Why Didn't the Early Protestants Just Become Orthodox?

This post was inspired by this question being asked by an old friend of mine in an exchange on Facebook. He said,

I think it was a big mistake that the Anglicans and Lutherans, who had the system of bishops and were national churches like the Orthodox, especially the Anglicans whose monarchs were temporal heads like the Roman kings were, not to have gone back to Orthodoxy. ... 

Whilst I am no expert on the Continental Reformation, I pointed out that bishops were only part of the problem. True, to the Anglicans they were essential to the constitution of the Church, but outside Sweden and Finland, the Lutheran churches held the episcopacy to be non-essential and operated on an essentially Presbyterian system.

As it happened, I was reading The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580, by Eamon Duffy, just as we were having this conversation. Despite my lack of knowledge of the Continental Reformation, I thought I knew quite a bit about the history of the Church of England. It turns out my knowledge was somewhat deficient. 

I knew that they were opposed to the invocation of the Saints. When Cranmer revised the Litany of the Saints (and renamed it to simply 'The Litany') in 1544, he reduced the long list of Saints invoked to three petitions, 'Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God Our Saviour, Jesus Christ', 'All holy Angels and Archangels and all holy orders of blessed spirits', and. 'All holy patriarchs, and Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, & Virgins, and all the blessed company of heaven', all with the response, 'Pray for us'.

By the time the Litany was included in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer even these truncated invocations had been removed.

This would not have gone over well with the Orthodox who glory in the invocation of the Theotokos and the Saints. For example, here is the Troparion of the Fifth Day of the Afterfeast of the Dormition (my emphasis):

In giving birth you preserved your virginity, / in falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos. / You were translated to life, O Mother of Life, / and by your prayers, you deliver our souls from death.

And the Troparion for the Feast of the Holy Prophet Samuel:

You were given as a precious gift to a barren womb, / and offered as a fragrant sacrifice to your Lord. / You served Him in truth and righteousness; / wherefore we honour you, O Samuel prophet of God, / as an intercessor for our souls.

The Troparion for the Afterfeast brings up another point as well. The Orthodox were (and are) deeply devoted to the Mother of God (Theotokos means 'God bearer'). In fact, the Eastern devotion to Her makes the most fanatical Western devotions look pale. Even many Roman Catholics, devoted to the Virgin Mary, look askance at the Akathist Hymn, a very popular Byzantine Devotion. Here are just a few lines from the very lengthy hymn which would have given the Reformers apoplexy:

Rejoice, O seer of the ineffable Will. Rejoice, O surety of those praying in silence.
Rejoice, you the Preface of Christ's miracles. Rejoice, you the Pinnacle of His commandments.
Rejoice, O heavenly Ladder, by which God descended. Rejoice, O Bridge leading those from earth to Heaven.
Rejoice, O Miracle, much marvelled of Angels. Rejoice, O trauma, much dirged of demons.
Rejoice, you who ineffably gave birth to the Light. Rejoice, you who revealed the mystery to none.
Rejoice, O knowledge superseding the wise. Rejoice, You who enlightens the minds of the faithful.

Rejoice, O Bride Ever-Virgin

I also had not realised how deeply the Anglican Reformers were committed to the heresy of iconoclasm. I knew they were no great friends of images, but not that they had literally waged war on all images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, destroying Crucifixes, smashing stained glass windows, and whitewashing over pictures.. This would not have sat well with the Orthodox who each year on the First Sunday in Great Lent hold a Feast called the Sunday of Orthodoxy. This Feast celebrates the decree of the Synod of Constantinople in 843, ending, at least temporarily, the rule of the iconoclastic party (the 'image breakers'). At the end of the first session, all made a triumphal procession from the Church of Blachernae to Hagia Sophia, restoring the icons to the church. This occurred on 11 March, 843 (which that year was the first Sunday of Great Lent). The Synod decreed that a perpetual feast on the anniversary of that day should be observed each year on the First Sunday of Great Lent, and named the day, "the Sunday of Orthodoxy". 

Another point of profound difference was a matter of æsthetics. The Reformers, in a misguided antiquarianism, stripped the Mass of virtually all its hymns and sung parts. Indeed, some went so far as to prohibit hymns that were not in Scripture. Given that the Eastern Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom makes the Roman Mass look stark and bare and is sung in its entirety, this would not have endeared the Reformers to the Byzantines.

So, assuming that the Continental Reformers held similar opinions, there would have been absolutely no common ground between the two groups and no possibility of union with the Orthodox who would have considered them to be the rankest heretics.

And even if none of that was true, there was the added problem of geopolitics. To join the Orthodox would have meant entering into communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople who was a puppet of the Turkish Sultan. This was at a time when the Ottomans were still quite actively trying to conquer and subjugate the Christian nations, both of the West and the East, of which the Austrians and Russians were well aware. In fact, the Muslims had been expelled from Spain only 25 years before Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Church door and only 42 years before the passage of the Act of Supremacy, 1534 whereby Henry definitely broke with Rome. And the Battles of Lepanto (1571) and Vienna (1683), which finally freed Europe from fear of jihad were decades in the future.

So, I'm convinced that a union between the Orthodox East and the 'Reformed' West was a no-go from the very beginning.