Today an English bishop is holding a conference in Bucharest, as he did in Constantinople, on unifying our Orthodox Church with the Church of England. This is preposterous. Furthermore, it is a crime against our national being. We saw it coming and were expecting it. For three years now, the Christian associations of the red and of the blue triangle (Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A.) have been engaging in religious propaganda, in search of followers of a faith which is not, cannot be, and must not be our own. For three years now, highly unorthodox evangelization efforts have been persistently conducted by such priests as T. Popescu and D. Cornilescu at the "Nest and Stork" by means of sermons and books on whose covers our holy cross is overridden by the Byzantine crown of an English-blooded Queen. For three years now has archimandrite Scriban been trying to reestablish a kind of moral virginity, by acting as the apostle of an orthodoxy heavily washed in the waters of the West, to the point of becoming washed out. And there are others still. With all of our history as witness, we lift up a protestation against this heinous crime. The fusion of these two churches would mean allowing the King of England to stand, with equal rights, in the future synod of our Eastern Church; it means counterfeiting our faith, which does not rest upon a moralizing Gospel but on the profound, organic, link with God, and, furthermore, it means exposing our spiritual life to any foreign political influence. Pushed back from the gateways of the Black Sea and Asia Minor by spectacular political defeats, the English are now looking for the shortest route to the Persian Gulf, via Constantza and Trebizond. Let them have it, if there is no other way, or if this is the way it must be. Not over our souls, though. Our troubles are of a different nature; in this moment of religious rebirth our paths are unfolding clearly: strenuous, yet full of light. And tread them we shall, with the determination of a people which has never lived but through the strength of suffering, and which has never suffered but with trust in salvation. For the time being, however: Away with all this Church of England policing.
by Nae Ionescu (1890-1940)
