Problems of Orthodoxy in America
The Spiritual Problem
by Father Alexander Schmemann
This is an incredibly insightful and penetrating essay which, when
written decades ago in the sixties, probably applied almost solely to America. Unfortunately,
after the fall of Communism secularism began to make steady inroads into historically
Orthodox countries. While in Romania in January, 2008, I distinctly remember the highly
esteemed Bishop Vasile of Cluj-Napoca remarking with great sadness that secularism was perhaps the greatest threat
to the Church in Romania, and that stemming its tide seemed almost hopeless. Other pious Romanians
lamented the abrupt loss of morality and Christian virtue in general that began after Ceauşescu
fell from power and the doors were flung wide open to Western cultural influences, especially
television—which
had been severely limited during Communism. Similar scenarios could be played out in
Russia and Greece. Thus, many of Fr. Alexander's brilliant comments are today applicable outside of America.
May his words help us all—clergy and laity—firmly to reject secularism
and fully to embrace an authentic Orthodox way of life that is deeply rooted in Christ and His Church. —Patrick Barnes
The problems we have discussed so far lead us to that ultimate one which
is the spiritual problem. It can be formulated very simply: what does it mean to be
Orthodox in America in the second half of the twentieth century and how can one truly be
it? To many Orthodox, most likely to an overwhelming majority, such a problem does not
seem to exist. If faced with it they would probably answer: what's the problem? Build
"bigger 'n better" churches and all kinds of "facilities," keep your
congregation busy and happy, serve the prescribed services, constantly affirm that
Orthodoxy is the true faith. And since all this is being done rather successfully the very
existence of any deep problem is therefore denied. It is neither pleasant nor easy to
sound like a prophet of doom, especially in our atmosphere of an almost compulsory
official optimism which regards every word of criticism and self-criticism as subversive
and criminal. Yet, at the risk of shocking many good people I cannot, in all honesty and
sincerity, conceal my firm conviction that Orthodoxy in America is in the midst of a
serious spiritual crisis which endangers its very existence as Orthodoxy. In my previous
articles I analyzed the most obvious expressions of the crisis: the canonical chaos which
deepens every day and leads inescapably to an openly professed canonical cynicism among
clergy and laity, and a less obvious yet equally real disintegration of the liturgical
life of the Church. These, however, are the expressions, not the substance of the crisis,
which, as every religious phenomenon, has spiritual roots and spiritual content. It is
this spiritual substance that we, must now try to understand.
Nothing probably reveals better the nature of the crisis than the
impressive amount of doctrines, rules, teachings and customs which, although taken for
granted for centuries as essential for Orthodoxy, are by a wide consensus declared to be
"impossible" here, in America. Speak to a Bishop, then to a priest, be he old
or young, speak finally to an active and dedicated layman and you will discover that in
spite of all differences between their respective points of view they all agree on the
same "impossibilities." Thus you will learn that it is impossible to enforce
here the canonical norms of the Church, impossible to preserve from the wonderfully rich
liturgical tradition of the Church anything except Sunday morning worship and a few
"days of obligation" common in fact to all Christian "denominations,"
impossible to stop non-Orthodox customs and practices, impossible to interest people in
anything but social activities, impossible. But when you add up all these and many other
"impossibilities" you must conclude, if you are logical and consistent, that for
some reason it is impossible for the Orthodox Church in America to be Orthodox, at least
in the meaning given this term "always, everywhere by all."
And please notice that I speak of the Church and not merely of Orthodox
individuals. At all times many Christians, if not a majority, were luke-warm in their
faith, minimalistic in fulfilling their religious obligations, lazy, selfish, etc.
Christian writings from St. Paul to Father John of Kronstadt are full of exhortations
addressed to such people and aimed at reforming their deficient Christian life. And, of
course, every Christian, when judging himself in the light of the Christian ideal, knows
how weak, sinful and unworthy he is. If this were the case there would be no problem
except that of the perennial, never-ending fight against human sins and deficiencies. But
the point is that such is not our case. In fact our churches here are better attended than
in the "old countries," people care more about them, contribute more, are
incomparably more involved and interested in parish affairs and probably more anxious to
do the "right things." Yet it is precisely these good, active generous and
church-minded people, it is indeed the Church and not the "lost sheep", that
find and declare it "impossible" to accept much of the canonical, doctrinal,
liturgical and primal tradition of Orthodoxy. At the same time, however, they claim that
they are perfectly Orthodox and are indeed acknowledged as such by their pastors and
hierarchy. This is the radically new fact of our existence. For again there have always
been "compromises" in the Church, there have always been minimalistic attitudes
among clergy and laity. But they were always recognized as such, never accepted as the
norm. A Christian could think it impossible for him to live by Christian standards,
but it never entered his mind to minimize the demands of the Church. But when
well-intentioned and responsible people in all sincerity declare that these demands are impossible
because they do not fit into the "American way of life", when a substantial
majority of Bishops, priests and laymen agree with them, when, furthermore, what is
declared impossible is not something secondary and historically conditioned—as, for
example, the long hair and specific clerical garb of the priests—but belongs to the
very essence of Orthodoxy (e.g., the place of the Priest in the parish), then the time has
come to ask: what is the mysterious obstacle which makes it impossible for Orthodoxy to be
Orthodox?
2. The Roots of the Crisis
I named that obstacle before: It is the peculiar disease of the society
and the culture to which we belong and whose name is secularism. Secularism, as I
tried to show, is a world-view and consequently a way of life in which the basic aspects
of human existence such as family, education, science, pro-lesson, art, etc., not only are
not rooted in or related to, religious faith, but the very necessity or possibility of
such connection is denied. The secular sphere of life is thought of as autonomous, i.e.
governed by its own values, principles and motivations—different by nature from the
religious ones. Secularism is more or less common to the whole West, but the particularity
of its American brand the one which concerns us in this article that here secularism not
only is not anti-religious or atheistic, but on the contrary implies as its almost
necessary element a definite view of religion, is in fact "religious". It is, in
other terms, a "philosophy of religion" as much as a "philosophy of
life." An openly atheistic society such as Soviet Russia or Red China cannot even be
termed "secularistic": the ideology on which it is based is a totally integrated
and all-embracing view of the world and man and this total "world-view" simply
replaces religion leaving no room for any other "world-view". But it is a
characteristic feature of American secularism that it both accepts religion as
essential to man and at the same time denies it is an integrated world-view
permeating and shaping the whole life of man. A "secularist" is usually a very
religious man, attached to his church, regular in attending services, generous in his
contributions, acknowledging the necessity of prayer, etc. He will have his marriage
"solemnized" in church, his home blessed, his religious "obligations"
fulfilled, all this in perfect good faith. But all this will not in the least alter the
plain fact that his understanding of all these spheres: marriage, family, home,
profession, leisure, and, ultimately, his religious "obligations" themselves,
will be derived not from the creed he confesses in church, not from the Incarnation,
Death, Resurrection and Glorification of Christ, the Son of God become Son of man, but
from "philosophies of life", i.e., ideas and convictions having nothing to do
with that creed, if not directly opposed to it. One has only to enumerate some of the key
"values" of our society: success, security, affluence, competition, status,
profit, prestige, ambition—to realize that they are at the opposite pole from the
whole "ethos" of the Gospel. But does this mean that this religious secularist
is a cynic, a hypocrite and a schizophrenic? Not at all. It means only that his
understanding of religion, of its function in his life and of his very need for it, are
rooted in his secularistic world-view and not vice-versa. In a non-secularistic
society (the only type of society Orthodoxy knew in the past) it is religion, its total
"vision" of the world, that constitutes the ultimate criterion of all life, a
supreme "term of reference" by which man and society evaluate themselves even if
they constantly deviate from them. There man also may live by the same "worldly"
motivations, but they are constantly challenged by religion, be it only by its passive
presence. The "way of life" may not be religious, the "philosophy of
life" certainly is. In the secularistic society it is exactly the opposite: the
"way of life" includes religion, the "philosophy of life" virtually
excludes it.
Acceptance of secularism means, of course, a total transformation of
religion itself. It may keep all its traditional forms but inside it is simply a different
religion. In secularism, when it "approves" of religion and even declares it
necessary, it does so only inasmuch as religion is ready to become a part of the
secularistic world-view, a sanction of its values and a help in the process of
attaining them. No other word indeed is used more often by secularism in reference to
religion than the word "help." "It helps" to pray, to go to church, to
belong to a religious group ("... and I don't care what it may be" said
President Eisenhower, who can be considered as truly the "icon" of a religious
secularist), it "helps" in short to "have religion." And since
religion helps, since it is such a useful factor in life, it must in turn be
helped. Hence the tremendous success of religion in America, attested by all statistics.
Secularism accepts religion, but on its own, secularistic terms, assigns religion a
function, and provided religion accepts this function, it covers it with wealth, honor and
prestige. "America", writes W. Herberg, "seems to be at once the most
religious and the most secular of nations. Every aspect of contemporary religious life
reflects this paradox: pervasive secularism amid mounting religiosity. The influx of
members into the churches and the increased readiness of Americans to identify themselves
in religions terms certainly appears to stand in contrast to. the way Americans seem to
think and feel about matters central to the faith they profess..." They are
"thinking and living in terms of a framework of reality and value remote from the
religious beliefs simultaneously professed."
It is this American secularism which an overwhelming majority of Orthodox
wrongly and naively identify with the American way of life that is, in my opinion,
the root of the deep spiritual crisis of Orthodoxy in America.
3. An Unconscious Surrender
Is there any need to state once more that Orthodoxy, her whole tradition,
her whole vision of God, man and world, is radically incompatible with the secularistic
approach to religion? Is it necessary to affirm that Orthodoxy is diametrically opposed to
secularism because the Truth which she claims to have preserved in fulness and by which
she claims to live implies precisely a total and all-embracing way of life and a
total and "Catholic" world-view; i.e., a way of looking at life and a way
of living that life?
The spiritual crisis of Orthodoxy in America consists, therefore, in the fact
that in spite of this absolute incompatibility, Orthodoxy is in the process of a progressive
surrender to secularism and this surrender is all the more tragic because it is
unconscious. The truly mortal danger facing them is concealed from the majority of the
Orthodox, on the one land, by the very "success" of religion so typical of
American secularism and, on the other hand, by total lack of spiritual and intellectual
leadership.
For, paradoxical as it may seem, the first to accept and to propagate the
secularistic philosophy of religion and thus to deepen the internal surrender of Orthodoxy
to secularism are the clergy. The external success measurable in terms of attendance at
services, popularity, parish affairs, building programs etc., makes them blind to the
actual drifting away from Orthodoxy, from her vision of life, of the human soul entrusted
to them. It is the clergy who are responsible for that reduction of Orthodoxy
which, in turn, opens the doors of the Church to secularism. I have mentioned some of
these reductions. It may be a reduction to a formal "canonicity" or to an
external liturgical "rectitude" or, finally, to "success" as such. But
in each case—-and there are many other types of "reduction"—Orthodoxy
is identified with something external at the expense of the internal or, to
put it more bluntly, at the expense of life itself which is not even considered as
an object of action and influence for Orthodoxy. The latter is both preached and
understood as a creed, to be formally subscribed to, a cult to be attended,
a minimal set of prescriptions, mainly negative (no socials on certain days, etc.)
to comply with, all this within the framework of some national tradition also understood
in its most superficial "folkloric" expression (balalaika orchestra rather than
Dostoyevsky). But—and this is the whole point—neither the creed nor the cult
prescriptions are related to life, communicated and accepted as the foundation, the
spring, the framework of that new life which is the only ultimate preoccupation of
the Gospel. We have, to be sure, "rigorists" and "compromisers" among
the clergy. But the difference and opposition between them is quantitative rather than
qualitative, it concerns the scope of "reduction" and not the content of
Orthodoxy.
But what some of the clergy do not seem to realize is that the secular and
non-religious attitudes of which they so often accuse the laity, especially when these
attitudes concern the parish administration or the "rights" of the priests, are
the natural and the inevitable result of a more general secularization, which they
themselves by their "reductions" of Orthodoxy help to propagate. If Orthodoxy
does not apply to the totality of life, does not judge, challenge, enlighten and help to
change and transform all of its aspects, then "life" is inevitably governed by
another "philosophy of life," another set of moral and social principles. And
this is what has happened to our Church in America. Generation after generation, year
after year, our people have been taught that Orthodoxy consists in a regular attendance at
services, whose meaning is not disclosed; in keeping a minimum of purely external rules;
and, above everything else, in contributing to their Churches. No wonder that they have
naturally accepted for everything else in their life that "philosophy of life"
which is common to the whole society in which they live and work. That this optimistic,
progressive and fundamentally hedonistic world-view might be in conflict with their
religion does not even enter their mind because no one has ever mentioned the very
possibility of such a conflict to them. On the contrary their religious leaders themselves
have fully sanctioned it, provided the above mentioned religious "duties" are
fulfilled, provided that nominal Orthodoxy be kept.
In reality, however, a simple coexistence of religion and a
"philosophy of life" alien to it is impossible. If religion does not control the
"philosophy of life", the later will inevitably control religion, subdue it from
outside to its set of values. One cannot be Orthodox in the Church and a
"secularist" in life. Sooner or later one becomes secularist in the Church
also.. It is thus in all sincerity that people do not understand why the democratic
process and the "majority rule" which seem to work so well in their public life
could not be applied as such in the Church. It is in all sincerity that they think of a
parish as their "property" and are scandalized by the attempts of the hierarchy
to "control" it. It is in good faith that they see in the Church an institution
that should satisfy their needs, reflect their interests, "serve" their desires
and above everything else, "fit" into their "way of life." And it is,
therefore, in good faith that they reject as "impossible" everything in the
Church which does not "fit" or seems to contradict their basic philosophy of
life.
And as long as we will not face this unconscious surrender to secularism
as the very source of all our difficulties and will not make an effort to deal with what
is the real source of all our problems and difficulties, all our attempts to preserve
Orthodoxy will suffer from an internal handicap. The real question, therefore, is: can
this spiritual problem be solved, and what are the possible ways to its solution?
4. The Secularistic Reduction of the Person
To answer this question, he it only in a most general way, we must begin
with something quite forgotten and certainly out of fashion today: the fundamentally personal
character of Christianity. One of the greatest dangers of modern secularism is the
reduction of man, of his life and his religion to history and sociology. The historical
reduction results in relativism: what was true in the past may not be true today and
vice-versa, for the very concept of truth is a historically conditioned one. As to the
sociological reduction, it consists in viewing man as entirely determined in his ideas,
ideals and behaviour, by his sociological environment—be it "middle class",
"modern world", or "technological age". A relative truth attained by
statistics: such is the formula of secularism. And it is this double reduction inasmuch as
it is accepted by the Orthodox, that conditions and provokes the spiritual crisis of
Orthodoxy described above, the so-to-speak natural rejection by the American Orthodox of
all that which does not "fit" into their "American way of life" and is
therefore declared to be "impossible." It is very typical that this rejection is
never professed as a personal conviction. Very seldom will you hear: "I do not
believe in this and I reject it because such is my conviction." The pattern would be,
rather: "Our people won't accept this", or "It is not for our American
people." Whoever says it sounds as if he personally could and would accept
"this", were it up to him; but since "our people won't have it, you just
can't go against the people." In this reduction of Orthodoxy to the "commonly
acceptable" there is very little difference between the clergy and the laity.
Recently an old and respected protopresbyter flatly stated in a written report to his
Bishop that the Parish Statutes adopted by his whole Church and embodying, in a very mild
form, the most obvious and elementary norms of Orthodox canon law, were
"unacceptable" due to "conditions of life in America."
It is at this point that one must forcefully state that Christianity deals
not with "cultures", "societies", and "ages", and even not
with "people"—but it is based on a concept which precisely is not reducible
to history and sociology. This does not mean that Christianity is limited to personal or
individual salvation. On the contrary, its scope is indeed cosmical and catholic, it
embraces in its vision the whole creation and the totality of life, it has always been
preached and believed as the salvation of the world. It means only that the salvation of
the world is announced and, in a sense, entrusted to each person, is made a
personal vocation and responsibility and ultimately depends on each person. In the
Christian teaching man is always a person and thus not only a "microcosm"
reflecting the whole world, but also a unique bearer of its destiny and a potential
"king of creation." The whole world is given—in a unique way—to each
person and thus in each person it is "saved" or "perishes." Thus in
every Saint the world is saved and it is fully saved in the one totally fulfilled
Person: Jesus Christ. And within this perspective evil ("... and we know . . .
that the whole world is in the power of evil" 1 John 5: 19) is precisely the
surrender of man, of the human person to the "impersonal" nature and thus his reduction
to, and enslavement by it. It is the triumph of "nature" over the
"person," a triumph which results in a fatal deterioration or fall of
both nature and person, for the very calling of the person is to possess and thus to
fulfill the nature. Hence the fundamentally personal character of Christian faith.
It is preached to the world but in the person of man. Its fruit is unity,
communion, love, but it is unity of persons, communion of persons, love among persons. In
the Orthodox doctrine of Church no "belonging", no "participation'', no
external "membership" is as such a "guarantee" of salvation; i.e., of
the true belonging to Christ and to the new life, but only a truly personal
"appropriation" and fulfillment of all these gifts. And, in a sense, a sinful
Christian does not belong to the Church, and this in spite of all formal
"belonging."
To remember this personal character of Christian faith is very appropriate
when one discusses the situation of the Church in any' "society",
"culture'' or "age", its relationship to any "way of life". For
the whole Orthodox tradition takes two radically different views on what is
"possible" and "impossible'' for Christianity depending on whether it
considers a person or the impersonal entities such as "society" and
"culture" which it includes in the general concept of "this world."
However strong and overwhelming the modern emphasis on the "social" orientation
of Christianity, no one can deny that in regard to "this world" Christianity is
basically "pessimistic." And the very category of "this world" in the
Gospel is by no means a temporary one, is not to be identified with some aspect of the
world (paganism, communism, atheism, segregation). It applies to the "Christian
world" as well, and the triumph of monasticism, i.e., world-renunciation, within the
Christianized medieval world is the best proof of this. Yet Orthodoxy is basically
optimistic about the possibilities of a person. What is impossible for
"this world" is possible for the one who believes in Christ; "truly,
truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater
works than those will ye do" (John 14: 12). "I can do all things in Him who
strengthens me" (Philip. 4: 13). Here is what eternally remains
"foolishness" for "this world", that precisely which
"secularism" in all its forms, including the religious one, cannot and will
never accept: "this world" always claims that everything is possible for
it and requests, therefore, the "reduction" of a person to it. To this,
Christianity answers: it is impossible. The man, in his weakness, always
says—it is impossible for me, and is tempted to accept his reduction to the
world. To this, Christianity responds: it is possible.
All this finally means something very simple and very practical for the
solution of our spiritual problem here, in America. It means that as long as we ourselves
constantly "reduce" this problem to its "impersonal" dimensions and
speak about the American Man, the American Culture, etc., not only do we find ourselves in
a vicious circle, but we posit the whole question on an utterly non-Orthodox framework.
For in a very real sense no general "man"—be he American or any
other—no "society", no "culture'' has at any time truly accepted Christianity
and from this point of view there is nothing radically new in our American situation. But
at all times and in all "cultures" there were persons who did accept it
and have lived by it and, although it was not their "motivation" or
preoccupation, they have always and everywhere left a deep impact on the
"society" and the "culture" to which they belonged and have truly
changed it from inside. Thus the early Christian martyrs did more for the ultimate victory
of Christianity than the "apologies," and kept the Christian society Christian
at least in inspiration; the monks did more than "Christian" governments.
My mention of martyrs is not merely rhetorical. For if one takes
Christianity seriously, be it only for one minute, one knows with certitude that martyria,
or what the Gospel describes as the narrow way is an absolutely essential and
inescapable part of Christian life. And it is a narrow way precisely because it is always
a conflict with the "ways of life" of "this world." From the very
beginning to become and to be a Christian meant these two things: first, a liberation from
the world, i.e., from any "reduction" of man, and such has always been the
significance of the Christian rites of initiation. A man is set free in Christ because
Christ is beyond and above all "cultures", all reductions. The liberation means
thus a real possibility to see this world in Christ and to choose a Christian "way of
life." In the second place, Christianity has always meant an opposition to and
a fight with this world—a fight, let me stress it again, which is primarily, if not
exclusively, a personal fight, i.e., an internal one—with the "old
man" in myself, with my own "reduction" of myself to "this
world." There is no Christian life without martyria and without asceticism,
this latter term meaning nothing else, fundamentally, but a life of concentrated
effort and fight.
In very simple terms all this means that in order to overcome the creeping
secularism of American Orthodoxy we must, while there is still time, turn from our
constant preoccupations with the "American man" and the "American way of
life" to Christian persons who constitute American Orthodoxy. At present
almost all organized efforts of the Church are split between the attempt to keep the
"American Orthodox" as Russian or as Greek as possible and the attempt to make
the "Russian" or "Greek Orthodox" as American as possible. In the last
analysis both attempts are wrong because both deal not with the "content" but
the "form" of Christian life and both, in fact, leave the door wide open for
secularism to become precisely the content of life. Ultimately a "value"
is to be accepted or rejected, lived by or fought, not because it is American or
"foreign"-Greek, Russian, etc., but because it is either true or wrong. But this
acceptance and rejection must be preached, this choice must be presented, first of all, on
a personal level. For, as I have said above, what seems "impossible" when
reduced to the demands or particularities of a "culture" or "way of
life" becomes perfectly possible when a person accepts it. It is useless to
discuss, for example, whether the Saturday evening service (which most certainly belongs
to the very essence of the Orthodox "experience" of Sunday) is
"acceptable" or not, "possible" or not, within the "American way
of life" in which Saturday night is traditionally reserved for "fun." For
the ultimate problem is not how we can "squeeze" into life a minimum of Orthodox
obligations within a maximum of "Americanism", and thus to show how, in fact,
everything is "compatible" (the evening service and "fun" if only it
could be moved to some other time). The ultimate problem is whether the very idea of
"fun" can be changed, deepened, transformed. For the one who has discovered the
meaning of that Saturday service, who has made it part of his life it has become—and
here is the whole point—"fun" in the deepest sense of the word, or—to
use the term which signifies the "redemption" of "fun"—it has
become joy. The path to that joy, however, is a "narrow way." It begins
if one accepts the initial "incompatibility" of the ways of this world with the
demands and the promises of the Christian life, if one accepts then a necessary sacrifice
or renunciation of these ways, if one, finally—in obedience and humility—accepts
the ways of the Church. Now, this can never be a "collective" way because the
essential elements and stages of that way: "liberation", "opposition",
"renunciation", "sacrifice", "fight", and finally,
"victory" are spiritual realities, "not reducible" to collective and
external actions. This is a very minor example but the same pattern can be applied to
everything: to marriage and sex, professional ethics and entertainment, indeed to the
whole life and the whole of the "way of life." On the one hand the
"spiritual problem" of American Orthodoxy is solved, or at least on its way to
solution every time an Orthodox person gives up general considerations about the
"American way of life" and strives to make his life as Orthodox and as Christian
as possible, every time—to use the same symbol—he decides to go to Church on
Saturday, without asking himself whether it fits or not into the "American way of
life" in general. And, on the other hand, it is never solved and no degree of its
external solution—about which I will speak later—can be taken as final.
The real problem, therefore, is not that of general and abstract
"possibilities" or "impossibilities" but that of a personal reorientation
of our pastoral and educational work. For, as I said already, the first to encourage de
facto a secularistic reduction of Orthodoxy are clergy themselves. And they do it
primarily precisely by always dealing with "people" and not "persons",
with externals rather than the internal, with the "common" and
"general" rather than the personal and particular. Furthermore they themselves
measure their work only in terms of external success, numbers, formal compliance with
rules and regulations; they themselves—from inside—subordinate the life of the
Church to the categories of prestige, acceptance, security, etc. An old Bishop, himself a
holy and lovable man, once told me the story of his pastoral visit to one of the big
parishes. Everything "went fine"—the solemn service, the banquet in the
best hotel, the visit with the Mayor, Congressman and other local powers. But then, he
said, something strange happened. A young woman asked him for an appointment and wanted
him to tell her about spiritual life. The old bishop was deeply astonished—so
obviously this incident was out of pattern, out of touch with his whole experience as
pastor, administrator and bishop. Yet the incident is very revealing. In fact not only do
we have nothing to satisfy the spiritual thirst and hunger of a human person, but we react
to them as something almost abnormal, as disrupting the well-oiled routine of "parish
activities" tailored for the average "member in good standing" and aimed at
keeping him smiling, happy and "proud of Orthodoxy." In reality we encourage him
in his secularism for the religion we preach to him is in no way incompatible with his
"way of life," is literally a cheap religion: it does not cost much money
and certainly not much effort. Thus a real reorientation of our leadership is the
first condition for the solution of the spiritual problem. And this leads us to the second
answer, or rather to the second dimension of the same answer—that of the parish.
5. The Secularistic Reduction of the Parish
The parish constitutes the main battlefield of the war between Orthodoxy
and the growing secularization of the American Orthodox. It is here that the spiritual
crisis is made obvious by the progressive lack of communication and understanding between
clergy and laity, on the one hand, and by the impoverishment of the liturgical and
spiritual content of Orthodoxy on the other hand. And as time goes on, it becomes also
obvious that mere formal "victories", be they canonical or liturgical, are not
sufficient. For neither a formal restoration of the hierarchical principle: obedience of
the laity to the clergy; nor that of "correct" services, important and desirable
as these victories are, can by themselves resolve the crisis and save us from secularism.
A very "hierarchical" priest may at the same time be a very
"secularistic" one and instill into his flock a perfectly secularistic spirit,
just as "correct practices" in worship can very well coexist with a consistently
non-Orthodox world-view. One must, therefore, go much deeper and raise the question of the
ultimate meaning of the parish itself. For our current controversies deal almost
exclusively with the form and structure of the parish, but not with its life and
the meaning of its life. The basic question: what is a parish? has not yet been even
raised, at least in Orthodox terms.
What I have to say here may come as a shock to the great majority of
Orthodox. Yet it is a self-evident fact that the parish as we understand it
now—i.e., as an organization with officers, by-laws, finances, property, dues,
meetings, elections, etc., is a very recent phenomenon and exists in fact almost
exclusively within the Orthodox "diaspora". This is to say that what we take for
granted as the only normative and natural form of the Church's existence is not at
all so clearly "granted" and may be not at all so normative. This recent
phenomenon requires at least an evaluation in the light of the total Orthodox tradition.
For many centuries—virtually since the conversion of the Roman Empire
to Christianity—the parish was identified primarily with a Church, i.e.,
a temple, a place of worship serving as the religious center of a more or less
"natural" community: a village, a district of a city etc. This
"natural" community was, of course, a Christian community, i.e., consisting of
people professing Christian faith. Within this community thc Church had no other function,
but that of literally making Christ present: in preaching, sacraments, worship,
education—and of making the life of "parishioners" as Christian, as
permeated with Christ, as possible. Those who were selected, ordained, set apart to carry
this work of the Church were the "clergy"—and not so long ago the clerical
status included not only "ordained ministers" but also psalm-readers,
prosphora-makers, etc. To govern and to administer the Church, both spiritually and
materially, was not their "right" but their sacred obligation, the very reason
for their being "set apart". Similarly the sacred obligation of all other
"parishioners", called laity, was to receive the teachings of the Church as
diligently as possible, to worship God together, to contribute "according to the will
of their heart" to the needs of the Church, and, finally, to live as much as possible
by the precepts of Christian religion. Anyone who felt the vocation to dedicate himself
entirely—not to God and Christian life, for to dedicate oneself to God is a common
precept for all Christians—but to the needs of the Church could, after an appropriate
training, join the "clergy" and fulfil thus his special vocation. There was no
specific "organization" of the parish because it really had no purpose: one does
not need an organization in order to go to Church, to listen to the Gospel, to receive
"with the fear of God, faith and love" the grace of the sacraments and to
contribute gladly and generously to the Church which supplies one with all this; one does
not need to be organized to lead a Christian life, fight sin and immerse oneself in the
peace and joy of the Holy Spirit. And thus there were no meetings, no. officers, no
voting, no elections. There was also no question of "rights" and
"control" because it was obvious to every one, that given the purpose' of the
Church, those who were ordained to govern it had to do it and those who were not ordained
to do it had to accept this government. People gave money in order not to acquire rights
to govern, but to be led along the path of tree Christian faith and true Christian life by
those whose special obligation in the Church was precisely to govern.
There is no need to idealize the past. There were plenty of deficiencies
and weaknesses in the Church of all ages. There were greedy priests and stingy laymen.
There were periods of decay and corruption, and, then, those of revival and renovation.
The preaching of the Gospel may have been weak and the understanding of Christian life,
responsibilities and goals narrow and one-sided. The doctrine and the liturgy of the
Church may not have been understood in all their implications and there may have not been
enough concern for justice and charity. But there can be no doubt that throughout all that
time the Church stood for and represented something ultimately serious in the eyes
of both clergy and laity, of the whole membership of the Church. She referred, be it only
by her presence, the whole life of man to the ultimate issues of eternal salvation and
eternal damnation; she reminded him of death, Divine judgment and eternity; she called him
to repentance and offered him forgiveness and the possibility of a new life and she was
here for this purpose and for nothing else. And whether she was successful or not,
she was understood, accepted and rejected in these terms and no other. To meet a
priest was considered sometimes as "bad luck"—yet even in this vulgar
reaction there is more "respect" for the Church than in the modem identification
of the minister with an optimistic salesman of reassurance and "peace of mind" .
. . In short, the parish was the Church—the other, the ultimately
serious pole of life, which one could minimize, by-pass or even reject personally, but
which no one could reduce to his own image and "needs."
In the light of all this it becomes obvious—and this may come as a
second shock—that the "parish" as we know it today is, in spite of all its
religious connotations, a product of secularization, or, rather, that in the process of
its development within the American way of life it has accepted a secularistic basis which
little by little dissolves the ultimate seriousness of that which it claims to
serve and to express; i.e., the Church. To understand this one must briefly analyze the
genesis and the development of the Orthodox parish in America.
The first thing the Orthodox immigrants did as they settled in America was
to build Churches. The Church was a self-evident, organic part of their life in the old
country. It became their first need in the new one. It was a need for the Church—for
worship, sacraments, for the possibility to baptize, marry and bury—and not for a
"parish", or rather for a parish in the old and traditional sense of the
word—as a place where one could worship together and have a religious "term of
reference" for the entire life. All early documents support this view: the
"organization" was something secondary, it was forced, so to speak, on
the immigrants by purely external factors. In a Russian or Greek village no one ever
asked: who is the owner of the parish Church? And even retroactively it is
difficult to answer this question. It was literally the property of God for which everyone
had to care but which belonged to no one in particular. Here, however, in a completely
different legal framework the land and the Church on it had to be purchased and owned by a
corporation. The latter was hastily constituted, usually by some energetic and
Church-minded people, but, as the same documents clearly show, with no other idea than to
make the Church possible. It was a purely pragmatic development—but it
introduced almost subconsciously a first radical change into the old idea of the
parish—that of the parish as owner of property and this idea became little by
little a real obsession. Then, came the second change. The immigrant parish was poor and
to have even a humble Church, together with supporting a priest, was costly. Hence, a
constant preoccupation with fund raising, a permanent fear: how to make ends meet, a fear
which put money and finances at the very heart of the parish's life. In fact the parish as
organization was born as a material support for the Church, the Church and not the
parish remaining, at first, the goal and the justification of the parish. But an
organization, when it is born and whatever the reason for its birth, follows almost
inevitably a logic of development which sooner or later makes its own "ultimate
value." And in America nearly everything contributed to this logic and to that
development: the democratic, i.e., basically anti-hierarchical ideal of society, the cult
of "free," i.e., private, enterprise, the spirit of competition, the evaluation
of everything in terms of "cost", the emphasis on security and saving, the
constant exaltation of the "people" and their will, needs, interests as the only
criterion of all activity and especially the pragmatic character of American
religion—in which activity and efficiency are the main religious
values. Finally the Orthodox parish became what it is today—an end in itself, an
organization whose whole efforts and energies m-e directed at forwarding its own
good—material stability, success, future security and a kind of self-pride. And it is
no longer the parish that serves the Church, it is, indeed, the Church that
is forced more and more to serve the parish, to accept it as its "goal" so that
a priest, the last sign and representative of the "Church" in the
"parish", is considered good when he entirely subordinates the interests
of the Church to those of the' parish.
The third and the most important change was the inevitable result of the
other two: the secularization of the parish and the corresponding loss of religious
seriousness. A modern American parish may have many good aspects but any deeper analysis
must admit that it lacks seriousness in the sense we used this term above. More than that:
as organization, i.e., as "parish" it in fact opposes this kind of
seriousness, for it knows by instinct and from experience that the success it wants
and seeks is precisely opposed to religious seriousness. To be "successful" one
has to refer and to. cater to human pride (the right hand not only knowing what the left
one is doing but spending most of the time acknowledging and publicizing it) the instinct
of gain (bingo being a more efficient way to fill the parish treasury than any appeal to
religious maximalism), vainglory (the best, the greatest, the most expensive...). And
since all this is done "for the Church"—it is thereby justified and
glorified as "Christian." To. be exact, a parish organization lives by standards
and principles, which, when applied to an individual, are condemned outright by
Christianity as immoral: pride, gain, selfishness and self-affirmation and even the
constant preaching in terms of the "glory" of Orthodoxy is a rather ambiguous
substitute for the glory that according to the Gospel is due to God alone. The parish
organization has replaced the Church and, by the same token, has become a completely
secular organization. In this it is radically different from the parish of the past. It
has ceased to be a natural community with a Church as its center and pole of
"seriousness." It has not become a religious community, i.e., a group
united by and serving a common religious ideal. As it exists today it represents the very
victory of secularism within American Orthodoxy.
6. The Way to a Solution
Can this situation be changed? Can this alarming trend towards the
secularization of our Church be reversed? Can Orthodoxy be Orthodox in America? My answer
is yes—but only if a radical reorientation of our thinking, of our whole vision of
"American Orthodoxy" takes place on all levels—the hierarchical, the
pastoral, the liturgical, the educational, etc.
First of all this reorientation concerns the clergy. A leader—it is
obvious—must lead. But in our Church today the hierarchy and the clergy are, in fact,
prisoners of a system which ironically they themselves have helped to establish, they are
literally crushed by a construction in which they have invested so much of their energy,
heart and love. Their surrender to the two fundamental secularistic
"reductions": that of the Church to the "parish" and that of the
Christian person to a "parishioner" may have not been a conscious one for, as I
have said, the parish in its new organizational, secular and legal form appeared at first
as the only way to support the Church in a radically new situation. But the fact remains
that progressively the clergy themselves were "reduced", i.e., have become the
servants and the promoters of the "system" and of its "needs", so that
today it is mainly through them that the "Church" serves the "parish"
and not vice-versa. Not all Bishops and priests realize this, but more and more do,
and the growing disillusion of our clergy is probably the most disturbing yet also the
most hopeful sign of our time. It is a hopeful sign, however, only if the priests realize
what a tremendous responsibility is theirs and what an effort—spiritual, pastoral
and, I dare say, prophetic—is to be made.
The necessary condition for that effort, the first challenge to the
secularized "system" is, of course, the canonical restoration of leadership within
the Church. From this point of view the acute crisis provoked in the Russian Metropolia by
the adoption in 1955 of the new Statutes transcends the narrow
"jurisdictional" boundaries and concerns the whole Church in America. It is a
real tragedy that so many hierarchs do not seem to understand this and, blinded by their
petty jurisdictional passions and loyalties are even ready to give a helping hand to the
parishes opposing the Statutes. For these Statutes are the first attempt, however
imperfect and inadequate, to subordinate the "parish" to the Church, i.e., to
reverse the situation in which the Church has become the servant of the parish. But this
restoration of leadership is, I repeat, only a condition—-which, by restoring the
priest to his real position in the parish, makes the spiritual reorientation possible; but
it is, by no means, an end in itself. Understood as an end in itself (canonical
reduction), disconnected from the pastoral and spiritual perspective in function of which
it is to be achieved, it could lead to another clerical and legalistic
"reduction" which is as alien to true Orthodoxy as the "democratic"
and "anti-hierarchical" one. Its only goal thus is to make possible spiritual
and religious restoration in the two areas, where, as we have seen, secularism has all but
triumphed: the parish and the parishioner. Let us begin with the parish.
When I speak of the religious and spiritual restoration of
the parish, I have something very definite in mind. For it is very, fashionable today to
think that to be "re-vitalized" and "re-Christianized" a parish must
be involved in all kinds of social and philanthropic projects, be connected organically
with the "secular world" and its needs: racial integration, social justice,
anti-poverty programs, urban renewal, etc. I dare to dissent very radically from this
view, being deeply convinced that neither of these concerns is the concern of the parish as
such. One must be very careful here: I have no doubt that these are concerns for
Christians, but not for the parish. Its function and purpose is different and
purely spiritual and only inasmuch as the parish remains faithful to this spiritual
function can it inspire Christians with their secular responsibilities. In other words,
the very success of Christians "in the world" depends on their being
"not of this world" and the essential function of the parish is precisely
to root them in their "supernatural" calling and being. Secularism in all its
forms, including the "religious" one is, in the last analysis, the loss of the experience
of God which has always stood at the very heart of religion. And the theologians of
"secular religion" are in a way quite consistent when they speak of the
"death of God"; they openly admit that which the numberless
"conservative" and "traditional" Christians hide in their
subconscious—namely, that their religion is not interested in God and has in fact
"this world" as its real object. Our parishes, being Orthodox, would certainly
not accept the "death of God" theology. But they should realize that lip-service
to God within a framework of purely secularistic interests and "activisms"
amounts to the same "death of God" even if traditional creeds, liturgical
splendors and spiritualistic phraseology supplies them with a religious "alibi"
("we do it for the church").
"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God . . ." (Ps.
42:2): this and only this is religion. And the parish as parish, i.e., as Church
has no other task, no other purpose but to reveal, to manifest, to announce, this
Living God so. that men may know Him, love Him and then, find in Him their real vocations
and tasks. Once more it is for the sake of the world that the Church, i.e., the parish,
must be different from and even opposed to, the world and its cares, and this means that
its proper and unique function is purely and exclusively religious: it is prayer
and sanctification, preaching and edification, it is, above everything else, communion
with the Living God. The tragedy is not, as some people affirm, that Churches and parishes
were too religious, too detached and thus "lost" the world. The tragedy is that
they let the world in, became worldly and set the "world" and not God as their
basic "term of reference." And thus they lost both God and the world and
became a vague and indeed "irrelevant" religious projection of secularism and an
equally irrelevant secularistic projection of religion. Of this double betrayal the modern
parish is the very "locus" and expression.
The spiritual restoration consists therefore in an absolute and total
priority of religion in the parish. Its secularistic reduction must be counteracted
by a real religious reduction and it is here that the priest must recover his
unique place and function. He must literally stop playing the game of the parish, he must
cease to be the "servant" and the "organization man" of secular
interests and become again what he was when people considered it bad luck to meet him,
what he eternally is: the man of faith, the witness of the Absolute, the representative of
the Living God. "It is his (the priest's) faith that the world needs"—wrote
Francois Mauriac—"a faith which does not wink at the idols. From all other men
we expect charity, from the priest alone we require faith and not faith horn out of a
reasoning, but a faith born from the daily contact and a kind of familiarity with God.
Charity, love we can receive from all beings; that kind of faith only from the
priest."
The first level of that religious restoration is, without any doubt, the liturgical
one. Our Church need not be ashamed of her identification with liturgy, of her
reputation as the liturgical Church par excellence, even if, in Western categories,
this is understood as a lack of concern for the social and activistic aspects
of Christianity. For the liturgy was always experienced and understood in our Church as
precisely the entering of men into, and communion with, the reality of the Kingdom of God,
as that experience of God which alone makes possible everything else—all
"action", all "fight." And in this sense the less pragmatic and
"world-oriented" it is—the more "useful'' it is. In my article on the
Liturgical Problem I tried to describe the main aspects of what I understand as liturgical
restoration. Let me repeat here only that it consists fundamentally in the recovery by the
Church of the true spirit and meaning of liturgy, as an all-embracing vision of life, including
heaven and earth, time and eternity, spirit and matter and as thc power of that
vision to transform our lives. But in order to recover this the priest who is, above
everything else, the celebrant of the liturgy, its guardian and interpreter, must cease to
consider the liturgy and the liturgical life of the parish in terms of
"attendance", "needs", "possibilities" and
"impossibilities''. The reasoning: "since no one comes to church on Saturday
night, why have a service?"—is the very type of reasoning that must be radically
rejected. For, as we have seen, the only real justification of the parish as
organization is precisely to make the liturgy, the cult of the Church as complete, as
Orthodox, as adequate as possible, and it is the liturgy, therefore, that is the
basic criterion of the only real "success" of the parish. Let the Saturday
service—this unique weekly celebration of Christ's resurrection, this essential
"source" of our Christian understanding of time and life, be served week after
week in an empty church—then at least the various secular "expressions'' and
"leaders" of the parish: committees, commissions and boards, may become aware of
the simple fact that their claim: "we work for the Church" is an empty claim,
for if the "Church" for which they work is not primarily a praying and
worshipping Church it is not "Church", whatever their work, effort and
enthusiasm. Is it not indeed a tragic paradox: we build ever greater and richer and more
beautiful churches and we pray less and less in them? Is it not the only real measure of
our "success" that today one may easily be a "Church-member" (and even
a "president of the Church") in good standing spending some fifty-two hour's in
Church per year? And finally, are the massive and complex organizations known as
"parishes" and which spend an infinitely superior number of hours discussing
their "fund raising" really necessary for those fifty-two hours of corporate
prayer? The liturgy—which is the sole responsibility of the priest, his
"area" par excellence—must become again the measure, the criterion,
the judgment of the "parish life." All conversations about people being
"busy" and "having no time" are no excuses. People were always busy,
people always worked, and in the past they were, in fact, much busier and had more
obstacles to overcome in order to come to Church. In the last analysis it all depends
where the treasure of man is—for there will be his heart. The only difference between
the present and the past is—and I have repeated this many times—that in the past
a man knew that he has to make an effort, and that today he expects from the Church
an effort to adjust herself to him and his "possibilities". The
liturgical restoration must be thus the first challenge to secularism, the first judgment
on the all-powerful "prince of this world."
The second religious task and justification of the parish is education.
At present it is limited almost exclusively to children and teenagers and constitutes
a specialized department within the parish, very often not even under the direct guidance
of the priest. What I have in mind here is something much more general: it is the concept
of the Christian life as "discipleship" and "education", and thus the
understanding of the whole parish as an unceasing education. Virtually all our
difficulties, crises and conflicts have as their principle cause the almost abysmal
ignorance by our people of the very elements of Christianity. A recent survey shows that
more than seventy-five percent of parishioners in "good standing" have never
read the Gospel—except what they hear in Church on Sunday—not to speak of the
Old Testament. If one adds to this that even some of our hierarchs think that a formal
theological education is not a real "must" for a priest, and that a substantial
number of our priests do not consider teaching their flocks to be their sacred
duty—one has the peculiar image of a Church disinterested in the very object of her
being. But the Christian concept of faith includes both—the act of
believing and the content of belief and one without the other makes a faith
dead.
Finally the third essential dimension of the religious restoration in the
parish is the recovery of its missionary character. And by this I mean primarily a
shift from the selfish self-centeredness of the modern parish to the concept of the parish
as servant. We use today an extremely ambiguous phraseology: we praise men because
they "serve their parish", for example. "Parish" is an end in itself
justifying all sacrifices, all efforts, all activities. "For the benefit of the
parish" . . . But it is ambiguous because the parish is not an end in itself and once
it has become one—it is, in fact, an idol condemned as all other idols in the Gospel.
The parish is the means for men of serving God and it itself must serve God and His
work and only then is it justified and becomes "Church". And again it is the
sacred duty and the real function of the priest not to "serve the parish", but
to make the parish serve God—and there is a tremendous difference between these two
functions. And for the parish to serve God means, first of all, to help God's work
wherever it is to be helped. I am convinced, and it is enough to read the Gospel just once
to be convinced, that as long as our seminaries are obliged, year after year, literally to
beg for money, as long as we cannot afford a few chaplains to take care of our students on
college campuses, as long as so many obvious, urgent, self-evident spiritual needs of the
Church remain unfulfilled because each parish must first "take care of
itself"—the beautiful mosaics, golden vestments and jeweled crosses do not
please God and that which does not please God is not Christian whatever the appearances.
If a man says "I won't help the poor because I must first take care of myself"
we call it selfishness and term it a sin. If a parish says it and acts accordingly we
consider it Christian—but as long as this "double standard" is accepted as
a self-evident norm, as long as all this is praised and glorified as good and Christian at
innumerable parish banquets and "affairs", the parish betrays rather than serves
God.
But having said all this one can hear the question: "All this may be
right and good, but how does one even start one of these 'restorations'?" Is not all
this the best illustration of precisely those "impossibilities" which were
mentioned at the beginning of this article? And it is here that I will remind my reader of
the other—the "personal" dimension of Orthodoxy. I am fully aware
that the parish as organization, cannot be "converted" to any of these
ideals, except perhaps theoretically. In fact, none was in the long history of the Church,
which begins with the terrible words addressed to one of the oldest "parishes":
"I know your works, you have the name of being alive and you are dead" (Rev.
3:1). Conversion and faith are always personal, and this means that although the priest
must preach to all, it is always some who hear and receive and accept the
Word and respond to it. As I said above the greatest tragedy and the surrender to
secularism consist precisely in the fact that the parish—as organization, as
an impersonal majority, as ail—has virtually concealed from the pastor the person,
who is the ultimate object of God's love and saving grace. We are so obsessed with the
social that not only do we neglect the person but we simply do not believe anymore that it
is the social that depends on the personal and not vice versa. But Christ
preached to the multitudes, to all, yet he chose the twelve and spent most of His time
teaching them "privately". Mutatis mutandis, we must follow the same
pattern and it is the only way to the solution of our spiritual problem. Speaking
of the liturgical restoration I mentioned the empty Church. In reality, however, it
will not be empty—and if "two or three" attend and participate and
"enjoy" the service we have not labored in vain. If but a handful of men and
women will discover the sweetness of the knowledge of God, will meet to read and to
understand the Gospel, to deepen their spiritual life—we have not labored in vain. If
a few will decide to organize a little missionary group, to direct their attention to the
needs of the Church—we have not labored in vain. The priest must free himself from
the obsession with numbers and success, must learn to value the only real success: That
which is hidden in God and cannot be reported in statistics and credited to him at parish
affairs. He must himself rediscover the eternal truth about "a little leaven which
leavens the whole lump" (I Cor. 5:6)—for this is the very essence of
Christian faith. For these few will—whether they want it or not—become witnesses
and sooner or later their testimony will bear its fruit. The parish may be improved
but only a person can be saved. Yet his salvation has a tremendous
meaning for all and thus for the parish itself. Once more—what is, indeed, impossible
for a parish, is being constantly revealed as possible for a person and, in the
last analysis the whole meaning of Christianity is the victory, made possible for
man by Christ, over the impossibilities imposed on man by the "world."
7. Orthodoxy and America
We may now return to Orthodoxy in America. All that I tried to say,
ultimately, amounts to this: we should stop thinking of Orthodoxy in terms of America and
begin to think of America in terms of Orthodoxy. And, first of all, we should remember
that in these terms, "America" means at least three things, three levels of our
life as Orthodox.
It is, first, the personal destiny and the daily life of each one of us;
it is my job, the people whom I meet, the papers I read, the innumerable decisions I have
to take. It is my "personal" America and it is exactly what I make of it.
America, in fact, requires nothing for me except that I be myself and to be myself for me,
as Orthodox, is to live by my faith and to live by it as fully as possible. All
"problems" are reduced to this one: do I want to be myself? And if I
invent all kinds of major and minor obstacles, all sorts of "idols" and call
them the "American way of life" the guilt is mine, not America's. For I was
told: "You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free"—free
from all idols, free to make decisions, free to please God and not men. This problem thus
is fully mine and only I can solve it by a daily effort and dedication, prayer and effort,
a constant effort to "stand fast" in the freedom in which Christ has set me
(Gal. 5: 1).
In the second place, "America" is a culture, i.e., a
complex of habits, customs, thought forms, etc., many of which are either new or alien to
Orthodoxy, to its history and tradition and it is impossible simply to "transpose''
Orthodoxy into the American cultural categories. To become the "fourth major
faith" by decree and proclamation is a poor solution of this difficult problem and
the day Orthodoxy will feel completely at home in this culture and give up her alienation
she will inescapably lose something essential, something crucially Orthodox. There is,
however, in American culture, a basic element which makes it possible for Orthodoxy not
simply to exist in America but to exist truly within American culture and in
a creative co-relation with it. This element is again freedom. In a deep sense it
is freedom that constitutes the only truly "American way of life" and not
the superficial and oppressive conformities which have been consistently denounced and
castigated by the best Americans of all generations as a betrayal of the American ideal.
And freedom means the possibility, even the duty, of choice and critique, of dissent and
search. Superficial conformity, so strong on the surface of American life, may make the
essentially American value the possibility given everyone to be himself, and thus
Orthodoxy to be Orthodox look "un-American"; this possibility nevertheless
remains fundamentally American. Therefore, if one moves from the personal level to
a corporate one there is nothing in the American culture which could prevent the Church
from being fully the Church, a parish truly a parish, and it is only by being fully
Orthodox that American Orthodoxy becomes fully American.
And finally "America", as every other nation, world, culture,
society, is a great search and a great confusion, a great hope and a great tragedy, a
thirst and a hunger. And, as every' other nation or culture, it desperately needs Truth
and Redemption. This means—and I write these words knowing how foolish they
sound—that it needs Orthodoxy. If only Orthodoxy is what we believe and confess it to
be, all men need it whether they know it or not, or else our confession and the very word
Orthodoxy mean nothing. And if my words sound as an impossible foolishness, it is only
because of us, Orthodox. It is our betrayal of Orthodoxy, our reduction of it to
our own petty and selfish "national identities," "cultural values,"
"parochial interests" that make it look like another "denomination"
with limited scope and doubtful relevance. It is looking at us, Orthodox, that America
cannot see Orthodoxy and discern any Truth and Redemption. And yet it is clear to every
one who wants to see that there are today around us thousands of ears ready to listen,
thousands of hearts ready to open themselves-not to us, not to our human words and human
explanations, not to the "splendors" of Byzantium or Russia, but to that alone
which makes Orthodoxy, which transcends all cultures, all ages, all societies, and which
makes us sing at the end of each Liturgy: "We have seen the true Light, we have
received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true Faith..." And if only we could
understand this and take it to our hearts and our will, day after day, there would be no
problem of Orthodoxy, but only a mission of Orthodoxy in America.
From St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly,
Vol. 9, No. 4 (1965), pp. 171-193. This was the third essay in a
series on the problems of Orthodoxy in America.
|