The Evangelical Orthodox Church, a tiny denomination...

The Evangelical Orthodox Church, a tiny denomination led by “born-again” Christians, has finally reached its unusual goal of linking up with Eastern Orthodoxy. Presiding Bishop Peter E. Gillquist of Isla Vista, in Santa Barbara County, said the church--or at least most of it--will be received some time next year into the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

Because Orthodox churches do not permit married bishops, however, the Evangelical Orthodox Church’s 14 bishops will have to accept demotion to priests. Balking at that restriction, five other married bishops in the Evangelical Orthodox Church and their parishes have decided not to join the move into the Antiochian church and have split away.

“We are about three-fourths intact,” Gillquist said. The church still has 20 parishes around the country and more than 1,600 members, he said. Gillquist was one of half a dozen leaders of Campus Crusade for Christ who left that organization in the late 1960s and sought to form a church true to the earliest traditions.

In 1983, Evangelical Orthodox Church bishops failed to generate much interest either by the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios in Istanbul or the National Assn. of Evangelicals in the church’s attempt to be a bridge between evangelicalism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

But interest was later shown by Metropolitan Philip Saliba of Englewood, N.J., primate of the Antiochian archdiocese, whose 280,000 members are primarily of Syrian heritage. Negotiations for the evangelical church to come into the Antiochian fold were completed Sept. 8. Gillquist said formal reception of his parishes and re-ordination of the priests will take place within the next 12 months.

“We will not be a ‘church within a church,’ ” Gillquist said, adding, however, that its council of former bishops will continue to meet. “Metropolitan Philip wants us to maintain our evangelical identity and to concentrate on evangelism and building mission churches,” he said.

For the last 10 years, Gillquist has been religion editor or senior editor for Thomas Nelson Publishers but, he said, he “resigned in September to devote my full time to the transition.”

On Sunday, Gillquist will address a 1 p.m. banquet at the Holiday Inn in Torrance sponsored by St. Matthew Orthodox Church of Lomita, an English-language congregation pastored by the Rt. Rev. Paul Doyle.

PEOPLE

The Rev. John Swartz, 56, an Escondido pastor known to side with fundamentalists in their prolonged battle against moderates in the Southern Baptist Convention, was elected president of the denomination’s California convention in Stockton this week, succeeding the Rev. Willie Gaines of San Jose. Swartz has been pastor of the 1,000-member Bethel Southern Baptist Church in Escondido for 18 years and is a trustee at Southern Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Southern Baptists have 1,091 full-fledged congregations and 264 mission churches in the state.

Freed Middle East hostage David P. Jacobsen, recently reunited with his family in Huntington Beach, will take part with his two sons in Sunday services at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. Pastor Robert Schuller will interview Jacobsen, the former director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, at the 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. services, a church spokesman said. Jacobsen’s son Eric will sing and his son Paul will read Scripture in both services. Spokesman Kevin Cartwright said that Jacobsen, who had attended some Crystal Cathedral services in the past, has often said since being released Nov. 2 that his faith helped him survive captivity.

Pope John Paul II has elevated Msgr. George Martin Kuzma, 61, pastor of Annunication Byzantine Catholic Church in Anaheim since 1972, to the rank of bishop in that Eastern Rite wing of the Roman Catholic Church. Kuzma will serve as auxiliary to Bishop Michael Dudick of Passaic, N.J.

DATES

A traveling seminar assessing the “secularist” effect on courts, legislatures, schools and other institutions and featuring religious conservatives Cal Thomas, a syndicated columnist; attorney John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, and R. J. Rushdoony, president of Chalcedon, a Christian think tank in northern California, will be at San Diego’s First Assembly of God Church on Thursday night, at Glendale Community Church on Friday night and at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel in a daylong program next Saturday.

The Rev. Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia, a leading job-training organizer and author of ethical codes for U.S. businesses to combat South African apartheid, will speak Friday at a 7 p.m. banquet at the Holiday Inn, Riverside, sponsored by the western regions of the Opportunities Industrialization Center, an organization founded by Sullivan.

MEDIA

A news release advises that actress Diane Keaton makes her debut as a director in “Heaven” for RCA Productions, scheduled for release next spring. Keaton, who probed some of the great questions of meaning in Woody Allen’s comedy “Love and Death” a decade ago, takes a “loving look at the Great Beyond,” according to the release, asking questions such as “Is there sex in Heaven?” and “How do you get to Heaven?” The movie was described as a collision of “letter-of-the-law fundamentalists, freewheeling visionaries and the people next door.”