John Couretas | October 31, 2008
In light of the recent exchanges on The Observer about converts, cradle Orthodox and the future of American Orthodoxy, we are republishing Terry Mattingly’s essay that touches on these important issues. This article was adapted from an address titled “So What Do the Converts Want, Anyway?” given at the 2006 Orthodox Christian Laity conference in Baltimore. Terry Mattingly, an advisor to AOI, is director of the Washington Journalism Center, editor of the www.GetReligion.org website, and a weekly syndicated columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service.
What Do the Converts Want?
By Terry Mattingly
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies to tell the difference
between a Southern Baptist church and an Orthodox church. You can get some
pretty good clues just by walking in the door and looking around. But there
are some similarities between the two that might be a little trickier to
spot. For instance, let me tell you about what life is like on Sunday
nights in a Southern Baptist congregation.
Baptists worship at several different times during the week — at least
they did in the old days when I was growing up as a Southern Baptist
pastor’s son. One of those times is on Sunday nights. Back in the early
1980s, I was active in a church in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in which the
typical Sunday morning crowd would be about 200 to 300 people, which is
rather small for a Baptist church, but fairly normal for an Orthodox
parish. Then the crowd on Sunday night would be from 40 to 45 people.
Now, that ratio should sound familiar to many priests who lead Vespers
services. But the similarities don’t stop there.
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John Couretas |
Fr. Thomas Hopko, an advisor to AOI, delivered an address in late September for the 40th Anniversary of the Consecration of the Chapel at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration, a monastery for women in Ellwood City, Pa.
Fr. Tom observes that while a “sprinkling” of Orthodox Christians in academic circles have been known to the wider American public, “hardly any other practicing Orthodox Christian has been publicly recognizable in American society in the past forty years.” Among the clergy, the late Archbishop Iakovos is singled out for social witness in the civil rights movement. “Things are not much different today,” Fr. Tom says. “But there are some notable exceptions.”
He opens with a sobering assessment and then explores the accomplishments of the Church in recent decades:
A Spiritual Springtime for American Orthodoxy — Reflections on the last 40 Years
Membership in the Orthodox churches in North America in the past forty years has radically decreased. There are probably about half as many people in the churches today as there were four decades ago. It also seems that most adults who attend services in Orthodox churches today are “holding the form” of Orthodox Christianity while “denying the power of it” (2 Tim 3.5) as they ‘pursue happiness” according to “the American dream” as devotees of “the American way of life.”
Concerning the churches’ clergy during the past forty years, I believe that the task of finding, educating, appointing and supporting suitable candidates for the clergy, especially the episcopate, remains the greatest challenge in all Orthodox churches in North America today just as it was four decades ago when (as my friend, the late Fr. John Psinka would say), “few were called and all were chosen.”
Having stated the “negatives” — greatly reduced membership, inept leadership, nominal participation and widespread use of the church for secular purposes – the spiritual achievements in North American Orthodoxy during the past forty years are amazingly many and spectacularly significant. They were accomplished by a relatively small number of people, mostly converts to the Faith, people born abroad and clergy children. They are so remarkable that I am persuaded to call the past forty years a “spiritual springtime” for Orthodoxy in the United States and Canada.
I will comment on the accomplishments as I see them. They are not yet a bountiful “blossoming.” But they are a promising “planting” capable of producing, in due time, a rich harvest of spiritual fruits, including, we may hope, a company of committed and competent bishops, priests, deacons, monastics, church workers and lay leaders for the coming generations.
Read the full address on the Web site of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary.
John Couretas | July 28, 2008
Orthodox Churches have long been involved in ecumenical projects, such as the World Council of Churches, and affirm the Lord’s mandate “that they all may be one” (John 17:21). Yet, I can’t help thinking at times that the Orthodox Churches might work a little harder at unity in their own house.
For that reason, it was encouraging to follow the progress of Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios’ recent visit to the Moscow Patriarchate and see Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I side by side with Patriarch Alexy II for the celebration of the baptism of Russia. The Greeks and the Russians have had some contentious moments of late, such as the controversy over who shall have jurisdiction for Orthodox Christians in Estonia.
Good background here in an AP story on the tensions between the Ukrainians and Russians:
Ukrainian officials are determined to use the events to lobby for autonomy for the local church from Russia, while the dominant Moscow Patriarchate will fight to retain influence over this mostly Orthodox country of 46 million.
For Ukrainian leaders, recognition of the Ukrainian Orthodox church as Moscow’s equal would mark a significant step in their drive to assert independence and shed centuries-long Russian influence. That effort gained strength after the 2004 Orange Revolution, which moved Ukraine away from Moscow and closer to the West.
“Ukraine is an independent state like Bulgaria or Georgia, and it is normal for it to have its own church,” said Anatoliy Kolodny, head of the religion studies department at the National Academy of Sciences. “There is nothing strange in that.”
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the world’s top Orthodox spiritual leader based in Istanbul, Turkey, will attend the ceremonies and could support the autonomy of the Ukrainian church, despite Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II’s efforts to thwart the move.
But any sudden decision by Bartholomew could create a major split among the world’s 250 million Orthodox believers and set off fierce battles over parishes and valuable church property inside Ukraine, with some priests siding with Moscow and others with Kiev.
“Were this decision to be made today, it would lead to another schism in the church,” said Andrei Zolotov, chief editor of the Russia Profile magazine and an expert on Orthodox church affairs.
The video above from Russia Today talks about efforts “to united a divided land.” There’s a ways to go.
The Moscow Times said that police blocked “hundreds of Orthodox believers from attending a service led by Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II at a monument to St. Vladimir on the banks of the Dnepr River in Kiev on Sunday.”
John Couretas | March 9, 2008
Dr. Vigen Guroian delivered a talk on “Youth, Unity and Orthodoxy in America” at the 20th Anniversary Annual Meeting of Orthodox Christian Laity in Glenview, Illinois, in November. The theme of the OCL conference: “The Need for a Great and Holy Council.”
Here’s Dr. Guroian (an advisor to AOI) on Orthodox youth:
The college or university is a synecdoche — a metaphor – representing in microcosm the diverseness and pluralism of America. Likewise, the Orthodox students who arrive at our colleges and universities represent a microcosm of the entire Orthodox presence in America in all of its variety. They come to college for many reasons, with little thought, however, about joining in the great experiment of Pan-Orthodoxy and church unity.
Unlike their immigrants forebears who came to America, these young people do not bring to college all of the institutional paraphernalia of their churches. They do carry, however, an Orthodox identity that they feel a need to share and explain to others. Ethnic or jurisdictional belonging does not inhibit them. They act out of a sense of pluralism and voluntarism that is also distinctively American. They voluntarily join together as Americans to form not a Greek Christian fellowship or a Ukrainian Christian fellowship but an Orthodox Christian Student Fellowship.
How did they get that idea? I don’t think we taught it to them in our parishes. Rather, they learned it from the culture, from the presence of all of us in this American culture. They read it out of the culture as Americans. I cannot stress this enough because this is also a clue to the future of Orthodoxy in North America.
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