Convert elected new head of Orthodox Church in America

c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) On the heels of a historic presidential election last week, hundreds of Orthodox Christians frustrated with their own leadership also voted for change Wednesday (Nov. 12), in the form of the youngest, newest bishop to become the head of the Orthodox Church in America. Bishop Jonah, 49, born James […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) On the heels of a historic presidential election last week, hundreds of Orthodox Christians frustrated with their own leadership also voted for change Wednesday (Nov. 12), in the form of the youngest, newest bishop to become the head of the Orthodox Church in America.

Bishop Jonah, 49, born James Paffhausen in Chicago, Ill., will also be the first convert to become the OCA’s metropolitan, having converted from the Episcopal Church to Orthodox Christianity 30 years ago while studying at the University of California, San Diego.


Jonah has been an Orthodox priest for more than a dozen years, but has been a bishop for less than two weeks. He was elected Bishop of Fort Worth (Texas) and Auxiliary Bishop of the South on Sept. 4, and was formally consecrated on Nov. 1.

His Sept. 4 election as bishop came the same day that the church’s former leader, Metropolitan Herman, retired following the release of a scathing special investigative report about OCA financial mismanagement.

Following his election as metropolitan at the OCA’s All-American Council in Pittsburgh, Jonah vowed to be a “servant” to the church, and excited the delegates with his aims of creating Orthodox campus housing facilities at every major university and expanding domestic charitable and health care initiatives.

`’The buck stops here,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do, and we need to resolve within ourselves that we make living out our Orthodox faith in our actions and by our words, the first and foremost thing in our entire life.”

With fewer than 30,000 members, the OCA had just 17 candidates among its bishops for the metropolitan position. Mark Stokoe, editor of Orthodox Christians for Accountability, a Web site that has tracked the church’s administrative crisis, had listed seven that had not been “tainted” by the investigative report, and said he would support Archbishop Job, who intends to retire in 2011, followed by Jonah.

Jonah received a slim majority of the votes in the first round of voting over Job, and then a larger majority during the second round. Both names were forwarded to the Holy Synod of Bishops for consideration, which formally confirmed Jonah’s election.

`’The clergy and laity in their votes expressed an unmistakable choice for change, real change, at the top,” Stokoe said. “God clearly moved up the timetable. … For the first time in three years of scandal, we are all on the same page at last. And that is the hand of God moving among his people. The smiles on the faces of delegates says it all.”


The OCA, based in Syosset, N.Y., was granted autonomy from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1970. With English-language liturgies, the OCA is often seen as the friendliest to converts, who might have trouble adapting to the heavily ethnic customs and liturgies of other Orthodox churches.

Some OCA clergy had supported Russian Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev of Vienna and Austria, an outsider, for the position, but Hilarion said he did not want to leave the Moscow Patriarchate for an independent church body. Another contender, Archbishop Seraphim of Ottawa and Canada, withdrew his name from consideration, saying he thought the metropolitan should come from within the United States.

Jonah will be installed as metropolitan at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 28.

KRE/DEA END NEROULIAS

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A photo of Bishop Jonah is available via https://religionnews.com

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