www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Intercultural Orthodoxy

This afternoon, I did a presentation on infectious diseases in Palmer, Alaska, about 50 miles north of Anchorage. On the return trip on the Glenn Highway, I passed the exit for Eklutna, a native town with a Russian Orthodox Church, originally a mission to the native nation.

The Church itself is very old and "logs". In the 50's, a native chief who was ill, was visited by the bishop and anointed. He was told that should he survive, he should renew the church building. He did recover, and constructed a totally new church building of clapboard. (Nice venetian blinds inside!)

The cemetary is the main focal point. It contains a large number of crosses (3 bar) along with small "houses" to house the spirits of the deceased. The houses are in pretty poor shape since most of the family members (Athabasca) are not around and the church does not have the resources to restore the cemetary. Their newly appointed priest is native, and there is a support priest (also native) who comes to help out when the resident priest is not available. (I learned this from the sub-deacon who came out to greet me.)

First, I'd like to say that the community is in real need of assistance to restore the original church building, to help in the upkeep of the 'new' church, and especially in the restoration of the resting-places of the faithful. I suspect that one could get the address from the OCA website and make checks payable to the Eklutna Russian Orthodox Church. Seminarians and monks are scheduled to come to the parish during the summer to help run the "gift shop" and do the tours of the site. Their work is cut out for them!

Second, I want to place the photos that I took, into this thread, and I will contact the administrator about doing so - jpeg to html. They include the new church, the "old church" and a side shrine to the Theotokos. And also the spirit-houses.

But my main question is, what do our collective brethren and sistren think about the 'accommodation' of the spirit-houses for the souls of the dead with traditional Orthodox spirituality?

Personally, although the concept is rather 'alien', I felt very comfortable with these large crosses and little buildings (~3 feet long, 2 feet high, and 18 inches wide). After speaking with the sub-deacon, I found my self standing at the edge of the grave sites and praying for the repose of those who were lying there awaiting the Final Judgement. I KNOW that this is not typical Orthodoxy, but it just seemed to me to be really "real" and just incredibly appropriate for Alaska.

Does anyone have a "problem" with this external expression of Orthodoxy?

I ask your prayers for the deceased who repose in this graveyard; I ask your prayers and financial support for the good people of this OCA parish who continue to live our Eastern Christian, Constantinopolitan lifestyle. (And send some silver coin to aid them in restoring this most wonderful monument to Constantinopolitan Christianity.)

Ideas welcome!

And blessings!! (And I'll get the pics up when I hear from the Most Holy Administrator after I return home.) P.S. Our Byzantine Catholic Church here in Anchorage is apparently OK after the horrible windstorms 2 weeks ago that caused the first-ever weather-related shut-down of the Anchorage airport in more than 30 years. (Wow! A triple hyphenation in one sentence. I think I have to have a lie-down!!!)

Dear Dr. John,

I don't have a problem with this. Orthodoxy seems to vary from culture to cuture in the observance of devotional practices. This seems to be a local variation of the common practice of building or placing memorial tombstones or mausoleums. But them again, I'm unorthodox.

As to the title of "Most Holy Administrator", the more common practice would be to title him "Esteemed". I'm sure he is the most holy administrator this Forum has, but this covers a limited number of persons (one, I think). Formalizing this title should wait for a Judgment from higher authority.

John
Pilgrim and Odd Duck

Dear Dr. John,

Certainly, it was St Herman of Alaska who did much to adapt Orthodoxy to native traditions and this is but one example.

Here in the Jesuit (I can feel your eyes light up! ) Martyrs' Shrine, there is an "Indian Chapel" with no floor. It is believed that the floor is an offence to the spirits who move around the earth.

The Jesuits (please don't get TOO excited!) also have a centre here where they are working on creating a "Native Rite" of the Mass with sweetgrass smoking, the enshrinement of the tabernacle in a teepee, buckskin vestments, peace-pipe for the Kiss of Peace and a sweat-hut for inner purification.

Not to mention all the pre-Christian rites we East Slavs have.

Did you know that kolbassa was formerly a sacrifical food in honour of the boar-god?

Orthodox patriarchs tried for years to get the Kozaks to stop bringing it to church at Easter for blessing, owing to its pagan background . . .

But the Kozaks didn't listen, bless 'em . . .

Once a Kozak, always a Kozak!

Alex

I don't have a problem with this. Orthodoxy seems to vary from culture to cuture in the observance of devotional practices.

I think that it is healthy to incorporate and support some of the traditions that our native peoples hold, as long as they are not opposed to the spirit of Christianity, and our liturgical life.

As a Mexican I know a little bit about the harmful effects of Syncretism. There are examples of good syncretism and bad syncretism. To summarize my thoughts, I would say that good syncretism is the preservation of some indigenous traditions that do not oppose christianity or infect the liturgical life of the Church (we're first of all Christians). Bad syncretism is the one that expresses a blend between Christianity and Paganism and when doctrine is confused and contaminated by remains of spiritism and politeism.

I know some of you would probably not like the comparisson. But I believe we must be careful and take the Roman Church as an example of what we can accept and what we cannot accept. In some places the Roman Church is so infected by syncretism that you would not recognize Christian elements in some ceremonies that have been incorporated to their mass and there is a serious doctrinal confusion. (And in this case, the inculturation regime of novelties which started in the 70's has been enough to destroy the awesome work of Catholic missionaries, a work that took 500 years to be accomplished!).

We cannot allow the Constantinopolitan character of the Orthodox Church to be lost, or the Orthodox faith to be compromised. In all the plural traditions of Orthodoxy (Slavic, Greek, Georgian, Romanian) the constantinopolitan character of the liturgy has been preserved, as well as some rules that you would find no so important, such as the no-instruments in Church have been respected through the centiuries.

Dear Snoopers,

(Sorry if I was a bit hard on you the other day - it was a bad day for me and I needed to go after someone - thank you for your consideration in being there for me! Actually - forgive me a sinner!).

The issue you raise is perhaps one of the most important ones in the entire "inculturation" debate today.

While I have no problems with the way the Latin Church has adapted so completely to local cultures, it is true that you and I would probably not be able to relate to such a complete transformation of the traditional liturgical heritage that we are used to.

Another issue is that there is a danger that if the Church is so totally identified with the culture that has yet to be Christianized, does it run the risk of losing its own distinguishing character so that the people the Gospel is being preached to won't feel the need to convert - they might feel they are already one with the Church etc. ?

I don't know the answer to that.

We know that so much of pre-Christian Roman, Byzantine and Slavic culture has become welded to the Church so as to be virtually indistinguishable.

But the old pagan cultures are no longer around and so if what we consider as "Christian" is, in fact, a reinterpreted pagan practice, there is no problem. All that is pagan from the old European cultures have lost their identification with a competing religion etc.

As well there is the question that missionaries must ask - to what extent is Christ being preached and to what extent are our cultural values being imposed, masquerading as interal elements of the Christian message?

I suspect that missionaries in the field have already broached some of these topics within a pragmatic framework.

I once met an RC missionary who allowed his converts to keep their Buddha statues at home etc.

He interpreted Buddhism as a kind of an "Old Testament" with good spiritual values that can lead one to commitment to Christ.

Certainly, this is how the RC thinker and monk, Thomas Merton, understood things.

According to him, the job of the Christian missionary is not to "introduce Christ" to these cultures - for He is already among them.

The job of the Christian missionary is to therefore point out more clearly the Christ who is already familiar to them since He already lives among them.

Alex

Snoopy makes some excellent points. Since we Byzantine Christians living in the Americas are no longer really Greeks, Middle Easterners and Slavs we will no doubt eventually alter the merely cultural aspects attached to Byzantine Christianity and replace them with suitable elements from our own cultures. This would only be following the example of the Greeks who formed the Byzantine style of Christianity and that of the Slavs who embraced it and made it their own while retaining its Constantinopolitan character. I think this is something we need to do in order to successfully evangelize the unchurched peoples of the Americas.

Dear Administrator,

But to what extent do Byzantine-style cupolas and other intrinsically Byzantine religious-cultural form an impediment to the assimilation of our Churches in North America?

Up until now, the issue, as dealt with by say your own Ruthenian Church, has been limited to the shedding of ethnocultural content (which, in some areas, has already died out anyway).

If the formula for acculturation in North America is - Byzantine Orthodoxy recast in American culture - I would argue that such will be doomed to ultimate failure.

If the premise is that the Byzantine tradition is itself somehow "culturally neutral" and became "ethnic" only because of its being assumed by Greek and Slavic and other cultures - that is a wrong premise, at least within the North American context.

The Byzantine tradition, even with English services, the celebration of North American traditions et al. is still intrinsically an "ethnic" one from the standpoint of mainstream North American Anglo-Celtic culture.

It is not that the Byzantine tradition can't stand apart from the various ethnic heritages that have come to be enshrined within it.

It is that it itself represents a religious culture that is deemed foreign to contemporary mainstream North America with its minimalist, iconoclastic and individualist cultural paradigms.

Alex

Alex,

You raise some excellent points in your earlier post. It is one thing to recognize the good in every culture but it is something entirely different to bring non-Christian elements into Christianity. One can take elements of a culture and �baptize� them to them give them new meaning but such baptism must wash away the old meaning and be seen as the true meaning.

I don�t believe that there is anything wrong with allowing Buddha to be seen as a historical way of life on which the light of Christ shined and replaced. Certainly we must never show anything but respect for all religions and cultures. I don�t necessarily think it is wrong to allow the pointing to certain images of Christ being already present in Buddhism (and other pagan religions) as long as there is never a suggestion that these pagan religions were equivalent to the God�s self-revelation in the Old Testament. Such images are a result of God�s writing them on the souls of men and not because of anything rooted in the pagan religions themselves. It must always be kept clear that these pagan religions were never The Way.

I wonder if the problem with evangelization is that we sometimes wish to merely teach people about the historical Jesus instead of witnessing the power of Christ in our own lives? Is this possibly another example of taking the easy way out?

Admin

Dear Admin:

You seem to take the position that (1) the shedding of one's ethnic roots is inevitable after several generations in North America; and (2) that this shedding would not include one's religious heritage as an Eastern Christian.

I would humbly submit, however, that for the vast majority of Greeks or Slavs who choose to assimilate, the assimilation includes leaving one's "native" church and finding a home in an RC or Protestant community that it, as Alex puts it, more in line with ther dominant Anglo-Celtic (and probably Germanic as well) culture. Perhaps there are those who have stopped being Greek or Ukrainian or whatever and joined an ethnically-nuetral Byzantine Rite church, but I would speculate that these are very few and far between. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Yours,

kl

Alex,

If we simply rely on the ethno-cultural component of our various Byzantine Churches we will not survive and deserve to die. The Slavic society was not very similar to Greek society. Christianity, in its Byzantine form, actually recreated Slavic society. This is what we must do with Western culture. It will remain Byzantine but will certainly baptize certain elements in our current society (and I�m not just talking about replacing palms with the American equivalent of Slavic pussywillows).

You are correct that the Byzantine tradition is not something that is culturally neutral. I believe, however that it can transform our North American culture for Christ. It will certainly take on a different look and feel but will remain faithful to the essence of the Byzantine Christian life. I think that Byzantine Christianity is far more capable of baptizing new cultures than is Latin Christianity. Yes, these cultures will not stay the same � they will become Christian.

Admin

KL,

Thanks for your comments.

I�m not sure that the shedding of one�s ethnic roots is inevitable after several generations but it does seem to be the norm. It is also common for people to shed their Eastern Christian religious heritage when they shed their traditional ethnic identities. More Greek-Americans now worship in Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches than worship in Greek Orthodox Churches. From what I�ve read this is because the Greek Orthodox Churches (which are Greek speaking) are considered by the Greeks to be the ethnic Church and the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches are seen as the non-ethnic, American Church.

I have nothing against people maintaining their ethnic cultures. My problem is when these ethnic cultures become a barrier to evangelization. I am always worried when someone from a WASP background converts to Byzantine Christianity and feels compelled to learn Church Slavonic or Greek and eat kielbasi or kibbi in order to really be a Christian.

I do agree that most cradle Byzantines who loose their ethnicity don�t seek out an ethnically-neutral Byzantine parish. I�ve known a few Greeks (Orthodox) who married Anglo-Saxons (Roman Catholics) who settled in Byzantine Catholic parishes. They seem to have done this primarily because they wanted Orthodoxy in English. But I don�t consider these to be converts and they are certainly not the norm.

The challenge to us is to create an environment where we not be seen as some foreign, highly ethnic Church. When we start seeing country music videos that talk about gathering with the Church and they show a wedding in front of an icon screen we�ll know we are doing something right.

Admin

Dear O.C.

Don't worry about last day, it was a bad day for all, it was just a breve lapsus of nationalism

I agree, as the old pagan cultures died long ago in Europe and also among the Anglo-Americans, the risks of adapting the traditional liturgy and Church life to American culture are not so grave because after all, even the Protestants have a Catholic-Orthodox memory.

In Africa, for example, where the Christian religion is still very young and the Pagan culture prevails, the situation would be different. It would be interesting to know something about the recent experiences of Orthodoxy in Africa, where there is a predominant black African element now.

A certain ethnic feeling will always exiist, it's unavoidable. For example, a Divine Liturgy which is entirely in modern English and with a neutral character would not seem so neutral to me, it would be like an Anglo-American Orthodox Church. I remember one poster in this forum who commented about some Arab Orthodox who attended maronite parishes instead of the Antiochian ones.

In the modern Western society the risk is not found in the Anglo-Celtic origin of the population, but in the modern western liberal and secular culture. There's this idea in which the modern man is thought to be esencially non-believing and entirely autonomous, and this has been reflected in the present forms of western worship and church life: churches with empty walls, music with a secular flavour and the enphasis on human action. This is quite different from the kind of traditional liturgy and Church life of Eastern christians and traditional western ones.

Some would add, as Michael Jackson said: "Can't we just get along?"

I think that the key point is getting a bit clouded. The focal point is the nexus between the spritual values of Christianity (or other religious/philosophical belief) and the externals that are the outward signs of the belief structure.

For the Athabasca, they accepted the beliefs of the Russian Orthodoxes in terms of the gospel, but they also needed to retain the religious/philosophical beliefs of their ancestors that mandated that 'spirit houses' be constructed for the repose of the spirits of the ancestral deceased - but, of course, the spirit house had a three-bar adjacent to it to show the commitment to the Gospel as the Russians presented it.

I understand and agree that there are going to be 'adaptations' as the Gospel goes out to the various cultures that are evangelized. I also see the Administrator's perspective that some of the "old" interpretations of the outward symbols can be incorporated into the mindsets of the converted and potentially be used to water-down the Gospel values.

Of course, the converse can be true: by denying the validity of the "old" symbols, there is no "outward sign" available to the preacher of the Gospel to make the Gospel-message understandable in the context of the preacher's need to "preach" in terms of the peoples' ability to understand.

Is a puzzlement.

Blessings!

PS: Today I saw a Moose - a real one!! And Kingfishers (birds) AND - TA DAH!!! several bald eagles. Alaska is a most wonderful place. And the people are most wonderful. It gives one a wonderful appreciation of God's creation. The mountains covered with snow are truly magnificent. "Be still; and know that I am God."

Dear Administrator,

Well, I never said that ethnocultural systems must be preserved as ends in and of themselves.

They have already died out or else adapted themselves to the mainstream in many contexts.

For my own ethnocultural group, it is still going strong owing to specific circumstances, but who knows what will happen ten or twenty years from now?

Also, ethnic identification can exist in a transformed state for years. When I was working on my dissertation on ethnic identity, I came across the category of "psychological identification with a group or tradition" where the person had no inward or outward ties to a tradition, but simply felt himself or herself tied to it.

I think Kliros' point is central here.

The position of some Eastern Catholic Churches, including the Ruthenian Church, is to affirm themselves in non-ethnic terms but only as a "Byzantine Catholic Church."

As Kliros pointed out and I agree, the Byzantine spiritual culture that is an integral part of our Churches is, IN AND OF ITSELF, something that is outside the mainstream of North American society.

One doesn't "de-ethnicize" our Church by introducing English and changing the name etc.

The cupolas et al. still present our Church to North America as an "ethnic Church" nevertheless.

As Kliros also pointed out, when our members "assimilate" they leave our Churches altogether.

In Canada, this has meant that Ukie Catholics become Roman Catholics and Ukie Orthodox become . . . members of the Protestant United Church of Canada.

So what this means is that the paradigm, that you and others seem to be affirming, where the salvation of our Church is seen in a "de-ethnicization" and acceptance of a North American culture and identity is doomed to failure.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying the reverse is doomed to success.

I'm saying that your perspective (shared by many others so I'm not picking on you) needs to be critically assessed in terms of the "let's get rid of the ethnic component" aspect - and I know I'm over-generalizing so this is not a perfect representation of your perspective.

I do think that Dr. John gives us a way out here with his comment about using the old culture (ethnic and Byzantine) and building from it, without denying it.

I do think that a good part of our effectiveness in preaching the Gospel within the context of our tradition here is precisely BECAUSE we are able to challenge the mainstream culture of North America.

The Church herself has a history, the Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, the Church of the Fathers, of the Thebaid etc.

The spiritual culture of the Byzantine and other Eastern traditions can be "recast" as a way to symbolically recall that history and that tradition that goes all the way back to Christ in the East.

So this is my point.

We need to culturally transform our Church as it adapts to North America and all that - to be sure.

But there is NO WAY we can ever get away from the "foreign" (to mainstream North America) spiritual culture that "we are stuck with" in our Eastern Churches, even when it is English-speaking and white-bread-eating.

My point is a challenge to you and others who have a laissez-faire attitude to the cultural component and feel that it is a question of de-ethnicization only (if I'm overstating your position, forgive me and tell me off).

We must address the cultural component of our Byzantine traditions and recast it within an historical/theological framework that points to the Church of the first millennium. We cannot get rid of that culture without doing damage to our spirituality, after all.

Finally, I don't know if I understood your point on Byzantine tradition and Slavic culture, but I'm going on the assumption that I did and that your point is mistaken.

Eugene Ivankiw did an article for "Visnyk" in Chicago and so did Prof. Bilaniuk on this very issue.

They showed how pre-Christian Slavic cultural ideals were quite close to Byzantine spirituality and the two complimented one another.

The East Slavs believed in "PanENtheism" or "God in everything" (not Pantheism).

Theosis from the Byzantine perspective was something that was intrinsically attractive for the East Slavs and this is one major reason why Byzantine spirituality so quickly adapted to the Slavic way of life in Kyivan Rus'.

Have a wonderful Holy Week and Pascha and forgive me a sinner for my insolence in questioning your points!!

Alex

Dear Dr. John,

I'm happy you are having a great time!

With the Presence of God seen and felt so powerfully around you, is it any wonder the Orthodox Missionary to Alaska, St Innocent, came across a man who said that he ALREADY knew about all that Innocent had preached to them?

When asked how he knew, the man, John something or other, said, "I learned it all from Three Men who taught me."

Innocent asked for a meeting with the Three Men, but it never took place . . .

Alex