{"id":113,"date":"2010-11-16T13:14:30","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T13:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/a-most-intriguing-tale.html"},"modified":"2010-11-16T13:14:30","modified_gmt":"2010-11-16T13:14:30","slug":"a-most-intriguing-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/a-most-intriguing-tale.html","title":{"rendered":"A most intriguing tale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Saliba.jpg\"Of
\nall the stories in American religion today, none may be more
\nfascinating than the meltdown of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the
\nLevantine branch of Eastern Orthodoxy in America that has been led since
\n1966 by Metropolitan Philip Saliba<\/a>.
\nThe denomination has done well under Philip’s leadership, multiplying
\nparishes and expanding its membership not least by attracting
\nnon-Arab-Americans journeying out of Roman Catholicism, Episcopalianism,
\nLutheranism, and various strains of evangelicalism. <\/p>\n

Back in
\n2004, His Eminence took the step of making his church autonomous, which
\nin Orthodoxy means establishing dioceses under full-fledged bishops. But
\nthen last year, apparently afflicted by the remorseful realization that
\nhe had signed away some of his power, he contrived to have the Synod of
\nAntioch demote the bishops to auxiliary status. This year, after
\nbeating back a move to reinstate them, he began cleaning house big time.<\/p>\n

The voices of resistance can be found on Orthodox Christians for Accountability<\/a>–a website created to foster reform in the Orthodox Church in America (Eastern Orthodoxy’s Russian branch, which has its own scandalous tale<\/a> to tell). But about the only mainstream reporter covering the story<\/a> is David Yonke of the Toledo Blade<\/i>. (Toledo is the Midwest capital of Antiochian Orthodoxy.)<\/p>\n

Here,
\nI’d say, is an opportunity for GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly to needle
\nhis journalistic readers to get on the stick. It’s not as if TMatt
\ndoesn’t know what’s going on. As he links today<\/a>, he himself belongs to an Antiochian Orthodox parish<\/a> in Linthicum, Maryland. C’mon GetReligionistas! GetOrthodox!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the stories in American religion today, none may be more fascinating than the meltdown of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the Levantine branch of Eastern Orthodoxy in America that has been led since 1966 by Metropolitan Philip Saliba. The denomination has done well under Philip’s leadership, multiplying parishes and expanding its membership not least…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nA most intriguing tale - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/a-most-intriguing-tale.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A most intriguing tale - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Of all the stories in American religion today, none may be more fascinating than the meltdown of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the Levantine branch of Eastern Orthodoxy in America that has been led since 1966 by Metropolitan Philip Saliba. The denomination has done well under Philip’s leadership, multiplying parishes and expanding its membership not least…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/a-most-intriguing-tale.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-16T13:14:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.spiritual-politics.org\/Saliba.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A most intriguing tale - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/a-most-intriguing-tale.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A most intriguing tale - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"Of all the stories in American religion today, none may be more fascinating than the meltdown of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the Levantine branch of Eastern Orthodoxy in America that has been led since 1966 by Metropolitan Philip Saliba. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}