Challenges of Orthodox Thought and Life

Problems of Orthodoxy in America

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The ideas that started arising at the beginning of the nineteenth century had with time a tremendous impact on the political, social and familial relations, and changed drastically the vision that the World adopted for centuries regarding the relations that paved the societal structure. Besides, the development of exact and applied sciences, since the middle of the twentieth century, resulted in reviewing many ethical basics. Questions related to Life are not anymore approached according to the religious moral axioms, but this is done on the basis of the Human Rights concepts, and an individualistic understanding of the human being.

The problems related to poverty in the world are not anymore discussed based on the standards of equity but through the consuming society interests ruled by the absolute dimension of the economic right. A theory of power is ruling the world by claiming indirectly the right of the most powerful to set up his norms on the expense of others habits and customs by forcing people to adopt his definition of the social welfare.

Meanwhile, this period of development of sciences was a period where communication between the modernizing World and the Churches was quite missing. Both the secularized World and the Churches were not able to develop a forum of communication which could have allowed deepening the ideas in order to find focal points to accept criticism and prepare a common future perspective from the acquired experiences. With time the gap increased and a real antagonism seems to take place.

Finally, the end of the last century witnessed the emerging extensive use of the Computer and the multimedia as new means of communication. This technological revolution does not confine to the introduction of technical gadgets; the World entered a phase of potential positive transparency but with the possibility of falsifying any objective given data and sending very quick wrong messages to the whole world. With all these changes, the Churches find themselves confronted to new facts regarding the way they have to dialogue with a new world. When it did, it was as a reaction to — and not in harmony with - the evolution of the modern world.

This is why all the current problematic issues of Modernism have the following conceptual elements in common: Without underestimating the importance of what is quantifiable, the Christian approach - especially the Orthodox one — considers that the human person cannot be reduced to his physical components, and that the integrity of his complementary components is the guarantee of his evolution and the fulfillment of his potentials. Some cases to reflect on in the Orthodox milieus Based on what was said before, it is tremendously important to adopt in the Orthodox World an approach to ethical issues that relates the decisions to take to this theological background.

Such ethical issues are of three different categories that complement one the other and looking to them as an unit will give the social praxis of the Church a strong foundation. The Ten Commandments and the Code of Hammurabi are clear examples. In the 20th Century, a series of bills regarding the rights of groups and individuals were published. Despite the importance of these texts, we cannot but mention the priority given to the rights over the concepts of duty and responsibility.

Moreover, the French motto Liberty-Equality-Fraternity has its inherent problematic issue that makes it fragile at the societal level. Here are some questions as examples: These kinds of questions are rarely raised in a world driven by political interests, and governed mainly by economic interests. We encounter a two faced problem: This explains its external and internal antagonisms. The Orthodox theology defends the concept of the person in a unique anthropologic approach that is unfortunately quite unknown and less lived. This is why the impact of the Orthodox approach on the modern problematic issues is quite absent.

Still, this Orthodox specificity proposes de facto a substitute motto based on the principle of Incarnation. This does not go against the content of the motto of the French Revolution, but suggests complementary action principles: From an Orthodox point of view, persons and societies are called to give this same importance to two mottos: If the Church adopts the latter trio for her, and makes it a plan of life as a corollary of its faith in Incarnation, its discourse will become more coherent and close to what the modern world expects.

While this relation between the Person and the Society may be looked upon as being a strictly social one, it is in fact an ethical issue because it relates to the equilibrium we have to establish between the Liberty of the Person and the welfare of the Society. As an example, let us to look at the value of the Tolerance in a social context. Is the tolerance always ethical or it can become none ethical when it asks to accept what is against established principles: Such questions may be solved only if the relation between the Person and the Society is cleared defined.

This problem leads to many questions for example: Is Ethics a synonym to Morality? Do norms replace values? Is there any absolute to defend in the discourse on Ethics? What is the relation between Ethics and Tolerance? Is there a unique referential which can be considered as a base for a social debate on the problem? In the name of liberty of individuals, Modernism favors the relativity of the ethical approach. The social aspect is valorized in order to create a judicial framework rather than launching an answering process.

Accordingly, some concepts are revealed more than others, or at the detriment of others without any obvious valid reason. Many cases related to modern thought cannot be discussed outside this opposition among a multiplicity of currents belonging to different registers.

The problem strictly resides in the fact that Ethics became a synonym of the prevailing Morals due to the individualism of the thought and because the social norms are replaced by the values due to the prevailing materialism. Ethics is rather a more global concept and especially richer from human and religious point of views.

Schematically, the religious thought in the Occident has two very antagonist stands, the Latin theology and the Protestant one. Does this position indicate a weakness in the Orthodox theology? This is a weak position when this economia has no criteria; i. This gives the impression as is happening today that the Orthodox Church has nothing to say to the world today and has not developed a dialogue process with modernism, and that it is just a pietistic Church where the praxis is in contradiction with its teaching on Incarnation.

But at the same time, it is a strong position if two complementary conditions are taken into consideration: The Orthodox theology carries in itself the potential to face positively this big challenge of Modernism, but it is not able to find the means to put this potential into action. This fundamental aspect is to be taken into consideration because it will help us to overcome problems that are driven by social or cultural stands. All the bioethical debate today has to be approached through such a methodology in order to avoid positions dictated by not appropriate backgrounds.

We live in a time where the Body is considered as a thing. The relation to the Body is underestimated and this is being accepted as a normal situation. I think that this is a direct result of the vision that the modern world has towards Mankind in general and the individual in particular. Accordingly, when the modern world speaks about the corporal aspect of the human being, it does so: The Christian approach is at the opposite end of that of the modern world, because it refuses to consider the Body as a thing, or to underestimate the relation to it.

The Christian approach insists on respecting the body and its potential expressions as an integral part of the human specificity. A young woman asked him for an appointment and wanted him to tell her about spiritual life. 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.

The Spiritual Problem

Thus a real reorientation of our leadership is the first condition for the solution of the spiritual problem. 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: 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. What I have to say here may come as a shock to the great majority of Orthodox. 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. This "natural" community was, of course, a Christian community, i. Within this community thc Church had no other function, but that of literally making Christ present: 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. There was no specific "organization" of the parish because it really had no purpose: And thus there were no meetings, no. 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.

Προβολές Ιστοσελίδας, Απο 1.4.2016

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 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. All early documents support this view: In a Russian or Greek village no one ever asked: 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.

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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: 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 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: 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. To be "successful" one has to refer and to. 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. As it exists today it represents the very victory of secularism within American Orthodoxy. Can this situation be changed?

Can this alarming trend towards the secularization of our Church be reversed? Can Orthodoxy be Orthodox in America?

For Further Reading

First of all this reorientation concerns the clergy. 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": But the fact remains that progressively the clergy themselves were "reduced", i.

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. 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 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.

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: 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: 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. 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".

And the parish as parish, i. Once more it is for the sake of the world that the Church, i. 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. 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: 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. 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''.

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. Is it not indeed a tragic paradox: 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?

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. 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: 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.

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: 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 for the parish to serve God means, first of all, to help God's work wherever it is to be helped.

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. But having said all this one can hear the question: 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": 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.

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. 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. 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.

Living an Orthodox Life: The Orthodox Family

We may now return to Orthodoxy in America. All that I tried to say, ultimately, amounts to this: 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: 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: 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.

In the second place, "America" is a culture, i. 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. 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: Vladimir's Theological Quarterly , Vol.

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