Even Orthodox Americans are Protestants at heart.
Two examples.
Our parish elders extended an invitation to a new priest. We’ve been without a priest since January 1st, and it’s hard. Finally, the elders found a priest who is eager to relocate and take on our parish. But a bunch of parishioners are unhappy because the process was undemocratic. We didn’t get to vote on the new priest. The idea that an Orthodox church should be a democratic institution is ludicrous to me. What’s next, we’ll vote on which parts of the service we want to eliminate because they are not inclusive enough? The whole point of being Orthodox is that you want a hierarchy, an unchanged millennial tradition, a break from the consumerist model of endlessly choosing and deciding everything. The idea that people who converted fifteen minutes ago should get a vote on par with the members of the parish council who were born and grew up and grew old in this parish is nuts.
“How are these elders better than me?” asks a young dude who got baptized last year. That the elders have been here forever and consequently understand the parish much better never occurs to him. Equality! One person, one vote! Roots and history are nothing! That the elders have been mowing the lawn, cleaning the grounds, and running the food pantry for decades while you showed up yesterday with opinions and a sense of self-importance doesn’t occur either.
Another objection to the new priest is that he does parts of the service in Old Slavonic. “We don’t understand what he’s saying!” the refuseniks exclaim. It’s unclear what it is they need to understand. The service hasn’t changed in a thousand years. We’ve all heard it in English many, many times. There are booklets in every seat where you can read the whole text in English. And that’s not what an Orthodox service is for anyway. You don’t come to engage with the text of the service on an intellectual level. That’s Protestantism. Orthodoxy doesn’t claim that every individual is his own priest. It claims the exact opposite. It invites you to be part of something that’s bigger than yourself. You are subsumed into the tradition. Your personal whims are unimportant. You accept, obey, and defer, and in the world of ceaseless choices and decisions it’s extremely restful and peace-inducing.
We had one dude a while ago who would actually interrupt the sermon with his corrections and observations. He ended up having to leave when he realized that an Orthodox sermon is not a debate club.
There are opportunities for an enormous amount of personal growth in learning to bow your head and accept. For three hours a week you can experience a bit of humility and put away your hubris. You can feel instead of think. You can find joy in the realization that many generations of people heard the exact same service and sang the exact same hymns in the exact same order, and it’s all already done. It’s completed. It’s decided and finished. It’s there for you and you needn’t work on improving the process. Your ego can take a rest. It’s not about feeding it and making it feel important. It’s about doing the exact opposite.
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