Calling for Orthodox unity, with diversity

Scripps-Howard News Service ^ | February 23, 2005 | Terry Mattingly

[Kolokotronis]

"Hey, we're Orthodox! What's the hurry! A two-to-three Century timeline isn't the law, but it's not a bad rule of thumb."

Well, of course! But in truth, its been my experience that the Orthodox phronema can be inculcated in a bit less than 300 years. It may take that long to build a critical mass here though! :)

[FormerLib]

Anybody likely to realize that you, too, are the "Whore of Babylon" that needs to be hated and feared is too ignorant to know you exist in the first place. Sad but true.

LOL! Not exactly the wording that I'd have used but the meaning is right on target.

And the second is division among yourselves which is one thing that Catholics lack.

Actually, the "divisions" that you speak of are not so concrete when viewed from the inside. I can go to virtually any Greek, Russian, Serbian, OCA (etc.) Church, receive Communion, and be welcomed. Our divisions are much closer to your own divisions, using examples such as the Maronites (sp?) or the Byzantine Catholics, than you realize. True, we don't have a single human head of the Church as you do, so you were correct if that's what you meant.

[Agrarian]

"the Greeks are less then 10% of the Orthodox Church"

Worldwide, this is true. The vast majority of the world's Orthodox Christians are Slavs (on the Old Calendar, no less). But here in the US, the GOA is by far the largest of the Orthodox Churches. I daresay that there are probably more members of the GOA in the State of NY than there are in the entire OCA.

The condition of the GOA is therefore vital to the condition of Orthodoxy in America. All of the abuses that Kosta mentions are certainly true -- in the 20th c the GOA led the way in these things, sadly. Kolokotronis has talked about the attempts by previous hierarchs to make the GOA into a sort of "Eastern Rite Episcopalianism," and it is true. There are understandable reasons for it, but that doesn't make it less regrettable.

But the trend in the GOA has turned sharply more traditional at the local level, especially with the younger generation of priests. The outward things are slow to catch up (I don't think we'll see pews disappear in my lifetime, but all new iconography seems to be traditional, organs are slowly being left unused in many parishes, and traditional chant is making a comeback), but in my personal experience, Greek priests under the age of 45 are very solid in understanding and teaching the spiritual life and the faith.

[Kolokotronis]

"The Slavs are some 50% or more and they are not changing, neither are the Ethiopians, Kenyans or Arabs."

I don't doubt for a minute that this is true of the Serbs and perhaps the Bulgarians, but the OCA can hardly be called the same as Slav Orthodoxy across the pond in Europe. And as for the Arabs, go to an Antiochian Church someday. They make the GOA look like a right wing subset of ROCOR.

The truth of the matter is that in the GOA there is a very large younger group of priests and seminarians who are actively rejecting the creeping Westernizing of the Church under +Iakovos. The fact that their parishes have pews or chairs, use paraffin candles and pray the Divine Liturgy in part or nearly whole in English is, in my very Greek chauvinist mind, neither here nor there. As far as I can see, these things make about as much difference, perhaps even less, than the issue of whether we use a calendar devised by a pagan Roman Emperor or a Roman Pope. The real issue is whether or not the Divine Liturgy is preserved inviolate and unchanged, that the clergy look like and live their lives as Orthodox priests ought and that we as the laity do the same. To accomplish the latter is extremely difficult in the society we live in, which is why preserving ties to the Mother Churches is vitally important. The old countries, whatever their manifold social and civic problems may be, are countries whose essential nature is Orthodox. Maintaining or developing an Orthodox phronema in those place will be for the foreseeable future far easier there than here. To the extent that those cultures and churches can be our anchor to windward, not the cause of insular, ethnic ghettos here, then we must maintain our ties and reject autocephally. Its a danger and a shame that +Philip and his evangelicals don't understand that. You'd think after the Ben Loman fiasco they'd have learned something.

[jb6]

pray the Divine Liturgy in part or nearly whole in English is, in my very Greek chauvinist mind, neither here nor there

That actually is part of the Orthodox tradition. Orthodox Church has never had a holy language like the Latins, where all services were done in Latin, regardless if one damn person could understand it. Instead it was always done in the layman's tongue: why slavic churches do it either in old slavonic or directly in the locals' modern language. In America, Orthodox churches should do their services in English, since that is the layman's tongue and allows the people to understand what is going on. The Latins have suffered from their insistance on Latin, where the local peoples: aka Germans, English, etc, did not understand what was being said or taught and thus had less problem finding substitutes in the fiery preachers of the reformation and or believing any lies that were spread.

[Kolokotronis]

"That actually is part of the Orthodox tradition."

Oh, absolutely, but the fact of the matter is that until relatively recently, on account of the presence of an Orthodox diaspora here in America, the hierarchs of the various jurisdictions tended to be, quite literally, Ethnarchs and the Churches tended to be pieces of the various Old Countries for immigrant Orthodox. In much later years these parishes have been rather shamefully used by the Old Countries to advance certain secular policy interests. What we ended up with were Churches that had more to do with being Russian or Greek or Serbian or whatever than with being Orthodox Christians. Use of the old language was and is a way to keep things that way. But these are secular and ethnic concerns, philetism actually, rather than religious ones. My experience tells me that the move to English in the Liturgy has been the equivalent of opening wide the doors of the Church to the people of America.

By the way, I always thought that Greek was THE holy language. Its what God speaks (or so my yiayia told me)! :)

[jb6]

If you watch my big fat greek wedding, then Greek is the foundation of all languages.

[Kolokotronis]

"If you watch my big fat greek wedding, then Greek is the foundation of all languages."

And Windex is a veritable "philosopher's stone"!

[kosta50]

That is one movie I can watch over and over ... and see my own family in it! :-)

"What, he don't eat no meat? It's okay! I make lamb." And the comments about Turks...priceless!

[kosta50]

Kolo, you are right. Paraffin, calendars and so on don't make the Faith. I am the first "heretic" who keeps saying that not everything the Church does is necessarily holy or ordained. I do have an issue with the pews because we would not think of sitting before a President, yet we have no problem facing God sitting down. Just my opinion.

Yet we all know that the little external traditions we keep in the Church are expressions of Faith and our respect for it. For example, the beeswax candles and pure olive oil burn with purity and without a residue -- as God's love burns pure.

Orthodoxy is keeping faith, being true and unwavering to the commitment made by the Church Fathers. It's not being conservative and it's not an option, matter of taste or preference. It's not cultural, or political.

It is about keeping the Faith (as) unchanged (as possible), symbolically as well as spiritually. If one can show that anything our forefathers did is broken, then change it!

Changing something because we feel "infected with freedom" is not a good reason. Neither is personal preference. The domino affect of permitting changes on the outside invariably lead to making changes on the inside. Once change is made for the sake of change, it continues. Change is a sign of corruption. This world is ever-changing, because it is subject to decay. Faith subject to change is a decaying faith.

Being Christ-like means becoming as unhanging as possible. Everything about God, Faith, Church and customs of our predecessors reflects spiritually and symbolically the eternal and unchanging nature of God.

However, the Orthodoxy did change. From time to time, it wondered off into heresies that required corrective measures (thank God Rome held the Orthodox course when we didn't!). Examples such as iconoclastic period come to mind, and then +Palamas established that Faith is not an academic discipline, but a spiritual one; not intellectual, but monastic.

I have no problems with English Divine Liturgies either. My question is why all the external changes? Why are they necessary? Are the habits of the Old heretical? Or is it because we have a culture that has no respect for the old, and traditional? Is it because Americans strongly believe that anything American is better than antyhing European? Or is it because we live in a culture that nurtures egos and our ultimate desires, that we inherited from Adam, to be gods?

I am afraid the reasons for pushing for changes are not that the old ways are broken and heretical -- but rather because of the idea of being "infected with freedom" is tainted with egos that want to be gods! It is because the predominant American culture is Western, Protestant, evangelical, where pride is not a dirty word, and egos are free to build personal kingdoms and consider traditions, as used cars, something whose utility has come to pass.

How can Orthodox phronema flourish and mature on such soil without being corrupted? Only by keeping close ties to the churches from which they came.

America is not English, or Protestant. It is predominantly English, German and Protestant. In a few decades it will be something else. Is Matthew more of an American name than Kosta? Are we going to change American Orthodoxy to reflect the Hispanic culture in a few decades so that we can fit in?

If a parish has mostly English-speaking members, then let the Divine Liturgy be in English! But don't change it to English so we can "fit in." Personally, the intonations of English are not suited for the Divine Liturgy sung in Greek or Slavonic. English Divine Liturgy needs to be adjusted to phonics of the English language, so that it can flow and sound natural in it.

[Kolokotronis]

Your comments speak to what all of us "cradle" types feel. But at least from this Greek Orthodox's point of view, I fear that you may be reading more into some of the things you've seen in GOA Churches than is STILL there. Let me dispose of one change very quickly; the use of paraffin candles. It is, for most of us a matter of ready availability, cost and smoke, frankly. There's nothing more to it than that. The other things, like organs, pews and choir robes are the remnants of a time in the GOA when the highest goal of the immigrant church, made up mostly of particularly brave and hard working immigrants seeking freedom in a new country, was to become Americans. It was a desire to "pass for white". I don't scorn this at all. Our old people and some of the new people to this day, left pretty bad places and came to a pretty good place where they faced some heavy duty discrimination. We were usually never the big ethnic group in an area so we couldn't get away with completely preserving the old ways and we wanted to look like Americans as far as we thought we could without actually becoming Protestants. Remember, Kosta, it was only a few years ago that a trip to the old country took weeks by ship and frankly, very few people ever made the trip. They were here for the duration. So they did things that they thought were "American". The desire to become accepted as part of the mainstream was so powerful!

Today, that's changing. We did succeed socially and discovered that we can be both totally Orthodox and fully American at the same time (though there's nothing easy about it!); that we can be Americans and still preserve our ancient forms of worship and belief and praxis. This is because we have come to understand America and because America today is a different place than it was in 1930. The mindset which made us install organs, wear choir robes, electrify the candelia, priests shave their beards, take off the rasso and don the dog collar of the Episcopal vicar is dying very fast my friend.

[jb6]

Amen brother, said like a true Father of the Church.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I've seen this issue "discussed" on the Yahoo Orthodox lists (yikes!!!) numerous times, the usual result being all heat and no light. Thanks to all here for your interesting, informative, constructive and civil comments on this issue of great importance to the future of Holy Orthodoxy in America.

[Agrarian]

Pews are a hard issue in America, since they have taken root in other jurisdictions as well, such as the Serbs and the Antiochians (although there is a growing trend in newer Antiochian parishes leaning away from pews) -- this may take a generation or two, but I think it will eventually happen. One of the biggest liturgical problems with pews is having these fixed narrow rows makes doing prostrations at the appointed parts of weekday services (especially during Great Lent) impossible unless the church is practically empty. Even chairs can be moved around, but heavy rows of wooden pews make for fixed obstacles to worship.

There was an old Georgian tradition of having a few widely spaced benches in the nave in addition to the traditional benches or stadia around the periphery, making more room for people to grab a place to take rests during long vigils and services. Not a bad way to accomplish both the open space and the practical concerns of long services.

But I would note that I am unaware of any monastery in the US of any jurisdiction that has pews in its chapels -- it would be my hope that eventually the witness of our monasteries will work its way back into parishes. Read Kontoglou -- 50 years ago the idea that traditional iconography would universally carry the day in Greece, let alone in America, would have been thought to be a pipe dream, yet that is exactly what has miraculously happened.

There is a rocky road ahead for Orthodoxy in America, but if we believe that the Holy Spirit breathes through the Church, we Orthodox in America have to believe that God will help us to survive our own tendencies toward error and heresy just as the same Holy Spirit helped our predecessors in the faith survive iconoclasm and all the other heresies and temptations of the past. I don't believe that the triumph of a "Protestant Orthodox Church" is at all inevitable, if for no other reason than the huge number of formerly Protestant converts would absolutely raise a ruckus -- we've been down that road, and never want to go back.

Having been a member of parishes of 4 different jurisdictions over the last decade and a half, and having regularly attended services at parishes of yet other jurisdictions, I can honestly say that there is not a single weakness or error that runs through all the jurisdictions here. And there is certainly no jurisdiction that is free of weaknesses and distortions that it wouldn't be better off without.

Conversely, there is no virtue that is not being lived and practiced somewhere by someone here in America. Somewhere, someone is getting it right in America, whether in externals or internals -- which are ultimately inextricably linked and woven together. Serbs, OCA, Antiochians, ROCOR, Greeks... I could go down the line and tell you things that each has the the others would do well to emulate.

The resources and good examples are all available in America, and when we add the wisdom of living connections to the old countries -- which I believe are still absolutely essential, no matter what Metr. Philip says -- things get even better. The question is whether we will have the wisdom to see strengths and truths in our brothers where we ourselves have weakness and errors, and whether we will have the fortitude to change to become like them in those ways, giving up our own pet bad habits. Ultimately, we need each other to be whole -- and that is the real reason that unity matters.

[kosta50]

I can never win a debate with a lawyer, especially an experienced one, but I can try! :-)

I believe everything you say. That being so, I disagree with it. I disagree with it, because Greeks are not the only people who came from some pretty bad places to find their home in America. They were certainly not the only Orthodox people. So, if what you say is true, then all the Orthodox minorities, especially those less influential than Greeks, should follow in the same steps and perhaps try even harder to "pass for white."

That is simply not so. I have seen Serbian Orthodox Churches with pews in America (NY, Pittsburgh, etc.) because they were previously non-Orthodox churches and were acquired with pews. But in most of them people still stood as if the pews were not there. I have never seen an electric organ or uniformed choir and some other "Protestant" acceptance ticket you write about. Yet I believe the Serbs, the Russians, the Bulgarians, etc. were under the same pressure to be accepted as true-blue Americans while trying to be Orthodox without dog-collars and clean shaven priests.

Yet, they didn't do it. Not to the extent that I STILL see in Greek and Romanian churches (and I am not picking on Greeks, or Romanians, of course, because I have not seen Antiochan ones, etc.). So there is another element that does not seem to hold your formula.

It is irrelevant at this point what was the cause and the motivation for some to try to blend in and become American at the expense of external symbols of Orthodoxy. Never mind that such changes suggest that somehow the Protestant image is more "civilized." What is relevant is that today the Greeks are not being scrutinized as alien beings and subjected to heavy duty discirmination and prejudice than any other group in America. There is no reason to hold on to those "traditions" from the 1930's while dispensing of the traditions that go back almost two millennia. We can't use "my dad used to beat me, so I beat my children" excuse any more.

You say Greeks became Americans and remained Orthodox. And I say they became Greek-Americans and American-Orthodox. Greeks marry Greeks. Unlike many other minorities, Greeks didn't cease being Greeks. Generations of Greeks born in America speak Greek, live among other Greeks, and consider themselves both ethnically Greek and American by nationality. Most Serbian kids don't speak a lick of English by the third generation born in the U.S. Yet they don't sit in their churches unless they are old, very young or sick. My point is not to paint the Serbs as better Americans or better Orthodox, but to show that your arguments are expressly the will and the choice of American Greeks, and not something that was imposed on them by the prejudiced and unaccepting society they chose to live in.

You say, it's changing and I believe you. But when I read something like the GOA giving Phillip a chance to "infect" everyone with freedom and intoxicate American Orthodox with "diversity" that is driven by ego and cultural prejudice of superiority over the rest of the world, I have my doubts.

[kosta50]

The question is whether we will have the wisdom to see strengths and truths in our brothers where we ourselves have weakness and errors, and whether we will have the fortitude to change to become like them in those ways, giving up our own pet bad habits

Absolutely. Thank you for bringing this up. Our disagreements are not supposed to be finger pointing (although sometimes they may seem that way, and I am sure that I am the culprit in most of them, with apologies) or as claims that one is a "better" sinner than the other. It is an expression of concern, that implicitly carries a message that if we are in the wrong our brothers would correct us.

In my previous post to Kolokotronis and jb6 I do mention the pews in Serbian churches and the reason. Removing all wooden pews would considerably take away from the real-estate value of many of those churches and is simply not practical.

But I am sure one will not find pews in monasteries, regardless of the jurisdiction.

[Kolokotronis]

"I have never seen an electric organ or uniformed choir and some other "Protestant" acceptance ticket you write about. Yet I believe the Serbs, the Russians, the Bulgarians, etc. were under the same pressure to be accepted as true-blue Americans while trying to be Orthodox without dog-collars and clean shaven priests."

I think the innovations inside the churches had to do with convincing themselves, not the outside world, that they were Americans. The dog-collars and clean shaven priests definitely came from the close ties the Greek Church here had with the Episcopalians into the 1950s and a desire to look American. We have pictures of priests here at the house from the WWI era up to today. The beards were gone by about 1930-1933. By then the first generation of Greeks here had established themselves well but were still not considered "real" Americans. After WWII, the Greeks were "in" with American society and, as I have said, +Iakovos wanted us to be almost a form of Greek Episcopalians. That had some very bad effects on the Greek Church here as did, frankly, the incredible economic and educational success of the Greek community in America. Now I have little or no experience with other Orthodox jurisdictions. Our four Greek parishes were pretty much the only Orthodox game in the state except for a small Russian community made up of czarist immigrants in a small village north of here (when I was a kid even their priest was clean shaven). As one 92 year old Syrian lady said a couple of years ago, "When we came in the 30s, we didn't have one of our churches here so we went to the Greek's Church." That particular feeling, as I have said before, has changed dramatically and now the members of our new and large Lebanese group talks about going to "our church" and "our parish family".

Changing the practices you've mentioned has and will meet resistance. In our church, for example, the icons on the iconostasion are real WWI era period pieces. In those days there was an itinerant icon painter who traveled all over the East Coast area painting icons for the then new Orthodox Churches. They are very Western; almost an Italian Romantic style. I have seen them in Greece and also some Russian Churches of the era here in the states. Any way, when we built our new church in the 70s, the parish wanted the old iconostasion from the church transported to the new one and set up, where it has been ever since. For the past 10 or 12 years there has been some talk about replacing those icons with Byzantine ones. Until just a few months ago that's all it was, talk. Every time the subject came up, it was "If those icons were good enough for Papou and Yiayia, they're good enough for us." or "I'm 80 years old and have looked at those all my life and I don't want them to change." or "My great grandparents paid for those icons and they are going to stay!" Believe me, I know; I tried to get them changed when I was parish council president and by the way, I've looked at them all my life and my great grandparents did give one of them!

So what did we do. Well, God is good. A new couple from Idaho showed up at the parish last summer, converts from many, many years ago. And it turns out that the wife is an iconographer. She offered to write two very large icons of the Hierarchs for behind the altar. She did and up they went. A few people complained ("They don't look right! The colors clash with the rest of the area." In fact they are perfect Byzantine icons!). But everyone else loves them. Now four more are being done. And after them, well then we do the new iconostasion and put the icons from the old one in the new church hall we plan to build. Sega, sega, as we Greeks say, slowly, slowly.

Your observations on Greek/American culture are interesting. It is sort of odd that Greeks are so American on the one hand and so tied to our "Greekiness" on the other. My boys' great, great grandparents came here and founded the parish about 100 years ago and the boys are still Orthodox and as best they can speak Greek and spend time in and are familiar with Greece. Its not, by the way, because we marry other Greeks, Actually, its quite the opposite. We almost never marry other Greeks. The Archdiocesan statistics bear this out. There is not one of us in the extended family in my generation or the boys' generation who married another Greek or even another cradle Orthodox.

Kosta, I didn't mean to give you or the rest of the gang here the impression that the innovations you've seen on the GOA were imposed on us from the outside. They weren't. Greeks did this to themselves in a misguided attempt to become Americans. It still goes on in non religious contexts. How many times have we seen our immigrant brothers and sisters work 24/7 in their little businesses to buy their spoiled brat kids a $50,000.00 BMW at 20 because "I want them to have a better life than I did." or buy into every Madison Avenue fad that comes along because that's how you become an American? Maybe its a flaw in Greek peasant character, probably its just human nature.

Finally as for +Philip, let me assure you that +Philip was being used by the GOA just as much as +Philip used that forum to promote his vision. The GOA knew exactly what Constantinople's reaction would be and truth be told, Black Bart of Istanbul overplayed his hand again, just as we figured he would. Civil society politics is bush league compared to what goes on in the Church my friends!

[kosta50]

Kolo, thank you for this wonderful reply. I think Agrarian summed it all up: this is not supposed to be who's better; we are all sinners. If I made it sound that way, I apologize.

The people were making a new life and they tried to be part of the society they chose. There was no malice in it.

As for the Church politics, I don't keep up with that. To me, church is where we get Sacraments. Maybe that's why statements such as Metr Phillip's come as a shock to me. I think it is difficult for us to try to be holier than clergy -- if they play each other while telling us to be forgiving and to love our neighbor.

If anything, the clergy succumbed to earthly things, keeping up with the Joneses of sorts, rather than staying the course. That immigrant Greeks tried to "fit in" is understandable. That the clergy did is not.

[jb6]

One of the biggest problems with pews is that they separate the people, allowing the "rich or powerful" to have their own area away from the rest of the Church body. The people are one and must be one. The Church I go to is greek and has pews. I've prayed in many churches during my travels and I greatly prefer the no pews.

[Agrarian]

I don't know how much "rich and powerful" has to do with it, but you are absolutely right that standing in a pewless church, one feels no distance at all between oneself and one's neighbor, nor distance between oneself and the altar. I had never really thought about it until you put it that way, but this is unquestionably an aspect of that indescribable feeling of being in a full, pewless church.