Unrest Rocks U.S. Greek Orthodox

Ever since the first Greek immigrants arrived in America, the Greek Orthodox Church has been their unshakable tie to the homeland. But now, rebellion is in the air.

In the wake of more than two years of tumultuous and controversial leadership by their primate, His Eminence Archbishop Spyridon, all five of the church’s American metropolitan bishops are due to arrive today at the Phanar--the Orthodox “Vatican” in Istanbul--to present their case against Spyridon to the man who appointed him, His All Holiness Bartholomew I.

The church “is in the process of being torn apart,” Archbishop Iakovos, Spyridon’s predecessor, said in a recent speech.

While the immediate issues to be addressed at Tuesday’s scheduled gathering in Istanbul may be of interest only to the church’s members, the developments within the Greek Orthodox Church have significance for a far broader audience.

What is playing out, church historians say, is a classic example of an immigrant church trying to cope with the pressures of Americanization. The church that brought its culture to American shores has, in turn, been changed by the culture and attitudes of its adopted country.

“It is an immigrant church coming of age,” said Northwestern University sociology professor Charles C. Moskos, author of “Greek Americans: Struggle and Success.”

“It is also something Archbishop Spyridon doesn’t understand.”

Spyridon has made no direct response to his critics. But at a news conference Friday in New York, he announced that the church had raised $8.87 million for 1998, an increase of $400,000 over the previous year. The increase, he said, was a “sign of the robust health and vigor of our church communities.”

His critics have accused the European-educated archbishop of running the 1.5-million member Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America like a “dictatorship.” His actions, they charge, have been arbitrary, un-Christian and recriminatory. Prominent lay members of the church have called for Spyridon’s removal, and 105 priests have signed a letter decrying the “autocratic and abusive treatment of peoples of all ranks.”

But most ominous for Bartholomew, dissenters in America are calling for independence from the patriarch’s control. They want a self-governing American church for Americans.

Independence for the church in America may not actually come about for a long time. Such a move would be a major blow to Patriarch Bartholomew’s own power and prestige because the American church possesses influence and wealth.

As ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew is “first among equals”--the spiritual leader of the world’s about 240 million Orthodox Christians. But without an American branch, his direct administrative control would be limited to about 2,000 Greek Orthodox Christians in Istanbul, along with churches in Canada, South America, Australia and Southeast Asia.

So disturbed is Bartholomew by the rebellion unfolding just 2 1/2 years after he appointed Spyridon that the patriarch was quoted by the metropolitan bishops--in a letter to Spyridon--to have exclaimed, “We are losing the church in America!”

The meeting with Bartholomew, which Spyridon will attend, could be a turning point in the 135-year history of the American church, although if a decision is made there, it may take months to become apparent.

Clearly, however, the stakes are high. “If we cannot solve our problems now it will be catastrophic,” said Metropolitan Anthony, who leads the seven-state diocese of San Francisco.

Even Spyridon’s spokesman, Father Mark Arey, has called the open challenge from the metropolitans “quite extraordinary.” But Arey, who will accompany Spyridon to Istanbul, said he expects a positive result for everyone. “No one’s a loser here,” Arey predicted.

Many of the immediate issues at stake involve Spyridon’s leadership style--he has spoken of centralizing control over priestly salaries, excluded critics from his advisory council, and, in the step that caused greatest controversy, filed suit against a dissident group of Orthodox laity.

But “the issues are beyond the personality of the archbishop and are sociological at their root,” said Moskos. Even without Spyridon, Moskos said, these issues would have surfaced, though perhaps not with the “rancor” that is now evident.

Dwindling Numbers

Several factors have been at work in the Americanization of the church, he said, among them a low birth rate among Greek Americans and the fact that immigration from Greece is now down to 1,400 people a year, a mere trickle compared to the more than 300,000 that arrived between 1900 and 1920.

At the same time, as Greek Americans have assimilated into the mainstream society, three out of four marriages in the church are mixed marriages involving a non-Greek Orthodox partner.

The church in America, said Metropolitan Anthony, has undergone a “tremendous amount of transformation.”

Spyridon, “even though he was born here and even though he speaks a little bit of English,” is not in “touch with American reality,” the bishop said.

Spyridon was born in Warren, Ohio, in 1944. But his family moved back to the Greek island of Rhodes when he was 9. He returned to the United States at age 15 and finished high school in 1962. But he then returned to Greece to continue his education and spent most of his years in Europe before he was made archbishop here.

As a result, his experiences are far closer to the hierarchical traditions of European churches than to the open style cultivated by most American religious organizations. As the Greek Orthodox Church here has become more assimilated, it has developed a strong voice for the laity in setting church policy.

Many Orthodox lay activists feel Spyridon has not respected that role--a feeling that was greatly escalated by the lawsuit he filed against the dissident group known as Greek Orthodox American Leaders (GOAL).

“He doesn’t know our church and he doesn’t love our country,” said John Collis, a Cleveland neurosurgeon and a leader of GOAL.

“It’s unheard of that a bishop would sue his own flock,” said George Matsoukas, secretary of GOAL and a past president of Orthodox Christian Laity.

But Arey, speaking for the archdiocese, has repeatedly said that GOAL and other groups critical of Spyridon represent only a small minority of the 1.5 million Greek Orthodox in America. Most church members, Arey maintained, are largely unaware of the controversy.

In the end, the dispute may revolve around conflicting beliefs of what church members want. Arey portrays a traditional passive role for the faithful.

“They want a good priest, the choir to sing in key, a good youth program and, when someone’s sick, they want the priest to go to the hospital. When they die, they want the priest to deliver the eulogy,” said Arey. “That’s what they want and that’s what we’re delivering.”

Many of Spyridon’s critics, however, are people who have taken a much more active role in the church.

The critics are “people who have been active in the Greek Orthodox Church for years,” said the Very Rev. John S. Bakas, dean of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles and a figure who has tried to remain apart from the developing storm. “They’ve been members of archdiocesan councils, diocesan councils and parishes. They are former presidents of seminary.”

And for many of them, the idea of a hierarchy ruled from far away seems, well, un-American. At a Los Angeles conference last October, the Orthodox Christian Laity group petitioned Bartholomew for an independent American church.

“We are an American church, an American people,” said Andrew Kopan, a founder of the group and professor emeritus at DePaul University in Chicago. “We have a right to organize our own church.”