The Long Island Council of Churches held its 2005 Annual Meeting on Thursday, May 5th from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM at Temple Beth David in Commack. The keynote speaker for this year’s event was the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, pastor of Our Lady of Kazan Orthodox Church in America in Sea Cliff and a founder of “Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A.” Rev. Kishkovsky, an Orthodox priest, is former president of the National Council of Churches (USA) and serves as the Ecumenical Officer for the Orthodox Church in America.

Father Kishkovsky described the challenges he has encountered in bringing together religious leaders from diverse Christian faith traditions that have traditionally been at odds with one another and are often unknown to one another. Although the Russian Orthodox Church was one of the first denominations to conduct missionary work in North America, when Americans hear the word “Orthodox” today, Rev. Kishkovsky noted, both other Christians and many Jews think “Orthodox Jews.”

Protestants commonly assume that Orthodox churches are similar to theirs, but that is far from the case. For example, Orthodox Christians celebrated Christ’s resurrection on May 1 this year. The Orthodox participated neither in the Reformation nor the Counter-Reformation, so many debates and dialogues between Protestants and Catholics remain quite foreign to the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

The National Council of Churches includes mainline Protestants, African American denominations, and the Eastern Orthodox, but Orthodox participation in the NCC has been somewhat limited. The NCC has had good relations with Catholics, but many Evangelicals have been hostile to NCC, with the National Association of Evangelicals barring from its membership anyone who joins the NCC. When Bob Edgar became General Secretary of the NCC, he reached out to Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestant churches, and the NCC has enthusiastically supported Kishkovsky’s efforts to build a new, broader organization that might include them. Some African American denominations have feared that the new organization might weaken the NCC and are distrustful of the new group’s position on racial issues, and there has also been some hesitancy among evangelicals, but representatives from all five of these streams of Christianity joined together to formally launch Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A. this June, with a big celebration this September at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A. will have minimal administrative structure, limited to an executive director and one full-time secretary. Leadership will be built from each of the five groups, with representatives from each functioning like co-presidents, who will rule by consensus. Bringing together people of such diverse faith traditions, ethnic, cultural and language differences is both new and radical. Never before have representatives from such diverse Christian faith traditions sat at the same table together. When they began to talk with one another and to consider how they might collaborate, they all agreed that working together to serve the world’s poor, was the most promising way to overcome barriers that historically divided them.

Asked what he has learned about how denominations and ecumenical organizations can deal with divisive issues of sexuality, Father Kishkovsky said that the World Council of Churches has found that there can be ecumenical dialogue on these topics but probably never a consensus. The Reformed denominations have found that the absolutely worst way to wrestle with these issues is to vote on “legislation that declares an official position, which leads to division rather than unity. He believes a process of consultation and reflection approach will be far more successful and that where ecumenical bodies should focus their energies is their shared commitment to compassion for the poor and advocacy on their behalf – a theological imperative common to religious traditions throughout the world.

Rev. Kishkovsky concluded his remarks by reflecting on the manner in which the late Pope John Paul II was able to combine a conservative theology with interfaith outreach. While interfaith dialogue is typically led by liberals of each participating tradition, John Paul II reached out to other faiths. His unique blend of theological conservatism and interfaith outreach liberated those of other faiths to be strictly observant of their own traditions while simultaneously engaging in interfaith cooperation and understanding. Successful interfaith dialogue, Kishkovsky said, does not mean abandoning one’s own faith tradition and may, in fact, encourage one to become more firmly rooted in one’s own faith tradition. The secret of Pope John Paul’s success, Rev. Kishkovsky believes, was that his dual stance allowed people to engage in interfaith dialogue without compromising their own beliefs and traditions.

We are grateful to Deamoak’s Planning Services, Ltd., and Riverhead Building Supply, for their generous support of this event.

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