Fears

Ligonier Fears and Future

A Response to "Ligonier Revisited" (The WORD, November 2004)

When speaking about the overlapping jurisdictional status of the Orthodox Church in the New World, the various sides often speak past each other. Much as in the recent Presidential election in the US, and as in the much ballyhooed "culture war" we find ourselves in, differing groups have different issues ranked in different degrees of importance. Parallels could also be drawn to the Calendar issue and the forced change that caused so much ill will in the Body of Christ.

How we came to this overlapping situation and who may be "right" is a question I will not deal with. I wish to discuss the current fears that underlay why our churches have not remedied the situation heretofore.

Some who support the "uncanonical status quo" in the jurisdictional overlapping in the New World do so, oftentimes, because they see what has happened in Americanized Orthodox parishes and jurisdictions. There seems, to them, to be a change in the Faith and practice of the Church without a real consultation with, and sensitivity to, the rest of the Orthodox world.

Many newer immigrants wonder how this can be the same unchanging Orthodoxy they knew back home, and many new converts wonder why the Orthodox have not learned the bitter lessons of Vatican II and the "modernization" of a declining mainline Protestantism.

Metropolitan Nicholas of the American Carpatho-Russian Diocese stated, "America needs Orthodoxy, without Orthodoxy becoming Americanized." This sentiment reflects well what many people fear when they compare their experience of Church life in the Old World to that in their New World jurisdiction, or for converts, what Fr. Seraphim Rose spoke of as "Eastern Rite Protestantism".

Others who support the "uncanonical status quo" are of a more modernizing mind and seek to protect themselves from those who are (privately) derided as "backwards": the Athonite fathers, the Great Russians, Whites, and traditionalists of all stripes. After all, it is easier to big a big fish in a small pond.

When, however, Metropolitan Herman of the Orthodox Church in America speaks of the "uncanonical status quo," he refers only to the fact that we have multiple bishops overseeing parishes and monasteries in the same geographical territory. One bishop allows the remarriage of a priest on one block, and another bishop on the next block does not. Church A fasts, Church B does not.

The hierarchs at Ligonier were not speaking of a mandatory Americanization and homogenization of all Orthodox practice, though this is exactly what many fear will happen. Serbs do not want to lose their Orthodox way of being Orthodox, and the same is true of Greeks, Russians, Bulgarians, Romanians, etc. A "Russian" bishop would not Russify Greek parishes; and, the Ecumenical Patriarch would not ban the Romanian Typikon, or the use of Slavonic, Arabic, or Georgian.

Equally, we all must remember that it is only the universal Church that is infallible. This includes all Orthodox today (clergy and laity, traditionalists and modernists), as well as all the Saints throughout the history of the Church on earth from Adam to the Prophets, from the Apostles to the New Martyrs. We must remember that the Russian Church in 1917 had as members both Metropolitan Sergius and Patriarch Tikhon, Frs. Paul Florensky and Alexander Hotovitsky, Bulgakov and Pomazansky.

Holding to the Tradition that has been handed on is laudable if it is accepted by the Church (unlike the Nestorian and Monophysite churches, or many Old Ritualists). Embracing innovation is also laudable if it is accepted by the Church (e.g. the insertion of the Trisagion, monasticism, even the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in its day).

Ligonier was not calling for a new, uniform, and Western style of Orthodox worship, practice, and theology. Ligonier called for the unity demanded by the earliest practice of the Church whereby one Bishop stood in the place of the one Christ in each city or territory. This unity is a witness to our monotheism. This unity is especially needed today given the "identity politics" of modern society that tends to fragment and divide us from each other into ever smaller demographic groups with unique doctrines.

At the same time, our unity in hierarchy is needed to proclaim to the world our belief in God as Three Persons. A unity in our differing, and yet still Orthodox, traditions preaches to the world that what makes us distinct does not separate us in being Orthodox. This respect is desperately needed in a world where many peoples feel their cultures are being overrun in the process of globalization. In addition, non-Slavic, Greek, or Arab converts can often feel that they must give up their culture and language to be Orthodox in faith.

It must also be admitted that simple greed for influence and money underlies the positions held by various people. Who will gain the upper hand in jurisdiction? Who will protect their share in the churches in America and the West? For churches in hostile environments the question of whether they should keep their life jacket on or just tread water seems obvious. And Americans need to take a lesson from the Apostle Paul who gathered alms out of thanks to the "saints in Jerusalem"; we, too, must not be stingy in our guarantees of support to our Mother Churches.

But through all of this, we must not succumb to the temptation to find what is "minimally required" to be Orthodox. Ours is the "fullness of the faith once delivered to the saints". We do not need to create an American Orthodox Church, with American Orthodox services and practices. When we are fully Orthodox, and since we are Americans, we cannot help but do

things in an "American" way. Since we are Christ's Body, the Church, and have never separated ourselves from the Tradition of the Apostles, we do not need Reformers. Rather, we need Prophets calling us back to the Traditions of our Fathers such as were Sts. Kosmas Aetolos, Alexis of Wilkes-Barre, and Raphael of Brooklyn.

The Holy Spirit has "guided us into all truth" in what we have been given in our Orthodox services, structures, and disciplines. While it is true that these practices have changed and been clarified over the centuries, it has never been our place to make these changes ourselves. God has given us what we need. What has survived, has survived for a reason; what has gone by the wayside has been left for a reason known by God.

Our situation in the New World is an anomaly within Orthodoxy and has more in common with Protestantism. Overlapping jurisdictions are an innovation without precedent, need, or canonical justification; so, too, would be the inorganic remanufacturing of the Church's services and disciplines into an "American Orthodoxy".

Heretics choose what they want their faith to be. Orthodox Christians seek to sharpen the focus of the image of God in us by faithfulness to "the faith once revealed to the Saints." Orthodox Christians are obedient to the Church Tradition, not trusting their own fallen will, but seeking to be conformed to the original beauty of God's creation as lived in the Church.

Let us respect the sensitivity of those who "hold to the Faith of their Fathers" and "to the faith which was delivered by tradition and epistle" as St. Paul says. In our conciliarity, let us hold off forcing change and causing offense like Reformers and Renovationists according to our own thoughts and opinions, without the agreement of the Church as a whole. But in the tradition of the Prophets and Righteous Israel, let us return (metanoia, repent) to the canons of the Church that are often forgotten, but uncovered in the academic study of our history.

In all of this, let us together proclaim our Triune God, the unity in diversity, "the same yesterday, today, and forever": Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.



Volume 6 Number 48 - Tuesday, November 30th, 2004	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY