Question: How can someone
best assimilate into the ‘culture’ of Orthodoxy even picking up other national
customs without losing their own nationality (being of the USA for example)?
How do we find that middle balance of taking the good and leaving the bad from
our own culture?
There is no such thing as a generic Orthodoxy. Our
faith is handed to us by particular people, who come from particular cultural
expressions of the faith. Consequently I think a convert can only embrace the
particular expression of the faith as they receive it, in the context that they
have converted in. Some converts have
gone so far as to actually try to adopt the ethnic identity of whatever
Orthodox Jurisdiction they convert into -- I have even heard of cases in which
people Russified their surname. This is of course ridiculous, and is neither
necessary, nor helpful.
When I first encountered the Orthodox Faith, it was in
the Russian Orthodox context. I was never under any illusions that I could
become a Russian, nor did I have any great desire to do so. When the Orthodox
Faith was brought to the Slavs, they embraced many aspects of the Orthodox
Byzantine culture that brought them the Faith, but they remained Slavs, and
with time, they in turn made the Faith their own, and a new Orthodox culture
developed. You could go back one step further and talk about the Jewish culture
of the Apostles, and the interaction that the Greek converts had with it, which
ultimately developed into the Byzantine Greek culture. So while I am not a
Russian, nor could I ever become a Russian, my experience of Orthodoxy came in
a Russian package, and so I am Russian Orthodox, and love and appreciate the
best aspects of Russian culture.
Anything in any culture that is contrary to the
Orthodox Christian Faith has to go. But anything that is good or virtuous in a
culture can be embraced. The Greeks certainly did not give up the best aspects
of their culture when they embraced the Christian Faith, and the Church has
been enriched by the Greek Christian culture that came out of that. The same is
true of Americans. Anything that is good in the culture that you have when you
enter the Church you get to keep.
And while we have to embrace the expression of
Orthodoxy as we receive it, since we live in a context where we have many other
cultural expressions of Orthodoxy, we should resist the temptation to look down
on other practices that are no less authentic, but nevertheless different than
what we are familiar with.
Someday, God willing, we will see a distinctly
American Orthodox culture, but attempts to force that into existence
prematurely have met with bad results, and I think this fails to understand how
Orthodoxy changes a culture. The Russians did not decide one day that they were
going to toss out Greek culture, and concoct a Russian version of it. It
happened naturally, as their national Church matured. The American Church has a
very long way to go.
However, none of this means that those of us whose
language is English need to have the services in a foreign language. The texts of
the services have all been translated into English, and so there is no reason
why we should not use them.
What a convert should do is try to learn what they can
from the most pious and mature Orthodox Christians they encounter in their
parish, and emulate them. You will inevitably find some faults in such people,
and so those things you should not follow. And you certainly should not emulate
the bad habits of those who have grown up on the Church. For example, many
Orthodox Christians have a bad a habit of coming to Church late, or coming to
Church inconsistently. Ignore the bad example of those people, and imitate the
ones that are doing what they should be doing.
One temptation for any convert is to take things to
extremes, and so finding the balance is something that you have to work
towards. For example, while we can and should learn from monasticism, unless
and until you go to a monastery, you should not try to live like you are an
Athonite monk. For one thing, it's not going to work, and you are likely to
have the wheels of your faith come off at some point. Keep your focus on trying
to live like a normal pious layman, and if God leads you to a monastery
eventually, you will be a lot more likely to work out your salvation there, if
you have learned how to work it out in a balanced way, while living in the
world.. We should always remember the wise words of St. Poemen the Great:
"Everything that goes to excess comes from the
demons" (Benedicta Ward, translator, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers,
The Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1975, 1984
revised edition), p. 185.).
By Fr.
John Whiteford
Source: http://fatherjohn.blogspot.com/2017/08/stump-priest-converts-and-culture.html
CONVERSATION