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.
Clarissa's Blog 
That’s interesting, I haven’t encountered this level of Protestantism from American Catholics. Which isn’t to say I haven’t encountered any; we’re all American at the end of the day. My atheist parents are still Baptist and mainline Protestant, respectively.
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It’ll come.
Until recently, Catholicism in America has been cultural: you’re catholic because your family has always been catholic.
But the RCC has been experiencing a lot of the same influx as Orthodoxy recently, and they have always, *always* sucked at catechesis, so… eventually they will hit a critical mass of people who are converts, who used to be protestants, who have been very poorly catechized and received most of their guidance in the faith from the internet, and still, deep down inside, have no concept of obedience, humility, or faithfulness: the church is something they *chose* because it ticked all their tickboxes: they went shopping and it was the best option on the shelf. If it doesn’t live up to expectations, they can always return it and get another…
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Catholics have an advantage in the sense of numbers; converts in my city face a church full of cradle Catholics who lead by example if nothing else, and would likely rebuke the most egregious stuff (ex. if someone complained about not being able to elect the Pope.) But I’ve seen some of the more obnoxious converts on twitter; there is a problem there and I’m sure it’ll continue to grow.
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I’m not as confident, but I also don’t have a good sense of the numbers.
The problem Catholics have in the US is that most of them have no idea what they believe, and most of the “members” on the books never darken the door of a church except for weddings and funerals. They’re still consolidating parishes and selling off church buildings because they haven’t enough congregants to pay the electric bill… from what I understand, the converts are not spread out evenly between parishes: they’re flocking to the already-thriving ones that are theologically conservative and have lots of families with kids. So when it comes to convert influence, it’s not over the whole church where it’d be diluted by the legions of cradle catholics, it’s over individual convert-heavy parishes, where they have more clout than the overall numbers would suggest.
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I’m sure it varies by locality, but even the most convert heavy church in my area is majority non-convert.
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Oi.
Parish we used to belong to (we moved away before this happened) had a beloved priest retire. A crowded, lively parish, healthy community by all visible markers. New priest installed: half the congregation decided they didn’t like him, and departed to other parishes.
The only way to be more protestant, is to split and form your own denomination when you disagree with a pastor.
No surprise most of the parish were converts from protestant churches. And I’m saying that as someone who came from a protestant background myself! That stuff is hard to overcome, you have to do it *consciously*, and if you don’t do the work, it’s easy to treat Orthodoxy like a shopping run: just another church among many, where you pick a parish based on whether you like the pastor, whether your friends’ kids are in the sunday school, how good the choir is, or if the church has a youth sports team (knew at least one family who joined a church so their kid could be on the baseball team…).
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“The only way to be more protestant, is to split and form your own denomination when you disagree with a pastor.”
Me, me, me! I wasn’t asked, my preferences weren’t consulted, my ego wasn’t stoked. MEEEEEE! Honestly, why leave Protestantism if that’s an appealing model?
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I think this is going to be a serious issue going forward. I LOVE that we have so many new folks, but fully integrating them into the life of the parish is a huge logistical challenge.
The older folks who’ve been running the kitchen and the cleaning and the decorating and everything else for decades are straining under the sheer volume of work, they keep asking for volunteers and nobody steps up… I am trying to convince them that it’s not enough to ask politely in the bulletin: we need to get out and actively *recruit* the new people, *find* the day-to-day work in the parish that they can help with, not primarily because the old ladies need more help in the kitchen, but because that’s how new people get integrated into the community— and a lot of them don’t know that yet. All they know is come to church services. If you’re lucky, they have already got the idea of tithing.
But you also need to work for the parish/community, with other members of the parish/community, for the goals of the parish. I wash dishes at coffee hour. Not because I love washing dishes, but because It means I spend some time every week doing sociable manual labor with other ladies at church, and this helps make me part of the community. Since I suck at doing the meet-and-greets, this is one of the better ways I can contribute. Working together toward a common goal melds you into the group.
We’ve got to find more ways for the newbs to do this, and shepherd them into it, as it’s not intuitive to a lot of people. If we fail at it, a lot of these people will drift off to the next thing in a few years, when they find that they are still only superficial participants in the life of the parish. Becoming an integral part of the parish doesn’t just happen.
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We have this exact problem. The parish council asks for volunteers to serve. If you are too occupied, I get it, although you are missing out on the experience. But then don’t complain that the council makes decisions without you.
“I don’t think the new priest is knowledgeable enough to guide me on my spiritual journey,” says a 26-year-old young woman who got baptized in November. Well, we can always ask him to make a TikTok and rap about Jesus. Maybe that will help.
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And yet: God wants these people. It’s on us to get them from where they are now, to where they need to be.
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We have three newborn babies in the parish. We haven’t had anything like this at the same time for years.
One of the babies was born to a couple in their early forties. They had completely lost hope for a child. Twenty years of trying but it wasn’t happening. Then they came to us, converted, and the wife became pregnant THE WEEK AFTER her baptism. We all wept when the little boy was born.
If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.
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That’s beautiful!
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Yes! This applies to us Catholics as well.
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“Americans are Protestants at heart”
I don’t know from Orthodox, but one of my old saws is: “If you’re from the US you’re a protestant even if you’re catholic. If you’re from Poland, you’re catholic even if you’re protestant”
Culture influences religious observance and practice far more than the reverse.
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They converted to Orthodoxy and immediately started to turn it into everything they ran away from when they converted. Like, dude, if your way of doing it is so great, why did you leave it and come here?
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It’s really hard to go from *I CHOSE* to… God wants to rearrange my innards, and this is the boot camp for doing it.
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It’s true. Consumerism doesn’t leave you the moment you step into an Orthodox church. That’s why we urgently need a priest. New people are coming, and it’s great, but they need to be introduced to a completely new way of worshipping and we need a priest to do that.
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Another objection to the new priest is that he worked as a plumber before becoming a priest. The previous priest worked as a computer programmer, and apparently that is more acceptable than a plumber. I don’t know what this is, a form of snobbery? Why is a plumber unacceptable? Because he doesn’t have a college degree? One would think it’s a plus in the current environment.
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Oh no! Are they really going to reject a priest because he’s not sufficiently middle-class?
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I am not a Biblical scholar but I’m quite certain there’s nothing in the Bible about godliness being incompatible with manual labor.
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The only way this could be more on the nose is if he was a carpenter
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Totally. 😆😆
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Reminds me of many immigrants and political converts!
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Heh. My mother who was raised hard-core Evangelical became an Episcopalian in grad school to her parents’ dismay. In their view, any kind of liturgy was antithetical to meaningful prayer, which they thought had to be an extemporaneous expression in order to have meaning. My mother wanted a faith that didn’t depend on her emotional state at the moment of worship.
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Oh, this is “Good Enough Professor” — I forgot to sign in.
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“nothing in the Bible about godliness being incompatible with manual labor”
I’m not a believer… but I do consider myself sort of a cultural protestant (the environment in which I grew up) and I have to say the idea that manual labor is not compatible with godliness or being in a leadership position in a church does not seem even remotely protestant (which is about, among other things, the inherent value and dignity of all honest labor and how that is in fact a daily expression of godliness).
Objecting to a plumber leading them is more about modern American class structure where everything but professional labor is devalued… (which I hate).
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Protestants sort out between denominations, by income and education.
It’s a really bad sign if you see this going on in your Orthodox parish.
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I despise this kind of snobbishness passionately. It’s so dumb.
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OT: I was talking with a student whose family is from Ukraine (been here a long time) about the timing of Orthodox Easter this year and they said their family actually belonged to the Greek Catholic church and I nodded and changed the subject.
What is the Greek Catholic church in Ukraine? I’ve heard of it and I did a small amount of googling and that didn’t really help….
Also… is onion syrup a thing in Eastern Ukraine? Another student from western Ukraine mentioned bonding with a student form Eastern Poland in hatred of it which isn’t a thing where I am but apparently in Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine it’s considered to be a traditional miracle cure for lots of things….
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They’re Catholics.
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Never heard of onion syrup but people do have this barbaric practice of sleeping next to a baked onion if they have a cold. It’s fine for the person with a stuffy nose but why are the innocent family members supposed to suffer.
I know that Greek Catholics exist but that is all I know. Never met anybody who practices it.
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“Never heard of onion syrup”
Chop up a raw onion and layer it in a jar with sugar (and/or honey) and let it sit a while and then drain the juice (lasts 3-5 days). I have to admit I’m intrigued and might try making it in early fall….
I looked up Greek Catholics on Wikipedia and am more confused that before… sort of orthodoxish catholics affiliated with Rome in some way but it gets very bureaucratic.
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Greek Catholics, once the Uniate Church, are the remnants of that group of originally Orthodox Christians who, as a result of their hierarchy’s decisions, left the Orthodox Church in the sixteenth century to swear allegiance to the Pope in Rome. This took place in what is today Western Ukraine. They were supposed to be the vanguard of a future reunification of Orthodox and Catholics under the Pope.
Liturgically their rites are virtually indistinguishable from the respective Orthodox ones: the Divine Liturgy is that of Saint Basil – Saint John Chrysostom on certain solemn occasions – they have a married clergy, Holy Communion is administered in both species in the same manner as in Orthodox churches. The main theological difference from their Orthodox brethren is their allegiance to the Bishop of Rome, who is commemorated during the liturgy.
Historically they’ve been persecuted through most of their existence, on both sides: by Polish Roman Catholics for their unswerving attachment to their “quaint” Orthodox ways, by the Russians and Orthodox for their allegiance to the pope in Rome.
Theirs is indeed a history of tragedy, in particular during the Soviet period, when they were brutally persecuted by the authorities, often with the connivance of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and the local Ukrainian laity. It was only with the independence of Ukraine that they regained their legal status. They have a significant presence – demographically, culturally and socially – in Western Ukraine: their Metropolitan See is in Lviv, and they are also significant in Canada’s western Provinces: here the residence of the Metropolitan is in Winnipeg.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is – and has long been – among the most stalwart supporters of Ukrainian nationhood and independence and for this reason alone if not for others should be held dear by anyone who supports Ukraine.
NB I’ve written this off my own bat without checking any details so please make allowance for possible imprecision.
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“Greek Catholics, once the Uniate Church, are the remnants”
Thank you! That was much more informative than any other source I’ve seen.
It almost makes up for your unhinged anti-German diatribes (I keed).
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