Blaming converts

(AOI) - A friend sent me an article from the Hellenic Voice titled, “Religious Right must not set agenda for Orthodox Church.” Well, reasonable enough. But the article got so many other things wrong that I was tempted to simply quit reading half way through. The author, Harry Katopodis, seemed not to understand the difference between religious doctrine and political activism (which was one of the main faults of the Religious Right). Amazingly, his article was aimed at those Orthodox brothers and sisters who have been received into the Church from other traditions. You know, converts. Their conversion, the author suggested, has been a Trojan horse that has allowed the Religious Right to stealthily creep into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The Katopodis article begins with the assertion that “the Orthodox Churches in America are heading down two different paths over political involvement.” The article is much too long and repetitive to reprint so I’ll touch on just a few points here. You can read the whole thing, if you like, here.

...

Furthermore, what exactly is Katopodis referring to when he talks about preserving the “Greek faith, language and culture”? Is he talking about the marriage of Classical and Hellenistic Greek philosophy and Christian theology that the Cappadocians wrought? Is he talking about the cultural expression of Orthodoxy in a Greek context as opposed to that expression in Russian, Serb, Arab, Bulgarian and other cultures? Or, is he talking about modern day Greece and the life of the Church in that culture?

Where is the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this preservation project? The one delivered to all people, for all time, unto the ends of the earth? I quote Holy Scripture at risk of being branded a fundamentalist: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28)

I suspect that Katopodis is talking about something else altogether: the Church as ethnic sect or enclave. His remarks in the Voice are all too common among the sort of ethnic Greek that confuses the Gospel with Greek ethnic pride. Ethnic pride has its place, but it’s pretty thin stuff on which to build a religious faith. In the future, we should be more careful of attributing bizarre doctrines to fellow Orthodox Christians, even though they may have come to us from the Protestant traditions. A better course would be to fall to our knees and thank God for sending the converts to the Orthodox Church. They just might save us cradle Orthodox from ourselves...

Complete article here.