‘Born-Again’ Denomination Committed to Quest for Ties With Eastern Orthodoxy, American Evangelicals

A fledgling denomination striving to enter into communion with ancient Eastern Orthodoxy and reestablish links with fellow “born-again” Christians has incurred its first rebuff--from the National Assn. of Evangelicals, which set aside the denomination’s bid for membership.

The ecclesiastical gulf between evangelical Protestants and the Eastern churches is about as wide as any in Christendom.

But the tiny Evangelical Orthodox Church, based here, still plans to visit the Ecumenical Patriarch this summer in what has been called a “romantic” quest to be a spiritual bridge-builder.

“Evangelicals and Orthodox Christians need to discover each other,” said Presiding Bishop Peter E. Gillquist, who heads the Evangelical Orthodox Church and lives among a colony of church members here and in Goleta.

Gillquist received word this week that the denomination’s membership application has been tabled by the National Assn. of Evangelicals executive committee.

‘Got Something to Offer’

“We think we’ve got something to offer the NAE,” said Gillquist, obviously disappointed. During an interview, he reviewed the 6-year-old church’s research and “rediscovery” of the value the Eastern Orthodox church has placed in church tradition, liturgy and even the incense and icons featured in Eastern church worship.

Gillquist and five other founders of the Evangelical Orthodox Church were former leaders of the Campus Crusade for Christ before they left that organization in the late 1960s.

Although the church retains an evangelical zeal for preaching, Gillquist speculated that NAE executives were uneasy because of his church’s emphasis on liturgy, bishops and beliefs such as the “real presence” of Christ in the Communion service.

In an interview by telephone, NAE Executive Director Billy Melvin indicated that no single reason prompted setting aside the application. “It is probably wise for them and us to have a longer time for discussion. They’re a young church,” Melvin said.

Bishops Not a Problem

The fact that the Evangelical Orthodox Church has bishops--19 in all, serving a total membership of more than 2,000 persons in 26 parishes ranging from Memphis to Alaska--was not a problem for the National Assn. of Evangelicals. Melvin said that several of the NAE’s 42 member denominations have bishops.

More important than establishing formal ties with evangelicals, it would seem, however, is the Evangelical Orthodox Church’s effort to enter into communion with Eastern Orthodox churches. Gillquist and other bishops have consulted frequently with U.S. priests and prelates of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Russian-heritage Orthodox Church in America.

On June 2, the denomination’s entire hierarchy, joined by Greek Orthodox Bishop Maximos of Pittsburgh, will depart for Istanbul and an audience with Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I, the archbishop of Constantinople.

Gillquist said his church hopes it can receive permission to establish itself as an independent Orthodox body, such as the American Carpatho-Russian Greek Orthodox Catholic Church. That church, organized in 1938 in Johnstown, Pa., was formed from Eastern European immigrant parishes that broke ties with the Roman Catholic Church to enter into communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Report to Patriarchate

Maximos, interviewed by telephone, said the Patriarchate asked for a report on the Evangelical Orthodox Church after two of Demetrios I’s representatives met Gillquist and his colleagues last July at a Greek Orthodox gathering in this country.

“I have followed their struggle for some time,” Maximos said. “I am one of those who think we need this kind of love for the gospel and evangelical zeal that this group can bring to canonical orthodoxy.”

The bishop noted that some people have accused the church of being a sect. “They have some practices which are kind of rigorous, but they are legitimate,” he said.

An obvious obstacle to gaining recognition is acknowledged quickly by Maximos and Gillquist. The Orthodox tradition allows married priests but not married bishops--and all 19 of the Evangelical Orthodox Church’s bishops are married.

“We discovered marriage long before we discovered the Orthodox Church,” Gillquist said. He indicated that he hopes the Ecumenical Patriarch might accept them provisionally, on condition that the present bishops replace themselves with celibate men.

Ties to Campus Crusade

Gillquist is 47, and his fellow founding members are about the same age. He was the Midwest director for Campus Crusade for Christ in the mid-1960s. Jack N. Sparks, a bishop who heads the church’s seminary in Isla Vista, was a leading Campus Crusade worker before starting an evangelical activist movement in Berkeley in the early 1970s. Jon Braun, another Santa Barbara-based bishop, was national field director for the San Bernardino-based organization. Kenneth A. Berven, now publisher of the church’s quarterly magazine at Mt. Hermon, Calif., was an assistant to Campus Crusade founder-president Bill Bright.

“When we left Campus Crusade in 1968, it was principally over the issue of church,” Gillquist said. As a so-called para-church agency, Campus Crusade specializes in converting young adults into believers and tries to guide them into church life. But Gillquist said he felt that in practical terms “our kids were being left on the doorstep.”

Also contributing to their disenchantment with Campus Crusade, Gillquist said, was a “me and Jesus” personal Christianity practiced by many evangelicals then and the leadership style of Bright, a layman who still heads the influential organization.

“Once he committed himself to a course of action, Bill was not apt to change,” Gillquist said.

Grew From 1973 Meeting

The ex-Campus Crusade leaders, together with some other former evangelicals, met in Dallas in 1973 and formed in the next year the New Covenant Apostolic Order. In February, 1979, the order was transformed into the present church body. Isla Vista, the community adjacent to the University of Santa Barbara campus, was chosen as headquarters because three of the leading six bishops lived there.

The church has urged that its members live as close to one another as possible with the result that about 150 members live in Isla Vista and another 50 east of U.S. 101 in Goleta.

Critics, including the evangelical Spiritual Counterfeits Project in Berkeley, charged several years ago that the semi-communitarian arrangements were designed to exert greater control over members’ spiritual and personal lives. The salvos of charges and countercharges between the two groups culminated with an inconclusive debate here in 1981.

“We have excommunicated a few people,” Gillquist said, but he added that churches have done so for various reasons throughout history. Strong leadership and church discipline are facets of Christian history that he thinks are important, Gillquist said.

An article in the church’s magazine a few years ago asserted: “Those in the church who refuse to trust and follow their godly leaders will be injured or perhaps destroyed and the church will lose its cutting edge and become passive. . . . We trust (our leaders), not because they are infallible, but because they are godly men who have done and are doing godly work.”

‘Submissive and Obedient’

Bishop J. Richard Ballew, who pastors the Isla Vista church in a former bank building, wrote in the current magazine that one sign of being “filled with the Holy Spirit” is being “submissive and obedient.” They are to be submissive to one another, yet with the understanding that it is a hierarchal church with lines of authority.

A comparison of membership figures indicates some attrition along with gains since 1979. When the church was first announced, it was said 50 churches belonged. However, the present number of parishes is about 26. Three churches in California joined last year: two charismatic congregations in Santa Barbara County and a community Bible church outside Sacramento.

Father Thomas Webster said the church had 986 adult members six years ago and has between 1,500 and 1,600 adult members at present.

The church’s bishops still have some influence in the conservative Protestant world through books and articles they have written. Gillquist, in addition, has been religion editor of the large Thomas Nelson & Co. publishers in Nashville for the last nine years. One of the company’s latest books is by ex-evangelical thinker Thomas Howard, who wrote “Evangelical Is Not Enough” and recently announced that he has joined the Roman Catholic Church.

Despite its small size, the church has captured the attention of a broad audience with “the grand gesture,” said the Rev. Bruce Wollenberg, the Lutheran campus pastor at UC Santa Barbara.

Wollenberg credited them with “a completely new kind of ecumenism--their very own home brew.” But with the National Assn. of Evangelical’s rebuff and with the Orthodox obstacle concerning married bishops, “I see a dash of cold water on their romantic foray into ecumenism,” the campus pastor said. “This is where reality meets romanticism.”