Response

A Response to "Orthodox Fundamentalism"

Submitted November 9, 2004

I don't get it. So much of the "Orthodox fundamentalism" criticized by Nicholas Cobb and others nowadays was simply Orthodox Christianity a few decades ago, even in this country! How come the demeanor and deportment of the pious babas and yia-yias, respected and admired in our childhood, is now derided and vilified as something dangerous, fanatical and cultic? Yes, not all that long ago in Orthodox America, people dressed modestly and decently ("Sunday best") for services. Covered heads were common among women in church; pants and make-up weren't. Married couples wore wedding rings where the Church put them, on their right hands. Women and children stood on the north side of the nave, men on the south side. (And yes, there may have been pews, but they *stood* for most of the service anyways.) Bearded or clean-shaven, most clergy wore cassocks, at least on the parish grounds or around parishioners. People greeted a bishop or presbyter by asking for their blessing, rather than pumping his hand like a campaigning politician or used car salesman. Nobody thought of any of this as "controversial," "cult-like" or "extremist." They just accepted it as the way things were, "the way church was supposed to be," for indeed, it had been that way for many, many centuries.

It was all part of a little something called "reverence," which is in dearly short supply in contemporary American culture now. Somehow – in the urge to be more "American" or "modern," perhaps? – we've lost a lot of the niceties of church etiquette and traditional piety that help maintain a certain level of decorum and dignity when it comes to things of God, reminding us that church is no mundane, everyday, commonplace affair. Maybe we just got lazy; maybe we thought that by becoming more "relaxed" like the spirit of the times, and more "like" the prevailing culture around us, we'd attract more newcomers. But the Lord Jesus Christ gives us a warning: "What good is it for a person to gain the whole world, but lose his soul?" (Mark 8:36).

Yes, some people get wrapped up in externals and miss the point. Others indulge in ethnic fantasy and borrowed roots. Still others simply hanker to be counter-cultural to the nth degree at all costs. But that doesn't mean one throws out the baby with the bath water. Wise, patient pastoral guidance, rooted in appreciation for centuries of Orthodox Tradition, can steer us clear of two pitfalls: emphasizing the letter of the law at the expense of its spirit, and dispensing with the letter of the law, through which we grasp its spirit, altogether.

Human beings need externals, because they are, by nature, *psychosomatic* creatures, composed of both soul (Greek, "psyche") and body (Greek, "soma"). What affects their souls impacts on their bodies, and vice versa. Clothes may not literally "make the man," but they go a long way in creating a certain mindset, demeanor and deportment, a sense of self. Recently, we had the unfortunate scandal of a bishop who got drunk in a gambling casino and accosted a woman. (May God have mercy on him and grant him a good repentance.) Would that have occurred if he was wearing the traditional monastic garb of an Orthodox Christian bishop? Not very likely: it would have reminded him of who he is and what he is meant to be, not to mention make him so conspicuous he would not likely go into a casino. (Plus, our clergy just plainly look more striking and dignified in cassocks! What's so much better about the "monkey-suit-and-dog-collar" combo, anyways?) While balance and moderation are key, I'd much rather see someone dressed like an extra from "Fiddler on the Roof" in church than someone sporting a decolletage that would make even the typical MTV "diva" think twice.

So let's not be so quick to dismiss the longstanding traditional Orthodox Christian externals of sober-minded piety, modestly and moderately applied, as dangerous, fanatical and cultic "fundamentalism." The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote an instructive little tale about externals, in which people in a faraway land possessed a life-giving fluid that could even bring back the dead, keeping it in a specially adorned vessel which people kissed and bowed down before in veneration. One day, some of them said, "You fools! It's the fluid that's valuable, not the vessel, so stop honoring it!" They smashed the vessel to stop the folly, and the fluid spilt on the ground and soaked into the soil, irretrievably lost forever.

"They broke the vessel and lost the fluid," Dostoyevsky wryly observed. A point well taken. Let's not forget it.



Volume 6 Number 46 - Tuesday, November 16th, 2004	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY