Posted on 10/07/2009 6:33:33 AM PDT by Nikas777
More Protestants Find a Home in the Orthodox Antioch Church
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: October 2, 2009
LINTHICUM HEIGHTS, Md. — Cal Oren was threading his way through the Santa Cruz Mountains of California early one evening in 1993, driving his wife, brother and three tired children back from a day of hiking amid the redwoods. As their car neared the town of Ben Lomond, Mr. Oren said, his brother pointed to a church on the roadside and said: “I’ve been inside this. It’s really neat.”
So Mr. Oren pulled to a stop, and as the children stayed in the car, the grown-ups gingerly padded into the sanctuary of Saints Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church. A lifelong Presbyterian, Mr. Oren knew virtually nothing about the Antiochians or, for that matter, Orthodox Christianity in general. He had always associated Ben Lomond with hippies, geodesic domes and marijuana fields.
As he entered, a vespers service was under way. Maybe two dozen worshipers stood, chanting psalms and hymns. Incense filled the dark air. Icons of apostles and saints hung on the walls. The ancientness and austerity stood at a time-warp remove from the evangelical circles in which Mr. Oren traveled, so modern, extroverted and assertively relevant.
“This was a Christianity I had never encountered before,” said Mr. Oren, 55, a marketing consultant in commercial construction. “I was frozen in my tracks. I felt like I was in the actual presence of God, almost as if I was in heaven. And I’m not the kind of person who gets all woo-hoo.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Eastern, but a lot of the old EOC folks are still bringing a VERY Western/Protestant approach to things such as hymnological arrangement and the like.
I attend the convert Antiochian parish in Memphis, and we wrung that out of our Liturgy quite some time ago.
Vespers is like the pre-game. Two dozen worshipers is actually a good size crowd.
You can ask that of Jews and other successful ethnic groups in America as well. For Greeks, Jews and other ethnic white groups I think foreign policy is a big reason for it and the fact that the Republicans were seen historically as anti-immigration and not welcoming to Southern and Eastern Europeans, Catholics & Jews.
Thanks! By the way, what’s the attraction of converts to the Antiochene Church rather than, say, a Greek or Russian Orthodox one?
Actually no, but you yourself may be in line for a reprimand......... :-)
By using terms like "snarky" and "insulting garbage" you are making it personal and making it about them.
This may be deemed an infraction of FR rules and could see you canned. Get with the program. It works like this. Outrageous comments about your faith are to be received with a polite smile and a courteous rebuttal which pays the mud slinger the unwarranted compliment of assuming that his/her comments were made in good faith.
Any suggestion to the contrary will see you severely chastised.
Could be.
Guess as an American first, I’m more concerned with liberty, keeping taxes low, controlling our borders and killing terrorists.
If you’re the ping holder, add me please. Thanks
“Hee hee...hilarious!”
Serves him right! I remember one time many years ago when our then priest suggested to us on the council that we have a “roz bif dinner” as a fundraiser. Once the laughter died down, we explained that the Episcopalians had the exclusive “roz bif dinner” franchise for the area parishes.
“I couldn’t find anything mentioned in the article or on their website....is Ben Lomand in the “Western Rite” portion of the AOC, or are they offering an Eastern liturgy?”
So far as I know, they use the Byzantine Rite. Western Rite parishes are very rare.
Appearance, I think - not much else. H.E. +Philip and H.B. +Ignatius IV have been VERY receptive to converts in the US. That’s been made clear to us in our parish (we count amongst our ranks a local physician - a Syrian by birth and cradle Antiochian Orthodox whose cousin is a Metropolitan in Europe). We had a dozen people in Catechumen class last night.
The mass conversions of the past 25 years or so have made Antioch appear more open to converts. It’s an over-simplification to put it this way, but converts to Orthodoxy *can* feel left out in highly ethnic parishes within the GOARCH and ROCOR, and even within high-concentration Ethnic Arab parishes within the AOANA.
Again, that’s an over-simplification and certainly not a universal truth or even reflective of the intent of the parishioners themselves.
By the way, there are some cool videos on YouTube of some of our Bishops’ vesting ceremonies at the cathedral in Damascus. I’ll Freepmail you the links if you’re interested.
I have been in the big Greek church here on Franklin road and I and my wife were both impressed by the same visual and other environmental sensations..
WD, you’ve had some exposure to Maronite Catholics, though, correct? Don’t the Maronites use the Eastern Liturgy? That would definitely make it less of a shocking experience.
“It’s an over-simplification to put it this way, but converts to Orthodoxy *can* feel left out in highly ethnic parishes within the GOARCH and ROCOR, and even within high-concentration Ethnic Arab parishes within the AOANA.”
That’s a very fair statement, in my opinion. To the extent that parishes are ethnic ghettos they can be tightly closed to outsiders. I’ve seen and even experienced that myself.
My own parish has always been welcoming to non-Greeks (we’ve had “Syrians” in the parish since the late 1920s), but it is in the past 20 years that things have really changed. Greeks and people of Greek descent now make up perhaps 40% of the parish. The others are Serbs, Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Ethipians and Egyptians or people descended from them...and all sorts of American converts. The converts tell me that the make up of the parish shows the universality of Orthodox Christianity and gives their children an insight into the ways and mindsets of people who were not born in America.
The foregoing notwithstanding, developing openness to non Greeks (or Russians etc) is a challenge which must be met by all Orthodox parishes in the GOA or the ROC or any of the others. Time, however, seems to be working in that direction.
If the poster wanted an "ecumenical" discussion, he could have labeled the thread that way.
Click on my profile page for more guidelines pertaining to the Religion Forum.
My ex wife was non practicing.
which made it easy for her to pretend to be Jewish her next marriage (in a long line of them now) to satisfy the new hubby and in laws about being in the tribe and all
they soon figured out though they had been snookered
i went to Calvary as a boy right across from where the Primos and Pavlous and Crechales whatnot all went back in the 60s...never stepped foot in the place.
Did go to a Greek Wedding in Houston once...
when I lived around the world I usually went to Catholic service given that was fairly ubiquitous
“Don’t the Maronites use the Eastern Liturgy?”
No. They use a sort of modified Novus Ordo liturgy with a lot of Aramaic, which is really quite extraordinary and a continued faithfulness to the prayers and writings and hymns of such Fathers as +Ephraim the Syrian and +Iakovos of Saroug. The Melkites also from Lebanon use the Divine Liturgy of +John Chrysostomos as do all the other Eastern Rite Catholic churches so far as I know.
The Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Catholic churches in India also use variants of the Antiochene Rite. The Syro-Malabars are actually the second-largest Eastern Catholic church, after the Ukrainians.
Listen to an Orthodox service in Spanish is chanted by the Choir of St. Georges Cathedral in Mexico. It is very moving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB1MiWjAZy8
I neglected to ping you to the link @ #36 to listen to an Orthodox service in Spanish is chanted by the Choir of St. Georges Cathedral in Mexico.
Ah. That makes sense. I woulda thought the original Antiochenes would have presented the same ethnicity problem, but I guess they didn't strike Anglos as quite so alien. Maybe I'm skewed being Italian...to me it seems Greek Orthodox would be the natural choice. Switch the Sambuca with Ouzo and we're good!
That is interesting about your parish Kolo...do the Ethiopians etc. have any difficulty adapting to the Byzantine liturgy?
“The Maronite liturgy is the Antiochene Rite (Liturgy of St. James) with some Latinizations.”
Here’s a link to an explanation of the Maronite Liturgy from a Maronite source.
http://www.stgeorgesa.org/explanation_of_the_maronite_divi.htm
I have been to Maronite Liturgies. I must say they seem to bear little resemblance to the Liturgy of St. James, though I don;t doubt that the modern “experimental” Maronite liturgy is based on it. Here’s a link
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf07.xii.ii.html
The Liturgy of St. James is indeed Antiochene and it is very, very long. In its ancient form it is still said here and there and as such is the most ancient continually used Liturgy of The Church.
I swear on my James Dobson/Adrian Rogers Pledge Pin that marshmallow is right about this.
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