginalized by these bodies.
Just a note that the National Council of Churches WWW site has had no news release on this to this date and tiem (1:30 PM CST).
There have been some rumblings from the OCA on this. I THINK there may be some information on this as you scroll down the Orthodox News link I provided or you can check OCA.org as well for a statement. But yes, you are correct that there are many in Orthodoxy who have not been pleased with the NCC, WCC, and the value of being involved. It seems like, although I was not at the Convention where the vote was taken, that Metropolitan PHILIP himself "led the charge" on this issue.
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