>>553895
>Was thinking of attending an Antiochian Orthodox church for my introduction to Orthodoxy
Great choice! If its a convert church that's probably the best, and if its an ethnic church that's pretty good too, the Arabs have been incredibly welcoming in my experience.
> However, upon further digging it appears that they are the "progressive" Orthodox.
Are you talking about Antiochians in general or a specific church? If your talking about Antiochians in general then I would say that my take on this issue is that it's part Greek and Slavic slander and part reality, which I will explain, but I'm going to do it right so bear with me. Sorry I've been wanting to get this off my chest for a while, and I think some could benefit here from the full rundown.
First here are the autocephalous (self-governing) churches with canonical jurisdictions in America:
1. Ecumenical Patriarchate
2. Patriarchate of Antioch
3. Patriarchate of Moscow
4. Patriarchate of Serbia
5. Patriarchate of Romania
6. Patriarchate of Bulgaria
7. Patriarchate of Georgia
8. Orthodox Church in America(whether this is an autocephalous church is debated)
Its also worth noting that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has four jurisdictions in America:
1a. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
1b. American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of the USA
1c. Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA
1d. Albanian Orthodox Diocese
And just for references here are the other autocephalous churches: Alexandria, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, and Albania. I think the following quote can help us in understanding some church politics, it's from Timothy Ware's The Orthodox Church. "The Churches of Greece and Cyprus are Greek; four of the others - Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Poland - are Slav."
So we can see that many of the Churches in America fall into these two categories, Greek or Slavic. Only 1a above is really Greek, but they are also pretty large. The rest are Slavic except for the following above, 1d, 2, 5, and 7, and some would get butthurt for my including the OCA among the Slavic Churches, but that's how I feel and I'm persuaded I feel that way accurately.
The Albanians, 1d, I think are more Greek, but they are also tiny and the Orthodox in their home country got shoahed extremely thoroughly by communists, so I wouldn't really consider them as their own important players in American church politics. The Romanians, 5, weren't included as Slavic by Ware, but I would consider them Slavic for all Church politics purposes, but maybe I just don't know enough about them, they aren't the largest church either. The Georgians, 7, aren't very big either, and whether they can be categorized as Greeks or Slavs, anyone with a map can tell they're one of the two, and in Church politics they aren't a real big hitter.
So who really are the big players in American Church politics? The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America(GOA), the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (AOA), the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), and the Orthodox Church in America(OCA). Some might argue against this, but I really feel that it is fair and that if the other churches want to be taken more seriously they need more of an American English presence.
As we saw above nearly every Church is either Greek or Slavic, with some border cases. Whats the one exception? The Antiochian Church, we;ll come back to this later.
Of the four big players the GOA is the Greek one and it has a lot of influence because it is very wide spread and is an Ecumenical Patriarchate jurisdiction. They are usually nice enough, but if you hear about Greeks shooing off non-Greeks and obsessing over ethnic bread and dancing they are probably who are being talked about. The most Slavic of the big players is ROCOR. They are usually nice enough, although I would honestly say less so than the GOA, and if you hear about Slavs shooing off non-Slavs and obsessing over ethnic alcohols and the collapse of the Soviet Union they are probably who are being talked about. The big player who is supposedly American is the OCA. They are probably my second favorite American jurisdiction and they are pretty American, but they have a Slavic background that they can't shake. They have historically been considered by many as the liberals of Orthodoxy, but much of that is because they didn't play by the muh Slavs muh communism narrative of ROCOR, who then slandered them.