Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future

by Seraphim Rose

  But the very nature of the Ecumenist heresy — the belief that there is no one visible Church of Christ, that it is only now being formed — is such that it disposes the soul under its influence to certain spiritual attitudes which, in time, should produce a typical Ecumenist “piety” and “spirituality.” In our day this seems to be happening at last, as the Ecumenical attitude of religious “expectancy” and “searching” begins to be rewarded by the activity of a certain “spirit” which gives religious satisfaction to the barren souls of the Ecumenist wasteland and results in a characteristic “piety” which is no longer merely Protestant in tone.

  This book was begun in 1971 with an examination of the latest “Ecumenical” fashion — the opening of a “dialogue with non-Christian religions.” Four chapters on this subject were printed in The Orthodox Word in 1971 and 1972, reporting chiefly on the events of the late 1960s up to early 1972. The last of these chapters was a detailed discussion of the “charismatic revival” which had just then been taken up by several Orthodox priests in America, and this movement was described as a form of “Ecumenical spirituality” inclusive of religious experiences which are distinctly non-Christian.

  Especially this last chapter aroused a great deal of interest among Orthodox people, and it helped to persuade some not to take part in the “charismatic” movement. Others, who had already participated in “charismatic” meetings, left the movement and confirmed many of the conclusions of this article about it. Since then the “charismatic revival” in “Orthodox” parishes in America, judging from Fr. Eusebius Stephanou’s periodical The Logos, has entirely adopted the language and techniques of Protestant revivalism, and its un-Orthodox character has become clear to any serious observer. Despite the Protestant mentality of its promoters, however, the “charismatic revival” as a “spiritual” movement is definitely something more than Protestantism. The characterization of it in this article as a kind of “Christian” mediumism, which has been corroborated by a number of observers of it, links it to the new “Ecumenical spirituality” out of which is being born a new, non-Christian religion.

  In the summer of 1974, one of the American monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia was visited by a young man who had been directed to one of its monks by the “spirit” who constantly attended him. During his brief visit the story of this young man unfolded itself. He was from a conservative Protestant background which he found spiritually barren, and he had been opened up to “spiritual” experiences by his Pentecostalist grandmother: the moment he touched a Bible she had given him, he received “spiritual gifts” — most notably, he was attended by an invisible “spirit” who gave him precise instructions as to where to walk and drive; and he was able at will to hypnotize others and cause them to levitate (a talent which he playfully used to terrorize atheist acquaintances). Occasionally he would doubt that his “gifts” were from God, but these doubts were overcome when he reflected on the fact that his spiritual “barrenness” had vanished, that his “spiritual rebirth” had been brought about by contact with the Bible, and that he seemed to be leading a very rich life of prayer and “spirituality.” Upon becoming acquainted with Orthodoxy at this monastery, and especially after reading the article on the “charismatic revival,” he admitted that here he found the first thorough and clear explanation of his “spiritual” experiences; most likely, he confessed, his “spirit” was an evil one. This realization, however, did not seem to touch his heart, and he left without being converted to Orthodoxy. On his next visit two years later this man revealed that he had given up “charismatic” activities as too frightening and was now spiritually content practicing Zen meditation.

  This close relationship between “Christian” and “Eastern” spiritual experiences is typical of the “ecumenical” spirituality of our days. For this second edition much has been added concerning Eastern religious cults and their influence today, as well as concerning a major “secular” phenomenon which is helping to form a “new religious consciousness” even among non-religious people. None of these by itself, it may be, has a crucial significance in the spiritual make-up of contemporary man; but each one in its own way typifies the striving of men today to find a new spiritual path, distinct from the Christianity of yesterday, and the sum of them together reveals a frightening unity of purpose whose final end seems just now to be looming above the horizon.

  Shortly after the publication of the article on the “charismatic revival,” The Orthodox Word received a letter from a respected Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical writer who is well versed in Orthodox theological and spiritual literature, saying: “What you have described here is the religion of the future, the religion of antichrist.” More and more, as this and similar forms of counterfeit spirituality take hold even of nominal Orthodox Christians, one shudders to behold the deception into which spiritually unprepared Christians can fall. This book is a warning to them and to all trying to live a conscious Orthodox Christian life in a world possessed by unclean spirits. It is not an exhaustive treatment of this religion, which has not yet attained its final form, but rather a preliminary exploration of those spiritual tendencies which, it would indeed seem, are preparing the way for a true religion of anti-Christianity, a religion outwardly “Christian,” but centered upon a pagan “initiation” experience.

  May this description of the increasingly evident and brazen activity of satan, the prince of darkness, among “Christians,” inspire true Orthodox Christians with the fear of losing God’s grace and turn them back to the pure sources of Christian life: the Holy Scriptures and the spiritual doctrine of the Holy Fathers of Orthodoxy!

  Introduction

  1. The “Dialogue with Non-Christian Religions”

  OURS is a spiritually unbalanced age, when many Orthodox Christians find themselves tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive (Eph. 4:14). The time, indeed, seems to have come when men will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be inclined unto fables (II Tim. 4:3–4).

  One reads in bewilderment of the latest acts and pronouncements of the ecumenical movement. On the most sophisticated level, Orthodox theologians representing the American Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops and other official Orthodox bodies conduct learned “dialogues” with Roman Catholics and Protestants and issue “joint statements” on such subjects as the Eucharist, spirituality, and the like — without even informing the heterodox that the Orthodox Church is the Church of Christ to which all are called, that only her Mysteries are grace-giving, that Orthodox spirituality can be understood only by those who know it in experience within the Orthodox Church, that all these “dialogues” and “joint statements” are an academic caricature of true Christian discourse — a discourse which has the salvation of souls as its aim. Indeed, many of the Orthodox participants in these “dialogues” know or suspect that this is no place for Orthodox witness, that the very atmosphere of ecumenical “liberalism” cancels out whatever truth might be spoken at them; but they are silent, for the “spirit of the times” today is often stronger than the voice of Orthodox conscience. (See Diakonia, 1970, no. 1, p. 72; St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 1969, no. 4, p. 225; etc.)

  On a more popular level, ecumenical “conferences” and “discussion” are organized, often with an “Orthodox speaker” or even the celebration of an “Orthodox Liturgy.” The approach to these “conferences” is often so dilettantish, and the general attitude at them is so lacking in seriousness, that rather than advance the “unity” their promoters desire, they actually serve to prove the existence of an impassible abyss between true Orthodoxy and the “ecumenical” outlook. (See Sobornost, Winter, 1978, pp. 494–98, etc.)

  On the level of action, ecumenical activists take advantage of the fact that the intellectuals an
d theologians are irresolute and unrooted in Orthodox tradition, and use their very words concerning “fundamental agreement” on sacramental and dogmatic points as an excuse for flamboyant ecumenical acts, not excluding the giving of Holy Communion to heretics. And this state of confusion in turn gives an opportunity for ecumenical ideologists on the most popular level to issue empty pronouncements that reduce basic theological issues to the level of cheap comedy, as when Patriarch Athenagoras allows himself to say: “Does your wife ever ask you how much salt she should put in the food? Certainly not. She has the infallibility. Let the Pope have it too, if he wishes” (Hellenic Chronicle, April 9, 1970).

  The informed and conscious Orthodox Christian may well ask: where will it all end? Is there no limit to the betrayal, the denaturement, the self-liquidation of Orthodoxy?

  It has not yet been too carefully observed where all this is leading, but logically the path is clear. The ideology behind ecumenism, which has inspired such ecumenistic acts and pronouncements as the above, is an already well-defined heresy: the Church of Christ does not exist, no one has the Truth, the Church is only now being built. But it takes little reflection to see that the self-liquidation of Orthodoxy, of the Church of Christ, is simultaneously the self-liquidation of Christianity itself; that if no one is the Church of Christ, then the combination of all sects will not be the Church either, not in the sense in which Christ founded it. And if all “Christian” bodies are relative to each other, then all of them together are relative to other “religious” bodies, and “Christian” ecumenism can only end in a syncretic world religion.

  This is indeed the undisguised aim of the masonic ideology which has inspired the Ecumenical Movement, and this ideology has now taken such possession of those who participate in the Ecumenical Movement that “dialogue” and eventual union with the non-Christian religions have come to be the logical next step for today’s denatured Christianity. The following are a few of the many recent examples that could be given that point the way to an “ecumenical” future outside of Christianity.

  1. On June 27, 1965, a “Convocation of Religion for World Peace” was held in San Francisco in connection with the 20th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in that city. Before 10,000 spectators there were addresses on the “religious” foundation of world peace by Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox representatives, and hymns of all faiths were sung by a 2,000-voice “interfaith” choir.

  2. The Greek Archdiocese of North and South America, in the official statement of its 19th Clergy-Laity Congress (Athens, July 1968), declared: “We believe that the ecumenical movement, even though it is of Christian origin, must become a movement of all religions reaching towards each other.”

  3. The “Temple of Understanding, Inc.,” an American foundation established in 1960 as a kind of “Association of United Religions” with the aim of “building the symbolic Temple in various parts of the world” (precisely in accord with the doctrine of Freemasonry), has held several “Summit Conferences.” At the first, in Calcutta in 1968, the Latin Trappist Thomas Merton (who was accidentally electrocuted in Bangkok on the way back from this conference) declared: “We are already a new unity. What we must regain is our original unity.” At the second, at Geneva in April 1970, eighty representatives of ten world religions met to discuss such topics as “The Project of the Creation of a World Community of Religions;” the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, delivered an address calling on the heads of all religions to unity; and on April 2 an “unprecedented” supra-confessional prayer service took place in St. Peter’s Cathedral, described by the Protestant Pastor Babel as “a very great date in the history of religions,” at which “everyone prayed in his own language and according to the customs of religion which he represented” and at which “the faithful of all religions were invited to coexist in the cult of the same God,” the service ending with the “Our Father” (La Suisse, April 3, 1970). Promotional material sent out by the “Temple of Understanding” reveals that Orthodox delegates were present at the second “Summit Conference” in the United States in the autumn of 1971, and that Metropolitan Emilianos of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is a member of the Temple’s “International Committee.” The “Summit Conferences” offer Orthodox delegates the opportunity to enter discussions aiming to “create a world community of religions,” to “hasten the realization of mankind’s dream of peace and understanding” according to the philosophy of “Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Ghandi, Schweitzer,” and the founders of various religions; and the delegates likewise participate in “unprecedented” supra-confessional prayer services where “everyone prays according to the customs of the religion he represents.” One can only wonder what must be in the soul of an Orthodox Christian who participates in such conferences and prays together with Moslems, Jews, and pagans.

  4. Early in 1970 the WCC sponsored a conference in Ajaltoun, Lebanon, between Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and Moslems, and a follow-up conference of twenty-three WCC “theologians” in Zurich in June declared the need for “dialogue” with the non-Christian religions. At the meeting of the Central Committee of the WCC at Addis Ababa in January of this year, Metropolitan Georges Khodre of Beirut (Orthodox Church of Antioch) shocked even many Protestant delegates when he not merely called for “dialogue” with these religions, but left the Church of Christ far behind and trampled on nineteen centuries of Christian tradition when he called on Christians to “investigate the authentically spiritual life of the unbaptized” and enrich their own experience with the “riches of a universal religious community” (Religious News Service), for “it is Christ alone who is received as light when grace visits a Brahmin, a Buddhist, or a Moslem reading his own scriptures” (Christian Century, Feb. 10, 1971).

  5. The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches at its meeting in Addis Ababa in January 1971, gave its approval and encouragement to the holding of meetings as regularly as possible between representatives of other religions, specifying that “at the present stage priority may be given to bilateral dialogues of a specific nature.” In accordance with this directive a major Christian-Moslem “dialogue” was set for mid-1972 involving some forty representatives of both sides, including a number of Orthodox delegates (Al Montada, January–February 1972, p. 18).

  6. In February 1972, another “unprecedented” ecumenical event occurred in New York when, according to Archbishop Iakovos of New York, for the first time in history, the Greek Orthodox Church (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America) held an official theological “dialogue” with the Jews. In two days of discussions definite results were achieved, which may be taken as symptomatic of the future results of the “dialogue with non-Christian religions”: the Greek “theologians” agreed “to review their liturgical texts in terms of improving references to Jews and Judaism where they are found to be negative or hostile” (Religious News Service). Does not the intention of the “dialogue” become ever more obvious? — to “reform” Orthodox Christianity in order to make it conformable to the religions of this world.

  These events were the beginnings of the “dialogue with non-Christian religions” at the end of the decade of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. In the years since then such events have multiplied, and “Christian” (and even “Orthodox”) discussions and worship with representatives of non-Christian religions have come to be accepted as a normal part of contemporary life. The “dialogue with non-Christian religions” has become part of the intellectual fashion of the day; it represents the present stage of ecumenism in its progress towards a universal religious syncretism. Let us now look at the “theology” and the goal of this accelerating “dialogue” and see how it differs from the “Christian” ecumenism that has prevailed up to now.

  2. “Christian” and Non-Christian Ecumenism

  “Christian” ecumenism at its best may be seen to represent a sincere and understandable error on t
he part of Protestants and Roman Catholics — the error of failing to recognize that the visible Church of Christ already exists, and that they are outside it. The “dialogue with non-Christian religions,” however, is something quite different, representing rather a conscience departure from even that part of genuine Christian belief and awareness which some Catholics and Protestants retain. It is the product, not of simple human “good intentions,” but rather of a diabolical “suggestion” that can capture only those who have already departed so far from Christianity as to be virtual pagans: worshippers of the god of this world, satan (II Cor. 4:4), and followers of whatever intellectual fashion this powerful god is capable of inspiring.

  “Christian” ecumenism relies for its support upon a vague but nonetheless real feeling of “common Christianity” which is shared by many who do not think or feel too deeply about the Church, and it aims somehow to “build” a church comprising all such indifferent “Christians.” But what common support can the “dialogue with non-Christians” rely on? On what possible ground can there be any kind of unity, however loose, between Christians and those who not merely do not know Christ, but — as is the case with all the present-day representatives of non-Christian religions who are in contact with Christianity — decisively reject Christ? Those who, like Metropolitan Georges Khodre of Lebanon, lead the avant-garde of Orthodox apostates (a name that is fully justified when applied to those who radically fall away from the whole Orthodox Christian tradition), speak of the “spiritual riches” and “authentic spiritual life” of the non-Christian religions; but it is only by doing great violence to the meaning of words and by reading his own fantasies into other people’s experience that he can bring himself to say that it is “Christ” and “grace” that pagans find in their scriptures, or that “every martyr for the truth, every man persecuted for what he believes to be right, dies in communion with Christ.”1 Certainly these people themselves (whether it be a Buddhist who sets fire to himself, a Communist who dies for the “cause” in which he sincerely believes, or whoever) would never say that it is “Christ” they receive or die for, and the idea of an unconscious confession or reception of Christ is against the very nature of Christianity. If a rare non-Christian does claim to have experience of “Christ,” it can only be in the way which Swami Vivekananda describes: “We Hindus do not merely tolerate, we unite ourselves with every religion, praying in the mosque of the Mohammedan, worshipping before the fire of the Zoroastrian, and kneeling to the Cross of the Christian” — that is, as merely one of a number of equally valid spiritual experiences.