Point Man for Greek Orthodox Church : Religion: ‘I knew the value of publicity,’ says Nicholas Royce of North Hollywood. His media campaign has brought greater awareness of his faith.

It happened 43 years ago, but Nicholas Royce is not about to forget the day he was inducted into the Army at Ft. Mead outside Baltimore. That was the day he learned about the tri-faith syndrome.

“Are you Catholic, Protestant or Jewish?” the induction officer asked him. “None of them,” Royce responded.

“I told him I was Greek Orthodox,” he recalled, “but the officer kept insisting that I had to fit into one of the three categories because that was all they recognized. Or I could be classified as an ‘other.’ That really irked me.

“Eastern Orthodox Christians had died in World War II in defense of the Constitution, yet here we were being denied our constitutional rights of freedom of religion.”

By his own admission Royce, a 63-year-old former professional dancer turned film distribution executive, takes any slight of his religion as a personal affront. But the North Hollywood resident does far more than just stew over his hurts.

His Army experience prompted him to start a nine-year lobbying effort that ended in 1955 when the Pentagon agreed to permit Orthodox Christians to have their own chaplains and official classification. Church leaders say Royce’s effort also prompted Dwight D. Eisenhower to invite an Orthodox archbishop to participate in his 1957 presidential inauguration, the first time such an invitation had been extended.

Since then, Royce has engaged in a nonstop, one-man campaign to raise public awareness and gain official recognition for Orthodox Christianity. He continues to pester politicians into giving Orthodox clergy equal time at ceremonial occasions, arranges for Orthodox representatives to appear on radio and television religion talk shows and makes sure that Orthodox viewpoints are included in interfaith activities.

He cajoles and, he also admits, sometimes annoys. But he’s also persistent and his efforts have gained him wide recognition within his church and the interfaith community as well.

“If it was not for Nick, Orthodoxy really wouldn’t be recognized in the United States. His work has been to that extent,” said the Rev. James T. Adams, dean of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles. “Nick gave the church visibility before anyone else in the church was even aware of the need for that.”

“Nick is my connection with the religious Greek community,” added Robert M. Jones, Southern California regional executive director for the National Conference of Christians and Jews. “He’s an excellent champion of his faith in the community.”

Royce works independently of his church’s hierarchy. He holds no official position and receives no financial support from the church, even though he said that each year he spends “several thousand dollars” of his money on behalf of his faith.

“I like to work alone,” he said. “You have to satisfy too many people if you work on committees. That’s why I could never be a priest.”

Royce’s outspokenness is also directed at his church, which he believes is stuck in its ethnic past, and reluctant to accommodate American mores and face the social problems of the day.

“Orthodoxy needs to be made relevant if it is to satisfy the real spiritual needs of our thoroughly Americanized congregants,” he said. “Having a bishop look great in beautiful vestments isn’t enough. He’s got to be streetwise.

“Our clergy believe in apostolic succession. So let them start to act like apostles and mix with the people.”

Statements like that have earned Royce the status of “church gadfly,” said Andrew T. Kopan, a professor of education at De Paul University in Chicago and a founder of Orthodox Christian Laity, a national body of lay Orthodox.

“He doesn’t go through formal channels, and that doesn’t endear you to the conservative elements in the church,” Kopan said. “There are some members of the hierarchy who see Nick as a threat because he demands accountability.”

Despite that, Royce was awarded Greek Orthodoxy’s highest honor accorded to lay people. In 1985, he traveled to New York where Archbishop Iakovos, the highest Greek Orthodox official in the Western Hemisphere, personally bestowed upon Royce the rank of Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Order of St. Andrew.

Royce, slightly built, white-haired and passionate when talking about his church, was born in Bethlehem, Pa., where his Greek immigrant parents ran a restaurant. When he was 6, the family moved to Baltimore and it was there that he encountered ethnic and religious prejudice.

“I heard a lot of ‘Go back to Greece,’ yet I was born in America. It tore me apart and I went home crying a lot,” Royce said. “But my reaction to this was to immerse myself in the Greek Orthodox religion and Greek culture.”

Greek Orthodoxy is the largest of the various independent national branches of Eastern Orthodox Christianity that have taken root in the United States, accounting for about 40% of the nation’s 5 million Orthodox believers (others include Russian, Ukrainian, Antiochian and Serbian Orthodox church members).

About three-fourths of Southern California’s 200,000 Orthodox Christians belong to the Greek church.

Orthodox Christians, whose church split with Western Christianity in the 11th Century over political and theological differences, consider theirs the true church of the early apostles. Known for its incense-filled rituals and the beauty of its icons (painted images of Christ and the saints), Orthodoxy is a conservative faith bound in Old World traditions.

Royce, however, is anything but traditional.

Taught to dance by his older sister, he turned professional at age 14, despite family fears that show business would drain him of his culture and religion. “That’s a problem we have in the Greek Orthodox world,” he said. “There’s a real fear that assimilation means the end for us as a people. I’m a perfect example of how untrue that is.”

Royce was known as “the Greek Fred Astaire in GI clothing” when the Army sent him on tours of military hospitals and bases. He appeared in nightclubs and theaters around the country with his own group, specializing in jazz and calypso dancing, and on the Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle and Kate Smith television shows.

He settled in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, ended his dancing career in 1960 and tried banking and hosting TV and radio talk shows before going into film distribution. He works in Hollywood for a religious film production company.

Soon after moving here, he also took on the self-appointed task of shaking up his church when he realized his own spiritual needs were unfulfilled.

“I wanted a church that was there for me seven days a week, not just on Sunday. I needed a forward-looking church that responded to issues and wasn’t just a cocoon for immigrants,” he said.

At about the same time, he noticed that Orthodoxy never seemed to be mentioned in the popular media. “Having been in show business, I knew the value of publicity,” Royce said. “Since no one else was doing it, I just started contacting the media and sending out press releases and letters.”

At the time, though, neither the Greek or any of the other Orthodox churches had official public relations representatives. Not knowing who else to call, media people got in the habit of calling Royce.

“Besides, I wasn’t your typical passive priest,” he explained. “I was outspoken and the media likes that. So they kept calling. Some of the clergy got quite upset with me. They said, ‘Who is he to do that?’ ”

“Nick was sort of a legend in the church back in the ‘50s,” Kopan said in a telephone interview from Chicago. “Before there was any organized public relations for the church, Nick was speaking or writing about Orthodoxy to anybody who would listen.”

Royce’s prime concerns within his church revolve around what he sees as the need for a “good” English translation of the Greek Orthodox liturgy and his upset over “unimaginative” responses to such pressing social issues as interfaith marriages, AIDS, the homeless, drugs, nuclear weapons and the role of women.

“The church has a moral duty to participate in solving social problems,” Royce said. “I’d like to see some of our bishops work in a soup kitchen and visit hospitals.”

“Nick believes the Orthodox churches should come right out with positions on social issues like other faiths often do,” said St. Sophia’s Father Adams. “He believes the church is too slow to respond, and sometimes he is right.”

Royce also is involved in an international effort on behalf of the Orthodoxy’s spiritual leader, Archbishop Dimitrios I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul). Orthodox officials have charged Muslim Turkey with harassing the archbishop, and Royce has fired off hundreds of letters to heads of state and international organizations in an attempt to pressure the Turkish government into allowing the archbishop more freedom.

“This may be his greatest contribution to the church,” said Nikki Stephanopoulos, chief spokesperson in New York for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America. “Nicholas was way ahead of everybody in getting people to understand the situation.”

Not all of Royce’s causes involve his religion, however.

Earlier this year, he became the first man to be accepted as a member of Women in Film, the third entertainment industry women’s organization to grant him full membership. The others were American Women in Radio & TV (Royce was the first male to serve on the board of the Southern California chapter) and the Hollywood Women’s Press Club.

Noting that women are being accepted in formerly all-male organizations, Royce said he is simply doing his bit to demonstrate that turnabout is fair play.

“I’ve always been an activist and maybe I’m a feminist. Besides, women have helped me during my life and I think I can help them by participating in their organizations,” he said.