Orthodox Denominationalism

“I do not know a Greek Christ, a Russian Christ, an English Christ, an Arab Christ. Christ for me is everything, the super cosmic being, if we confess in the creed, Christ is very God, the Saviour of the Universe, the Creator of the World by whom all things are made, how can we bring our understanding of Him down to a question of nationality, place or epoch?”

+ Archimandrite Sophrony (disciple of St Silouan)

One of the most tragic issues for Orthodoxy today is jurisdictionalism and the misconception that there are different types of Orthodox Denominations. Both "Oriental" and "Eastern" Orthodox 'Jurisdictions' might desire evangelism and missions but to have parallel missions and services in the same area or region (and refusing to cooperate or support joint mission and services) is, forgive me for saying, a severe oversight by the lay, the clergy and the hierarchs.

When Parishes within the same 'Jurisdiction' have to operate separate charities or mission centers in the same Diocese this reflects on our understanding of ecclesiology.

Also problematic is when 'Jurisdictions' within the same 'Family' don't integrate their youth with each other (ie. for example having separate Indian, Coptic, Ukranian, Greek, Armenian or Russian Orthodox Student clubs on Campus instead of a jointly supported OCF chapter in every university).

In 1991, SYNDESMOS presented the following recommendations:

1. That all Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox youth movements prepare their members for the imminent communion of our Churches through information, common activities and close co-operation. This is particularly important in those regions where our Churches co-exist.

2. That SYNDESMOS publish and distribute information about the official dialogue. This information could take the form of a booklet containing a short history of the Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Churches and their youth movements, and a chapter summarizing the history of the dialogue between our Churches up to the recent agreed statements.

3. That SYNDESMOS actively encourage the close co-operation on a local and regional level of youth movements of both families of our Churches. This co-operation could take the form of regional and local committees, retreats with biblical and liturgical studies and discussions on these themes of Tradition and renewal.

4. That SYNDESMOS initiate a programme of contacts and exchanges between students and teachers of Theology from both families of Churches.

5. That SYNDESMOS amend its Constitution to allow Oriental Orthodox youth movements and theological schools to become full affiliate members of SYNDESMOS, thereby enabling these movements to participate fully in the decision making of SYNDESMOS.

It has been over twenty years since this document was published and we are still seeing the polar opposite of the recommendations.

Je Nai Nan.

When Orthodox Churches of differing rites (Coptic, Greek, Ethiopian, Syrian, Russian, Eritrean, Bulgarian, Indian) see each other as a fundamentally different type of Orthodox 'Denomination' this also very troubling because it hearkens to either nationalism (and inward looking 'spiritual nationalism') or undercover-phyletism.

This identification with denominationalism within the Orthodox world emphasizes differences, and encourages short-hand 'branding' of sister Orthodox Churches as holding a different theology and orthopraxy in essence. This bias can also be perpetuated when we focus on formulaic statements that reduce our theology to differences without the possibility of seeing what is meant by our statements and the statements of others.

It is troubling to see that even after the promise of the various Joint Commission documents, many Orthodox lay and clergy choose to still identify differences in other 'jurisdictions' and refuse to cooperate on a lay level (ie live and see our shared Orthodoxy).

Perhaps there's a need to encourage our lay and clergy to re-examine the Joint Commission and other Pan-Orthodox initiatives in prayer and humility. Not to just look at the statements on a formulaic level, but to go deeper, to learn the history, know the theology, ask deeply what is meant in essence not only what is literally stated.

When there is dialogue, when there is participation on a ground level, when we see ourselves as sinners and our brothers and sisters as walking the same road, when we ask and examine our presuppositions and the implication of our shared Orthodox theology, when we share in pastoral love, then Orthodoxy can truly be Orthodoxy, not merely a 'denomination' (because denominationalism is "ecclesial Nestorianism").

There is such promise when we hear about projects like http://www.youthfederation.org/index.php/news/106-youth-learn-peacemaking-in-israel-and-palestine-
or http://www.peaceplayersintl.org/locations/northern-ireland or http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr99/vol56/num07/-Schools-of-Reconciliation.aspx or
http://www.dallasnews.com/incoming/20100710-Protestant-Catholic-teens-from-Northern-410.ece which are so much in line with the recommendations of SYNDESMOS.

If we as Orthodox continue to identify ourselves as a "denomination," there is a very real possibility that Orthodoxy WILL collapse in North America. This collapse can be through a 'silent-exodus,' as well as loss of our Orthodox Ethos and identity.

Je Nai Nan, Lord have mercy, strengthen the Church that She may never be shaken by our weakness, our pride, our ignorance, our lack of love, our stubbornness, our inability to forgive, our refusal to go help other Orthodox.

Below is an excerpt from a talk/paper by Vigen Guroian ("Youth, Unity, and Orthodoxy in America."  in "Orthodox Christianity at the Crossroad." Ed. George E. Matsoukas. [Bloomington: iUniverse books, 2009] 51-59) which addresses the issue of Orthodox Unity.

May it encourage you to seek out the other Orthodox "Jurisdictions" in your area and start loving each other, start BEING Orthodox Saints with each other. Glory to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

 Addressing Denominationalism

I want to closely address two related matters. First is our Orthodox self-identification as diasporan communities, and second is the transformation of our churchly life into a denominational existence. The microcosm of college and university pan-Orthodoxy will help illumine what is at stake.

A high theory of the unity of church, frequently pronounced by our Orthodox church leaders and theologians, cannot constantly rub up against a contradictory reality of theologically indefensible institutional divisions and exclusionary habits of belonging and win the day As time goes on, our piety is misshapen, and the log in our eye blinds us. Good old American pragmatism, rooted in practical living, wins out, and we are left bereft of the Orthodox faith. The signatories of the Ligonier Conference stated emphatically that they could “not accept the term ‘Diaspora as used to describe the Church in North America, [that] “the term is ecclesiastically problematic [because] it diminishes the fullness of faith.” They were right. Habits of speech have a way of taking over our lives and determining behavior. Language has its consequences. As long as Orthodox Christians think of themselves as a Diaspora, neither unity nor mission is possible. If one is in a permanent state of Diaspora, there can be no compelling reason to have unity, since one s real home is somewhere else. When a church thinks of itself as in Diaspora, it also loses its sense of mission. Yet, without unity and mission, the church does not exist. Our use of the term “Diaspora” originates from a sense of dislocation and forced removal from the historic homelands. Our brethren in the old countries have their own interest in keeping this mentality alive in us. A powerful myth arises that Orthodox religion in the Diaspora is derivative and inferior to what it was in the old country, as if the Orthodox faith grows out of the ground in Russia or Greece, but here in America it is, at best, kept potted and clipped.

This notion of a Diaspora is a theological mistake: it misrepresents the meaning of what it means to be the church. For Judaism, Diaspora carries a legitimate religious meaning. The dispersion and exile of Jews from the Promised Land is not only a part of secular history, but it also belongs to salvation history. God means to reverse the Diaspora by returning the Chosen People to their land. Right from the beginning, the Christian faith construed dispersion (or Diaspora) differently. In the Orthodox Study Bible: New Testament and Psalms, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman that “the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father’ (John 4:21). And at the close of Matthews Gospel, Jesus commands the “eleven disciples” to leave the mountain in Galilee and “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:16, 19). The church is not restricted to a single holy place, city, or nation. Indeed, God requires that it disperse throughout the known world to be a mission to all peoples. This stands the concept of Diaspora as accident, misfortune, or permanent subordinate status on its head. It affirms the Church's universal and evangelical character, for the church is catholic and apostolic and its mission is to all of humankind, or it is not truly the church.

Our habitual self-description as Diaspora ironically leads to a denominational mindset. Yet, during the modern era in which Orthodox peoples have been dispersed into Western Europe and North America, Orthodox spokesmen at ecumenical gatherings have strongly denounced denominationalism. They have argued that Orthodoxy’s high doctrine of the church is a prophylactic against this schismatic process. And they have insisted that under no circumstances will Orthodox people accept the idea of a parity of denominations or any sort of interdenominational adjustment as the basis for church unity. Yet sociologically speaking, on North American soil, Orthodox people have adopted all of the habits and attitudes of the denomination. You heard Father John Erickson tell you earlier that we are more divided than ever here in America. Now that is something to ponder.

Just last week, the religion editor of the Baltimore Sun contacted me. She left me a message in which she said, “I hope to talk to you about evangelism among Orthodox denominations—particularly those denominations that are identified with an ethnic group, such as the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches.” Our churches are denominations in the minds of most Americans, and I venture to guess, in the minds of many people in our parishes as well. I returned her call and learned that her inquiry was prompted by the news of an African American man in Baltimore who had been ordained as a deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church. She was wondering whether the Orthodox were evangelizing the black neighborhoods of downtown Baltimore!

I believe a conscientious Orthodox exercise in self-criticism is needed. This self-examination must begin with recognition of the ironic, almost tragic, fact that Orthodox Christians in North America live and work together as citizens but are ecclesially separated, not by national boundaries, but rather by transported jurisdictional structures and ethnic identities. The ethnic identities may serve the limited good of initially helping to bind the religious community together. That which is binding, however, may also keep apart those who share the same faith and ultimately reduce our mentality to a denominational  one. For let us not kid ourselves. Even our so-called ethnic identities are social constructs of a peculiarly American character. In his classic study, “The Social Sources of Denominationalism,” published in 1929, H. Richard Niebuhr observed that “The cultural quality of nationalism ... rather than [simply] its ethnic character must be considered as one of the probable sources of denominationalism.” He was reflecting on the experience of the Protestant churches in America. He did not have in mind the Orthodox. Denominations, like the transplanted national churches from which they originate, he said, “are separated and kept distinct [more] by differences of language and of habitual modes of thought” than by “physical traits, and the former are only incidentally rooted in the latter.” In sociological terms, the situation of the Russian, Greek, or Armenian churches in North America is quite comparable to the German, Swedish Lutheran, and the Dutch Reformed churches of an earlier era. Nationalism in the churches when they are transported to America is the seed from which sprouts the denomination.

On American soil, an instrumentalism that, in the homeland, put the church in service to the nation, quite “naturally” transmutes the ethnic parish into what is, functionally speaking, a denomination. Under the American way of life, old world religious nationalism grows into a distinctively American form of ethnicity and culture religion. This religion measures ecclesial life not by the great marks of the church as “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church,” but over and against other “churches” that occupy the same space and time. Even when the ethnic factor dissipates, even when Orthodox of Greek, Russian, or Ukrainian background let go of the national or ethnic nomenclature, the denominational mentality endures. The American denomination is frequently the “religious” residue of the disappearing ethnic church.

My purpose in raising these issues is not to scold or to frighten, but rather to bring about a shared recognition in all of our churches of the real challenges we face. And I go back to the model of the youth in our colleges who, coming out of a variety of ethnic Orthodox backgrounds, join together in pan-Orthodox association. We need to understand what enabled them to reach beyond the parochialism of so many of their parishes. I submit that it has to do with the fact that they came together as Americans in order to remain Orthodox. We need to understand that in order to prepare the ground on which to receive these young people back into our parishes, we must build upon their experience. We need to give them the opportunity to use their experience constructively. And if we fail to do this—well, we know what they will do. They will leave.

SOURCE:  "Youth, Unity, and Orthodoxy in America."  in "Orthodox Christianity at the Crossroad." Ed. George E. Matsoukas. (Bloomington: iUniverse books, 2009) 51-59.