Evangelism and Culture
by Fr. Michael J. Oleska
http://www.pravmir.com/evangelism-and-culture/
The most obvious gospel paradigm for the theme evangelism and culture is the parable of the sower. The seed is the Word of God.
But as St. Maximos the Confessor wrote in the seventh century, the Word of God is constantly revealing himself, becoming “embodied.” The Word establishes the created universe, the heavens tell his glory, the firmament his handiwork, for it is by the Word that everything that was made came into existence and is sustained in being. The Word is embodied first of all in the entire cosmos. The Word in the Cosmos has been misunderstood, after all. It was as if the Message revealed by the Word was written, as C.S. Lewis once said, in letters too large for us to read clearly. In the pre-Christian societies, he was wrongly identified with Neptune, Zeus, Adonus, Apollo, or in the modern world with the forces of the natural world, with the “laws” of chemistry, physiology, genetics.
So in the second embodiment the Word became easier to decipher. The Word of God is also embodied in the Holy Scriptures, in some ways in amore focused and understandable form. Even there, the possibility of misinterpretation arose, and the Scribes and Pharisees were constantly criticized for missing the intended meaning of the Law and the Prophets.
So ultimately, at the fullness of time, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He is called “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” He is called “the Messiah.” “the Christ,” the Way, the Truth and the Life.” He calls himself “the Living Bread,” “the Son of Man,” “Living Water,” “the Good Shepherd.”
All of this is the Word of God, the seed in the parable of sower- and more. The gospel is also the Church, the mystical body of Christ, and the scattered seed can refer to the evangelical establishment of the church as the faith spreads geographically throughout the world. And fullness of the gospel, of the Christian faith, is Orthodoxy. The seed then means all these-the Word of God in all embodiments, the Gospel of Repentance, of the Kingdom, the sacramental and iconographic presence of Christ, the Truth of the Orthodox faith. And none of these existed in a vacuum. The seed always requires a specific place, some oil, in which to grow.
The Word of God as scripture must be expressed in human language, and language is culture. The gospel of the kingdom must be preached in human words, and words are culture. The presence of Christ must convey, manifested with signs, symbols, art, music, liturgical action, sacrament, and all this is culture. The Truth, like the seed, needs soil in which to grow, and the soil is culture.
The seed in the parable is scattered and some grows, some does not. But even the seed that reaches maturity produces different harvests, some thirty or sixty or a hundredfold. The same truth, the same gospel, the same Christ, when introduced into specific cultural context produces a unique harvest, for different soils have different levels of fertility. Climatic conditions vary from time to time and place to place. The reception of the Word of God varies accordingly, not only as individuals hear the gospel, understand the Truth, confront Christ, enter the church, but as cultures do as well.
No one plants without expecting a harvest. The results the church anticipates and for which it prepares, the goal of all that it says and does, is revealed in the gospel passage read on more Sundays during church year than any other: John ch. 17. It is no accident that the church presents our Lord’s prayer for unity to us more often than any other, for this is the ultimate goal of his life and mission, the fulfillment of the gospel. In the end, the scriptures tell us, Christ will be “all in all.” He will hold us, all people of all races, nationalities, ethnic groups, political parties, religious sects and creeds, and with all others, our friends, neighbours, and the enemies Jesus Christ commanded us to forgive, to bless, to love. For those who have loved and served him- and the neighbour the have abused, despised, rejected, exploited, hated- will be their sorrow, humiliation, their torment, their hell. Heaven and hell are not places we “go to,” but spiritual conditions we are already in.
We must become one, the way our Lord prayed to his heavenly Father, as the Holy Trinity is one, in total humility and love, each of us fulfilling the will of the Father as the son and the Holy Spirit perfectly and eternally do. This is the end toward which the church labours and strives. The church plants the seed in order to reap this harvest. No one can be the image of the Holy Trinity alone, as isolated individual. While only human beings, by an acct of faith and commitment, can be saved, no one is saved alone. There is no such thing as an individual salvation, for salvation is to enter into the community of interpersonal love, love of God, fulfilling his will in all things, and the love of one’s neighbour, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
This is the goal, the harvest the church expects, awaits, and in which it invites all humanity to participate. The church’s vision, her soteriology and eschatology, while focused on Christ, is not exclusively Christocentric but Trinitarian. And the essence of his interpersonal unity-in-love, the possibly for many persons to be one, is revealed in divine love, tri-personal Agape, which, which makes the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, the three equally divine persons, one. We must always keep the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in mind in all the evangelists think, say and do. There is no place for coercion, persecution, intolerance or violence in planting the seed, in announcing the good news to the nations, for these tactics would render the ultimate goal, total Agape, unattainable.
Syncretism and inculturation
Perhaps no question is more heatedly discussed in various ecumenical mission conferences today than the attempt to distinguish theologically between syncretism and inculturation. Within the World Council of Churches, the problem, it seems to me, is that there are different kinds of seed. In this context, the temptation to syncretism is inescapable.
What is syncretism? It has bee difficult if not impossible for many Protestant theologians to arrive at consensus, a definition of exactly what constitutes syncretism, but the historic, patristic Orthodox tradition offers us clear guidelines. The church, during the period of ecumenical councils, sought to express its faith in terms intelligible to Hellenic culture without being distorted, without being “contaminated” by it in the process. This was no easy task, and it required five centuries and seven councils to accomplish it. Syncretism was successfully voided. The church, guided by the Holy Spirit, did not add to its doctrines, practices, beliefs, anything extraneous or incompatible with the faith of the Apostles, the witness of sacred scripture, the Truth revealed in Christ. Syncretism is precisely the introduction into Christian doctrine or worship elements that are incompatible with the fullness of the Apostolic tradition.
Thus, when we learned Chinese Protestant theologian attempted to include within her presentation at Canberra general assembly of the World Council of the Churches an act of reverence to the Chinese goddess of mercy, the Orthodox were correct in rejecting such an inclusion as syncretistic. There is no place for “goddesses of mercy” in Christian doctrine or piety. (Orthodox missionaries, however, encountering a culture with a personification of a merciful feminine principle might attempt to present this pre-Christian intuition as typologically prefiguring the Theo-okos.
If syncretism must at all costs be avoided as distorting or corrupting the gospel message, inculturation, on the other hand, is inevitable and necessary. However, inculturation is only possible when the evangelist knows the Orthodox tradition and can therefore discern what is and what is not compatible with it. Inculturation is the planting of the gospel, the seed, the presence of Christ, in the unique soil of new culture, and allowing it, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to mature at its own pace, to produce ultimately a new, indigenous church.
The Alaskan Orthodox mission
When, for example, the Valaam Mission analyzed the spirituality of the Kodiak native peoples in 1795, they expressed a willingness to tolerate certain aberrations (such as polygamy) for a short time, to discuss others (the belief in the inua/yua) and to overlook still others (for example, fasting norms).
Polygamy endured for one generation after the baptism of the Kodiak Alutiiqs. This was a necessary accommodation, since to require the separation of multiple wives from their husbands would have created severe social upheaval and economical hardship for women and children. Fasting norms could not be enforced in a land of hunter-gatherers whose food supplies were never stable or predictable, and starvation was an annual possibility. Only today, after two centuries, is fasting being gradually introduced. Everywhere, however, the reception of the gospel ended inter-tribal warfare and the enslavement and mistreatment of the prisoners. This was seldom recognized or even noticed by later observers, who had not complained that the Orthodox natives had not absorbed much doctrine, had not memorized much scripture, and thus had not, in their estimation, been properly evangelized.
Belief in the Yua persists. The Yua, in Yup’ik Eskimo culture, is the spirit that makes a living thing to be alive. It is the life force, which in pre-contact times was believed to be conscious but interpersonal. Animals and human beings have essentially the same Yua, and differ only in their outward physical form.
Animals have abilities that surpass those of human beings. They see, smell, and hear what we cannot. They have strengths and capabilities that surpass ours. They are not viewed as inferior beings, but in some ways as superior creatures. Their sensory input permits them to know things that we cannot perceive. To be changed into an animal in all native Alaskan folklore is viewed not as a curse (typical of European stories; – “the Frog Prince,” “Beauty and The Beast,” werewolves, etc.), but as a promotion. Some Alutiiq stories end with the hero deciding to remain an animal and “live happily ever after.” This belief in the intelligence, sensitivity and even superiority of the animals made traditional Alaskan peoples reverent towards the game they needed to kill in order to feed themselves, in order to survive. And it is the universal beliefs that since the animals know more, see more, hear more, sense more, they are willing victims who offer to the hunter. But they only sacrifice themselves to feed those human beings who treat them reverently, respectfully, not only during the hunt, in the act of killing the and butchering them, but in the way the meat is thoroughly eaten, wasting none of it, and how various parts of the animal (such as the pelts) are used. The unusable remains must also be treated respectfully, returned to the habitat from which the animal was taken. Recycling is an ancient practice in the Arctic.
Orthodox missionaries did not discourage this belief that life in all its form should be treated reverently. Their Alaskan converts heard the Paschal gospel from within the context of their traditional worldview, and saw Christ in the whole created universe, the Word of God in the Cosmos, in a way even the missionaries had not seen him before. The life of the world, the life of all, yes-all the Yua are really him. And the first chapter to the Colossians took on a meaning that was always there, but had gone unnoticed, or at least under appreciated, for centuries.
The seed found especially fertile ground, for the text “He is before all things and in him all things subsist” affirmed that what the Alaskans had intuited centuries before was now affirmed in the gospel. Only now they knew his identity. Alaskan Orthodoxy affirms a cosmic dimension to the Christian faith that many, perhaps most, modern Christians fail to grasp. John 3:16 is probably the most widely memorized verse in the New Testament, few who study the Bible in English translation grasp its full meaning the way most Eskimos do. The original text speaks of God’s love for the world, and most suppose the Greek word here is oikoumene, the inhabited earth, the human beings, and indeed the evangelist could have chosen this word. In fact, however, he did not. This famous verse affirms “For God so loved cosmos the sent his son.”
In the missionary context of the industrialized world, where secularism is in some instances giving way to a revival of “paganism” or the emergence of “new age” spirituality, or an interest in oriental religions, the theology of St. Maximos, in which the “logoi”: of God are affirmed, in which the created universe plays a mediating and sanctifying role in God’s divine plan, which the cosmos is to be blessed, reclaimed, transfigured and transformed, sanctified and blessed to become “the Kingdom of our God and His Christ” presents a Christian alternative. The Alaskan church goes forth in procession each January for the great blessing of water, in most places walking on the frozen river, standing on the ice in subzero temperatures, to sanctify the one small piece of the cosmos on which their lives have always depended. The river is their highway, their cleansing, their supermarket, their home, their life. In their pre-Christian past they thanked the animal spirits for offering themselves, sacrificing themselves to feed the people, and put their inflated intestines and bladders through the holes in the ice in order to recycle their Yua. Now they go to the river and bless the waters, putting the cross through a cruciform hole in the ice; it is Christ they bless, Christ they thank, for his sacrifice, prefigured in the cycle of the natural world as they understood it.
This not, I would submit, syncretistic, for these patterns were always there, in the liturgical life of the church. The gospel texts were always there, within the hearing of all believers. But the Eskimos have discovered a meaning hidden from those of other cultures and they offer this meaning back to the church. This the pattern of all genuine inculturation-the missionary, and, through the evangelist, the whole church, discovers heretofore unnoticed or disclosed treasures of her own sacred heritage.
When Navajo Indians of the American southwest were asked to make a film about production of their famous rugs, they submitted a video depicting a sunrise, wild flowers blooming, rain falling, sheep grazing, wind blowing, the sun setting, and finally a few seconds showing a half-finished rug on a traditional loom. The producers who had commissioned the film were confused and disappointed. They had expected to see wool being spun, dyed and woven, and none of this was included in the video. But to the Navajo, it takes more than wool, vegetable dyes, a loom and a grandmother to make a rug. They assumed a much wider frame of reference: The sun must rise. The rain must fall. The flower must bloom. The sheep must graze. And if all is harmony, you can get rugs out of it. It takes the whole cosmos to make a rug.
It this not equally true of our Eucharastic Gifts? We so often perceive it as merely bread- flour, water and yeast. But what does it take to produce that flour? The sun must shine. The wind must blow. The rain must fall. The earth must be fertile. Human beings must appropriately interact with it. And if all is in harmony, you can make bread. On every altar, in every church we offer the universe in joy and thanksgiving back to God. But our frame of reference can be too small.
Christ fed thousands with only a few a few loaves and two fish. Those who witnessed this considered it a miracle. Our Lord also said, “The son only does the works he sees his Father do.” The Father is always taking a little wheat and feeding thousands, but we fail to see it, we don’t get the message. He is taking some seeds each spring and making food in every wheat and corn field, but the pagans said it was Apollo or Zeus or Minerva or “Mother Nature” at work, and secularists say it is all “natural processes.” So the Son does the same thing he sees his Father do, but on a smaller scale and a faster speed, and suddenly the miraculous element becomes evident. It is the same Word of God made manifest and the feeding of the thousands will have its full impact when we can recognize it continuously in the miracle of the cosmos, the Word written in letters so large we could not read the message before.
Be reminding the church of the cosmic dimensions of its faith and mission, the Greek evangelized become evangelists. In the Patristic age, Greek language, Greek culture, Greek philosophical language enriched the life of the church forever. As the seed, the gospel, the church, as Christ’s presence enters into the context of other cultures, these too offer something back to God. The same seed, the same faith, the same Orthodox truth, implanted in another culture produces a unique harvest, a Serbian, a Romanian, a Russian, a Ukrainian, an Albanian, an African, an Alaskan, an Indonesian, a Korean or Japanese (or even an American), expression, each the product of the same holy faith, yet each irreplaceable and unique.
Father Alexander Schmemann defined in his most famous book, For the Life of the World, what it means to be Christian. “A Christian, “ he wrote, “is someone who, wherever he/she looks sees Christ and rejoices Him.” I read this book many times. I was blessed for several years to attend Father Alexander’s lectures. I read Holy Fathers. But it was my Eskimo parishioners who revealed to me the depth of the passage, revealed to me the cosmic dimension of the prologue to the gospel according to St. John, showed me the magnificence of the Apostle Paul’s Christocentric experience and vision. This is what inculturation means for the church. Unlike syncretism, which distorts the gospel, corrupts the faith, renders a Christian harvest impossible, inculturation enriches and deepens and expands the genuine apprehension of the Apostolic faith, to the glory of God and building up of his holy church. The church, while resisting any syncretism, delights and rejoices in inculturation.
Conclusion
The church scatters the seed, offering the gospel to all, and in so doing, discovers the new harvest dimensions of the faith it had not consciously known, noticed or appreciated fully before. Evangelism enriches the church. Inculturation blesses the church. Our Greek patristic legacy is the historic evidence of the creative process. The seed always needs soil in which to grow-the gospel always needs a culture in which to be planted, and the Holy Spirit produces various harvests in each culture and in each of us.
Evangelism and Culture. 1995. International Review of Mission. Authentic Witness Within Each Culture. Section 1; Conference on World Mission and Evangelism (Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 1996). LXXXIV No. 335, October 1995. The World Council of Churches. 387-393.
You can also read more about Orthodox Alaska here http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/russian/s1a.html and http://oca.org/history-archives/orthodox-christians-na/chapter-1 and http://oca.org/history-archives/orthodox-christians-na
The Alaskan Mission (1794-1870)
For almost two thousand years, Orthodox Christians have been actively spreading the Gospel.[1] Following the gradual conversion of the Roman Empire over the first three centuries, missionaries from the Greek-speaking Church of the Eastern Roman Empire (hence the term “Eastern Orthodox”) evangelized much of the Middle East, the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and lands to the east. The most remarkable, and ultimately successful, missionary effort of this era was undertaken by SS Cyril and Methodius, brothers who are credited with creating the Cyrillic alphabet and who helped to lay the foundations for Slavic culture. When in AD 988, Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus (contemporary Ukraine) embraced Orthodoxy, monastics, following the examples of SS Cyril and Methodius, provided Kievan Rus with living examples of Christian values. Several centuries later, two monks, Hourg and Barsanuphii, journeyed east to Kazan, capital of the Tartars, learned the Tartar language, and established a monastic community for the conversion of the Mongol peoples. St Stephen of Perm (1340-96), another monk, would in turn journey beyond Kazan, across the Ural mountain, into the forests of Siberia to labor among the pagan Zyrians. There Stephen devised a Zyrian alphabet, translated the Gospel, and subsequently converted an entire people. This model of monastic evangelization became the pattern for other Russian Orthodox missionaries as they trekked ever eastward, eventually establishing a network of missions across Siberia and along the entire Pacific Rim: in China (1686), Alaska (1794), Japan (1861), and Korea (1898). The eight Orthodox monks who arrived in Alaska in 1794 were simply part of this centuries-old missionary heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Beginnings of the Alaskan Mission
In 1648, the Russian explorer Simeon Dezhnev sailed from the Arctic Ocean, around the Chukotka Peninsula, and founded the post of Anadyr on the Bering Sea, facing Alaska. During the next several generations, Siberian entrepreneurs ventured across the straits to engage native Americans in commerce. Rumors of these early permanent Russian settlements on Alaskan soil during this period persist among Alaskan native peoples today. Whether permanent or occasional residents, these Russian frontiersmen brought with them not only beads, blankets, pots and pans, but their religious traditions as well. Orthodox laity brought the Orthodox faith to North America, baptized the first converts (often their own native wives and Creole offspring), and even constructed the first chapels. Clergy and official missionaries came much later.
In 1728, and again in 1741, Vitus Bering and Alexis Chirikov mapped the Alaskan coast, and in the process set off a “Fur Rush”—creating a Russian “Wild East” much like the later “Gold Rushes” of the American “Wild West.” For the next forty years, Russian traders and trappers would make annual or biannual trading expeditions to the Aleutian Archipelago in search of valuable sea otter pelts. Poorly equipped, these Siberian entrepreneurs were not seasoned military men, but frontier adventurers, much like Daniel Boone. Unlike Boone, though, these adventurers were bachelors. Inevitably they married local women who provided their Siberian husbands with the same clothing, tools, and food they would have given native Alaskan spouses. Thus, when the British Captain James Cook visited the Aleutian Islands at the end of the century (1793), he could not distinguish the Slavs from the native Alaskans. The Siberians had been completely acculturated into the material culture of the Aleuts.
This pattern of intermarriage and gradual evangelization of the indigenous people provoked some resistance. A major uprising against the Siberians—during which some 200 Siberians and an equal number of Aleut warriors were killed—took place around 1764. Despite occasional outbursts, the Aleut, Russian, and Creole communities gradually returned to a generally peaceful coexistence.
Gregory Shelikov
In the 1780’s a Russian trader, Gregory Shelikov, argued that sending annual trading expeditions to the New World across the Bering Strait was unnecessarily expensive and dangerous. The time had come, he argued, for the establishment of permanent trading posts in Alaska. The importation of a few hundred Russian settlers, Shelikov reasoned, could lead to the systematic exploitation of the sea otter habitats all along the Alaskan coast—and vast profits. As the natives might not be receptive to such a colonial intrusion, Shelikov suggested that the commercial adventure assume a military dimension as well. A Russian settlement in Alaska, atop the North Pacific, would extend Russian political and military influence as far as Spanish California, British Hawaii, and the Spanish Philippines.
In the summer of 1784, Shelikov set out for Kodiak Island to establish his Alaskan base. By all accounts except his own, Shelikov’s expedition was greeted with hostility and armed resistance. Subduing the Kodiak islanders in a bloody encounter, Shelikov returned to St Petersburg to relate his conquest and present a request for a monopoly on the ensuing fur trade to the imperial court. He installed Alexander Baranov as company manager, governor, and virtual dictator of the small Russian colony. Shelikov did not live to see his Russian-American Trading Company receive its monopoly, nor did he ever return to Alaska. Baranov, however was to rule both the colony and the company with an iron fist for 27 years.
The Alaskan Mission
To convince the imperial court of the seriousness of his colonial scheme, Shelikov journeyed to Valaam and Konevitsa monasteries, located on the Russo-Finnish border, to recruit monastic volunteers for the new settlement in Alaska. One Archimandrite, three priestmonks, one deacon-monk, one lay monk, together with several staff members, left St Petersburg on December 21, 1793. They arrived in Kodiak on September 24, 1794, having travelled 7,300 miles in 293 days. Upon arrival, the monks were shocked at conditions in the colony.
It was not the poor living conditions, inhospitable weather, nor the strange customs and foods of the native peoples that so upset the monks, but the violent and exploitative behavior of their own Russian countrymen. Within a few weeks, the leader of the mission, Archimandrite Joasaph (Bolotov) was sending vivid reports of abuse back to Shelikov, believing that Shelikov would intervene. Receiving no reply, Joasaph, the priest-monk Makary, and the deacon Stephen returned to Russia in 1798 to report firsthand about Baranov’s outrageous actions. On their return to Alaska, their ship sank, and all aboard perished (1799). In retaliation for such continuing “interference,” Baranov placed the remaining monks under house arrest, forbidding them any further contact with the native peoples (1800).
St. Herman of Alaska
Despite continuing oppression by the Company, native Alaskans flocked to join the Orthodox Church. The priest-monk Juvenal reported baptizing several thousand himself. Although Juvenal would be martyred by hostile natives in 1796 [2], the more general success of the Alaskan mission can be explained only by the heroic efforts of the missionaries in defending the Alaskans from Baranov and his henchmen, as well as by the missionaries’ sensitive approach to the pre-Christian spirituality of the Aleuts. The Russian monks presented Orthodox Christianity not as the abolition, but as the fulfillment, of the Aleut’s ancient religious heritage. Most persuasively, the personal example of the monk Herman provided the natives with tangible evidence that the Gospel, when embraced with full dedication and commitment, produced God-like men.
To avoid harassment (and possible assassination at the hands of Baranov’s men), the monk Herman left Kodiak sometime between 1808-1818, and relocated to Spruce Island, three miles to the north. He named his small hermitage “New Valaam,” in honor of his former monastery, from earlier generations of Orthodox monks had set out to evangelize Karelian, Lapp, and Finnish tribespeople. At New Valaam, Herman spent the rest of his life teaching the Aleuts, nursing the sick, raising orphans, praying, and working miracles. Most importantly, through his kindness, compassion and personal holiness, Herman exemplified an ideal Christian life. The last surviving member of the original mission, Herman died in 1837. His remains repose in Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Kodiak. The Aleuts never forgot the humble monk nor his legacy of prayer and deeds. Largely at their insistence, Herman was canonized in 1970 by the Orthodox Church in America as the first Orthodox saint America.
St. Innocent
Following Baranov’s death in 1818, social and economic life in Russian Alaska stabilized. In 1824, Fr John Veniaminov, his wife, children, and mother-in-law arrived in Unalaska, opening a new chapter in the story of the Alaskan Mission. Quickly learning Unangan Aleut, the language of the Fox Islands, Veniaminov translated the Gospel of St Matthew with the assistance of local Aleut chief, Ivan Pan’kov. The two also collaborated on the translation of a catechism. Together they opened a parish school in Unalaska in 1828.
Traveling from village to village by sea kayak, for which he would later suffer constant pain and some crippling in his legs, Veniaminov impressed his parishioners with his fluency in their language, respect for their traditions, and pastoral concern. In 1836, he joined a Russian schooner traveling south to minister to those stationed at the most distant Russian outpost in America, Fort Ross, near San Francisco. While in Spanish California, Veniaminov visited the Franciscan missions along the coast, conversing with the Spanish monks in Latin. In a rare gesture of ecumenical goodwill for the time, Veniaminov even built small pipe organs for at least two of the Catholic missions.
Veniaminov returned to European Russia in 1839 to report on his missionary work. During this journey, his wife died in Siberia. After some hesitation, Veniaminov accepted monastic tonsure and ordination as the Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, in late 1840. Upon his return to Alaska, Veniaminov founded an All-Colonial School for the “training of native and Creole (mixed ancestry) clergy, seamen, navigators, physicians, accountants, cartographers, and artisans” in New Archangel (Sitka).[3] He quickly learned the local Tlingit language. In 1844 he designed and began the construction of St Michael’s Orthodox Cathedral for the capital of Russian Alaska—a structure which continues to dominate Sitka to this day.
In 1852, Veniaminov was raised to the rank of archbishop and transferred to Yakutsk, Siberia. There he learned yet another native language and continued his missionary work among the native peoples of Siberia. Veniaminov ended his days (+1879) as the Metropolitan of Moscow (the senior hierarch of the Russian Church), where among his other accomplishments he established the Imperial Missionary Society. At the request of the Orthodox Church in America, Veniaminov, who is buried at the Holy Trinity-St Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad, Russia, was canonized as “St Innocent, Enlightener of the Aleuts, Apostle to America and Siberia,” by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977.
Father Jacob Netsvetov
In 1828, Father Jacob Netsvetov, a Creole of Aleut and Russian ancestry and graduate of the Irkutsk Seminary, was ordained to assist Veniaminov (then still a priest) in the evangelization of the Aleutian Islands. Later, when Veniaminov was ordained bishop, he assigned Netsvetov to begin missionary work in the Yukon river delta. Making his headquarters at Ikogmiut, a village today called “Russian Mission,” Netsvetov labored for nearly twenty years among the Yup’ik Eskimo. At the invitation of Athabascan Indian tribes upstream, he preached to, converted, and baptized hundreds in the Innoko River in 1852, thereby narrowly averting a tribal war. Netsvetov described this accomplishment in his personal diaries: “What a joy to see so many joined to the Church of Christ; former enemies, now living together in peaceful coexistence.”[3] Without the benefit of technology, without the protection or physical support of military or legal authorities, and hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost, Father Jacob preached the Good News and brought salvation to thousands of Alaskans during his decades of service. In recognition of his outstanding work, Netsvetov was made a member of the Imperial Order of St Anna and knighted by Tsar Nicholas I. Fr Netsvetov was canonized by the Orthodox Church in America at St Innocent’s Cathedral in Anchorage on October 15-16, 1994. He is venerated as “St Jacob, Enlightener of the Peoples of Alaska.”
The Meaning of the Alaskan Mission
St. Herman moved to Spruce Island where he nursed the sick, raised orphans, and performed miracles.
Through St. Herman, the Alaskan Mission was blessed by the traditional monastic example which SS. Cyril and Methodius provided to the Slavs, centuries earlier. By SS. Innocent and Jacob, the Alaskan Mission demonstrated the linguistic adaptability, cultural sensitivity, and educational outreach characteristic of Orthodox missions from Moravia to Kamchatka. Unfortunately, the heroic missionary work of the Siberian traders who married, converted, and raised their families in the Orthodox faith, and that of their children, the first Native American Orthodox evangelists, have received less attention. Nevertheless, through all their efforts the foundations of the Alaskan Mission had been firmly laid.
With the transfer to American rule in 1867, most ethnic Russians, including the vast majority of Orthodox priests, returned to Russia, leaving the 12,000 native Christians, 9 Orthodox parishes, 35 chapels, 17 schools, and 3 orphanages to fend largely for themselves. In 1872, the diocesan see was transferred from Sitka to San Francisco, and the bishop was able to supervise the mission only from afar. Over the next 100 years, the Alaskan mission received only sporadic assistance from the Orthodox community in the “lower 48.”
Nevertheless, the mission continued to grow, largely through the efforts of indigenous leaders. Despite the fact that the mission never had more than 15 priests, scores of new parishes and chapels, as well as schools and orphanages, were built. Lay leaders continued to conduct services, preach, and teach even in the absence of clergy. The Orthodox Church in Alaska was able to survive because, from its very beginning, it was envisioned, in the best tradition of Orthodox missionary spirituality, as an indigenous church, not as a “diaspora..”[5]
Notes:
[1] This chapter was co-authored by Fr. Michael Oleksa.
[2] In 1980, the OCA Diocese of Alaska canonized Juvenal, together with other martyrs of Alaska, known and unknown.
[3] For a fuller listing of St. Innocent’s accomplishments see Paul Garrett’s biography, St. Innocent: Apostle to America (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979).
[4] Orthodox America, p. 19.
[5] For a more detailed discussion, see Richard Pierce, The Russian Orthodox Religious Mission in America, 1794-1837 (Kingston, ON: The Limestone Press, 1978); Bishop Gregory (Afonsky), History of the Orthodox Church in Alaska, 1774-1914 (Kodiak, AK: St Herman’s Seminary, 1977); and Michael Oleksa, Alaskan Missionary Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992).
by Fr. Michael J. Oleska
http://www.pravmir.com/evangelism-and-culture/
The most obvious gospel paradigm for the theme evangelism and culture is the parable of the sower. The seed is the Word of God.
But as St. Maximos the Confessor wrote in the seventh century, the Word of God is constantly revealing himself, becoming “embodied.” The Word establishes the created universe, the heavens tell his glory, the firmament his handiwork, for it is by the Word that everything that was made came into existence and is sustained in being. The Word is embodied first of all in the entire cosmos. The Word in the Cosmos has been misunderstood, after all. It was as if the Message revealed by the Word was written, as C.S. Lewis once said, in letters too large for us to read clearly. In the pre-Christian societies, he was wrongly identified with Neptune, Zeus, Adonus, Apollo, or in the modern world with the forces of the natural world, with the “laws” of chemistry, physiology, genetics.
So in the second embodiment the Word became easier to decipher. The Word of God is also embodied in the Holy Scriptures, in some ways in amore focused and understandable form. Even there, the possibility of misinterpretation arose, and the Scribes and Pharisees were constantly criticized for missing the intended meaning of the Law and the Prophets.
So ultimately, at the fullness of time, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He is called “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” He is called “the Messiah.” “the Christ,” the Way, the Truth and the Life.” He calls himself “the Living Bread,” “the Son of Man,” “Living Water,” “the Good Shepherd.”
All of this is the Word of God, the seed in the parable of sower- and more. The gospel is also the Church, the mystical body of Christ, and the scattered seed can refer to the evangelical establishment of the church as the faith spreads geographically throughout the world. And fullness of the gospel, of the Christian faith, is Orthodoxy. The seed then means all these-the Word of God in all embodiments, the Gospel of Repentance, of the Kingdom, the sacramental and iconographic presence of Christ, the Truth of the Orthodox faith. And none of these existed in a vacuum. The seed always requires a specific place, some oil, in which to grow.
The Word of God as scripture must be expressed in human language, and language is culture. The gospel of the kingdom must be preached in human words, and words are culture. The presence of Christ must convey, manifested with signs, symbols, art, music, liturgical action, sacrament, and all this is culture. The Truth, like the seed, needs soil in which to grow, and the soil is culture.
The seed in the parable is scattered and some grows, some does not. But even the seed that reaches maturity produces different harvests, some thirty or sixty or a hundredfold. The same truth, the same gospel, the same Christ, when introduced into specific cultural context produces a unique harvest, for different soils have different levels of fertility. Climatic conditions vary from time to time and place to place. The reception of the Word of God varies accordingly, not only as individuals hear the gospel, understand the Truth, confront Christ, enter the church, but as cultures do as well.
No one plants without expecting a harvest. The results the church anticipates and for which it prepares, the goal of all that it says and does, is revealed in the gospel passage read on more Sundays during church year than any other: John ch. 17. It is no accident that the church presents our Lord’s prayer for unity to us more often than any other, for this is the ultimate goal of his life and mission, the fulfillment of the gospel. In the end, the scriptures tell us, Christ will be “all in all.” He will hold us, all people of all races, nationalities, ethnic groups, political parties, religious sects and creeds, and with all others, our friends, neighbours, and the enemies Jesus Christ commanded us to forgive, to bless, to love. For those who have loved and served him- and the neighbour the have abused, despised, rejected, exploited, hated- will be their sorrow, humiliation, their torment, their hell. Heaven and hell are not places we “go to,” but spiritual conditions we are already in.
We must become one, the way our Lord prayed to his heavenly Father, as the Holy Trinity is one, in total humility and love, each of us fulfilling the will of the Father as the son and the Holy Spirit perfectly and eternally do. This is the end toward which the church labours and strives. The church plants the seed in order to reap this harvest. No one can be the image of the Holy Trinity alone, as isolated individual. While only human beings, by an acct of faith and commitment, can be saved, no one is saved alone. There is no such thing as an individual salvation, for salvation is to enter into the community of interpersonal love, love of God, fulfilling his will in all things, and the love of one’s neighbour, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
This is the goal, the harvest the church expects, awaits, and in which it invites all humanity to participate. The church’s vision, her soteriology and eschatology, while focused on Christ, is not exclusively Christocentric but Trinitarian. And the essence of his interpersonal unity-in-love, the possibly for many persons to be one, is revealed in divine love, tri-personal Agape, which, which makes the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, the three equally divine persons, one. We must always keep the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in mind in all the evangelists think, say and do. There is no place for coercion, persecution, intolerance or violence in planting the seed, in announcing the good news to the nations, for these tactics would render the ultimate goal, total Agape, unattainable.
Syncretism and inculturation
Perhaps no question is more heatedly discussed in various ecumenical mission conferences today than the attempt to distinguish theologically between syncretism and inculturation. Within the World Council of Churches, the problem, it seems to me, is that there are different kinds of seed. In this context, the temptation to syncretism is inescapable.
What is syncretism? It has bee difficult if not impossible for many Protestant theologians to arrive at consensus, a definition of exactly what constitutes syncretism, but the historic, patristic Orthodox tradition offers us clear guidelines. The church, during the period of ecumenical councils, sought to express its faith in terms intelligible to Hellenic culture without being distorted, without being “contaminated” by it in the process. This was no easy task, and it required five centuries and seven councils to accomplish it. Syncretism was successfully voided. The church, guided by the Holy Spirit, did not add to its doctrines, practices, beliefs, anything extraneous or incompatible with the faith of the Apostles, the witness of sacred scripture, the Truth revealed in Christ. Syncretism is precisely the introduction into Christian doctrine or worship elements that are incompatible with the fullness of the Apostolic tradition.
Thus, when we learned Chinese Protestant theologian attempted to include within her presentation at Canberra general assembly of the World Council of the Churches an act of reverence to the Chinese goddess of mercy, the Orthodox were correct in rejecting such an inclusion as syncretistic. There is no place for “goddesses of mercy” in Christian doctrine or piety. (Orthodox missionaries, however, encountering a culture with a personification of a merciful feminine principle might attempt to present this pre-Christian intuition as typologically prefiguring the Theo-okos.
If syncretism must at all costs be avoided as distorting or corrupting the gospel message, inculturation, on the other hand, is inevitable and necessary. However, inculturation is only possible when the evangelist knows the Orthodox tradition and can therefore discern what is and what is not compatible with it. Inculturation is the planting of the gospel, the seed, the presence of Christ, in the unique soil of new culture, and allowing it, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to mature at its own pace, to produce ultimately a new, indigenous church.
The Alaskan Orthodox mission
When, for example, the Valaam Mission analyzed the spirituality of the Kodiak native peoples in 1795, they expressed a willingness to tolerate certain aberrations (such as polygamy) for a short time, to discuss others (the belief in the inua/yua) and to overlook still others (for example, fasting norms).
Polygamy endured for one generation after the baptism of the Kodiak Alutiiqs. This was a necessary accommodation, since to require the separation of multiple wives from their husbands would have created severe social upheaval and economical hardship for women and children. Fasting norms could not be enforced in a land of hunter-gatherers whose food supplies were never stable or predictable, and starvation was an annual possibility. Only today, after two centuries, is fasting being gradually introduced. Everywhere, however, the reception of the gospel ended inter-tribal warfare and the enslavement and mistreatment of the prisoners. This was seldom recognized or even noticed by later observers, who had not complained that the Orthodox natives had not absorbed much doctrine, had not memorized much scripture, and thus had not, in their estimation, been properly evangelized.
Belief in the Yua persists. The Yua, in Yup’ik Eskimo culture, is the spirit that makes a living thing to be alive. It is the life force, which in pre-contact times was believed to be conscious but interpersonal. Animals and human beings have essentially the same Yua, and differ only in their outward physical form.
Animals have abilities that surpass those of human beings. They see, smell, and hear what we cannot. They have strengths and capabilities that surpass ours. They are not viewed as inferior beings, but in some ways as superior creatures. Their sensory input permits them to know things that we cannot perceive. To be changed into an animal in all native Alaskan folklore is viewed not as a curse (typical of European stories; – “the Frog Prince,” “Beauty and The Beast,” werewolves, etc.), but as a promotion. Some Alutiiq stories end with the hero deciding to remain an animal and “live happily ever after.” This belief in the intelligence, sensitivity and even superiority of the animals made traditional Alaskan peoples reverent towards the game they needed to kill in order to feed themselves, in order to survive. And it is the universal beliefs that since the animals know more, see more, hear more, sense more, they are willing victims who offer to the hunter. But they only sacrifice themselves to feed those human beings who treat them reverently, respectfully, not only during the hunt, in the act of killing the and butchering them, but in the way the meat is thoroughly eaten, wasting none of it, and how various parts of the animal (such as the pelts) are used. The unusable remains must also be treated respectfully, returned to the habitat from which the animal was taken. Recycling is an ancient practice in the Arctic.
Orthodox missionaries did not discourage this belief that life in all its form should be treated reverently. Their Alaskan converts heard the Paschal gospel from within the context of their traditional worldview, and saw Christ in the whole created universe, the Word of God in the Cosmos, in a way even the missionaries had not seen him before. The life of the world, the life of all, yes-all the Yua are really him. And the first chapter to the Colossians took on a meaning that was always there, but had gone unnoticed, or at least under appreciated, for centuries.
The seed found especially fertile ground, for the text “He is before all things and in him all things subsist” affirmed that what the Alaskans had intuited centuries before was now affirmed in the gospel. Only now they knew his identity. Alaskan Orthodoxy affirms a cosmic dimension to the Christian faith that many, perhaps most, modern Christians fail to grasp. John 3:16 is probably the most widely memorized verse in the New Testament, few who study the Bible in English translation grasp its full meaning the way most Eskimos do. The original text speaks of God’s love for the world, and most suppose the Greek word here is oikoumene, the inhabited earth, the human beings, and indeed the evangelist could have chosen this word. In fact, however, he did not. This famous verse affirms “For God so loved cosmos the sent his son.”
In the missionary context of the industrialized world, where secularism is in some instances giving way to a revival of “paganism” or the emergence of “new age” spirituality, or an interest in oriental religions, the theology of St. Maximos, in which the “logoi”: of God are affirmed, in which the created universe plays a mediating and sanctifying role in God’s divine plan, which the cosmos is to be blessed, reclaimed, transfigured and transformed, sanctified and blessed to become “the Kingdom of our God and His Christ” presents a Christian alternative. The Alaskan church goes forth in procession each January for the great blessing of water, in most places walking on the frozen river, standing on the ice in subzero temperatures, to sanctify the one small piece of the cosmos on which their lives have always depended. The river is their highway, their cleansing, their supermarket, their home, their life. In their pre-Christian past they thanked the animal spirits for offering themselves, sacrificing themselves to feed the people, and put their inflated intestines and bladders through the holes in the ice in order to recycle their Yua. Now they go to the river and bless the waters, putting the cross through a cruciform hole in the ice; it is Christ they bless, Christ they thank, for his sacrifice, prefigured in the cycle of the natural world as they understood it.
This not, I would submit, syncretistic, for these patterns were always there, in the liturgical life of the church. The gospel texts were always there, within the hearing of all believers. But the Eskimos have discovered a meaning hidden from those of other cultures and they offer this meaning back to the church. This the pattern of all genuine inculturation-the missionary, and, through the evangelist, the whole church, discovers heretofore unnoticed or disclosed treasures of her own sacred heritage.
When Navajo Indians of the American southwest were asked to make a film about production of their famous rugs, they submitted a video depicting a sunrise, wild flowers blooming, rain falling, sheep grazing, wind blowing, the sun setting, and finally a few seconds showing a half-finished rug on a traditional loom. The producers who had commissioned the film were confused and disappointed. They had expected to see wool being spun, dyed and woven, and none of this was included in the video. But to the Navajo, it takes more than wool, vegetable dyes, a loom and a grandmother to make a rug. They assumed a much wider frame of reference: The sun must rise. The rain must fall. The flower must bloom. The sheep must graze. And if all is harmony, you can get rugs out of it. It takes the whole cosmos to make a rug.
It this not equally true of our Eucharastic Gifts? We so often perceive it as merely bread- flour, water and yeast. But what does it take to produce that flour? The sun must shine. The wind must blow. The rain must fall. The earth must be fertile. Human beings must appropriately interact with it. And if all is in harmony, you can make bread. On every altar, in every church we offer the universe in joy and thanksgiving back to God. But our frame of reference can be too small.
Christ fed thousands with only a few a few loaves and two fish. Those who witnessed this considered it a miracle. Our Lord also said, “The son only does the works he sees his Father do.” The Father is always taking a little wheat and feeding thousands, but we fail to see it, we don’t get the message. He is taking some seeds each spring and making food in every wheat and corn field, but the pagans said it was Apollo or Zeus or Minerva or “Mother Nature” at work, and secularists say it is all “natural processes.” So the Son does the same thing he sees his Father do, but on a smaller scale and a faster speed, and suddenly the miraculous element becomes evident. It is the same Word of God made manifest and the feeding of the thousands will have its full impact when we can recognize it continuously in the miracle of the cosmos, the Word written in letters so large we could not read the message before.
Be reminding the church of the cosmic dimensions of its faith and mission, the Greek evangelized become evangelists. In the Patristic age, Greek language, Greek culture, Greek philosophical language enriched the life of the church forever. As the seed, the gospel, the church, as Christ’s presence enters into the context of other cultures, these too offer something back to God. The same seed, the same faith, the same Orthodox truth, implanted in another culture produces a unique harvest, a Serbian, a Romanian, a Russian, a Ukrainian, an Albanian, an African, an Alaskan, an Indonesian, a Korean or Japanese (or even an American), expression, each the product of the same holy faith, yet each irreplaceable and unique.
Father Alexander Schmemann defined in his most famous book, For the Life of the World, what it means to be Christian. “A Christian, “ he wrote, “is someone who, wherever he/she looks sees Christ and rejoices Him.” I read this book many times. I was blessed for several years to attend Father Alexander’s lectures. I read Holy Fathers. But it was my Eskimo parishioners who revealed to me the depth of the passage, revealed to me the cosmic dimension of the prologue to the gospel according to St. John, showed me the magnificence of the Apostle Paul’s Christocentric experience and vision. This is what inculturation means for the church. Unlike syncretism, which distorts the gospel, corrupts the faith, renders a Christian harvest impossible, inculturation enriches and deepens and expands the genuine apprehension of the Apostolic faith, to the glory of God and building up of his holy church. The church, while resisting any syncretism, delights and rejoices in inculturation.
Conclusion
The church scatters the seed, offering the gospel to all, and in so doing, discovers the new harvest dimensions of the faith it had not consciously known, noticed or appreciated fully before. Evangelism enriches the church. Inculturation blesses the church. Our Greek patristic legacy is the historic evidence of the creative process. The seed always needs soil in which to grow-the gospel always needs a culture in which to be planted, and the Holy Spirit produces various harvests in each culture and in each of us.
Evangelism and Culture. 1995. International Review of Mission. Authentic Witness Within Each Culture. Section 1; Conference on World Mission and Evangelism (Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 1996). LXXXIV No. 335, October 1995. The World Council of Churches. 387-393.
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You can also read more about Orthodox Alaska here http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/russian/s1a.html and http://oca.org/history-archives/orthodox-christians-na/chapter-1 and http://oca.org/history-archives/orthodox-christians-na
The Alaskan Mission (1794-1870)
For almost two thousand years, Orthodox Christians have been actively spreading the Gospel.[1] Following the gradual conversion of the Roman Empire over the first three centuries, missionaries from the Greek-speaking Church of the Eastern Roman Empire (hence the term “Eastern Orthodox”) evangelized much of the Middle East, the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and lands to the east. The most remarkable, and ultimately successful, missionary effort of this era was undertaken by SS Cyril and Methodius, brothers who are credited with creating the Cyrillic alphabet and who helped to lay the foundations for Slavic culture. When in AD 988, Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus (contemporary Ukraine) embraced Orthodoxy, monastics, following the examples of SS Cyril and Methodius, provided Kievan Rus with living examples of Christian values. Several centuries later, two monks, Hourg and Barsanuphii, journeyed east to Kazan, capital of the Tartars, learned the Tartar language, and established a monastic community for the conversion of the Mongol peoples. St Stephen of Perm (1340-96), another monk, would in turn journey beyond Kazan, across the Ural mountain, into the forests of Siberia to labor among the pagan Zyrians. There Stephen devised a Zyrian alphabet, translated the Gospel, and subsequently converted an entire people. This model of monastic evangelization became the pattern for other Russian Orthodox missionaries as they trekked ever eastward, eventually establishing a network of missions across Siberia and along the entire Pacific Rim: in China (1686), Alaska (1794), Japan (1861), and Korea (1898). The eight Orthodox monks who arrived in Alaska in 1794 were simply part of this centuries-old missionary heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Beginnings of the Alaskan Mission
In 1648, the Russian explorer Simeon Dezhnev sailed from the Arctic Ocean, around the Chukotka Peninsula, and founded the post of Anadyr on the Bering Sea, facing Alaska. During the next several generations, Siberian entrepreneurs ventured across the straits to engage native Americans in commerce. Rumors of these early permanent Russian settlements on Alaskan soil during this period persist among Alaskan native peoples today. Whether permanent or occasional residents, these Russian frontiersmen brought with them not only beads, blankets, pots and pans, but their religious traditions as well. Orthodox laity brought the Orthodox faith to North America, baptized the first converts (often their own native wives and Creole offspring), and even constructed the first chapels. Clergy and official missionaries came much later.
In 1728, and again in 1741, Vitus Bering and Alexis Chirikov mapped the Alaskan coast, and in the process set off a “Fur Rush”—creating a Russian “Wild East” much like the later “Gold Rushes” of the American “Wild West.” For the next forty years, Russian traders and trappers would make annual or biannual trading expeditions to the Aleutian Archipelago in search of valuable sea otter pelts. Poorly equipped, these Siberian entrepreneurs were not seasoned military men, but frontier adventurers, much like Daniel Boone. Unlike Boone, though, these adventurers were bachelors. Inevitably they married local women who provided their Siberian husbands with the same clothing, tools, and food they would have given native Alaskan spouses. Thus, when the British Captain James Cook visited the Aleutian Islands at the end of the century (1793), he could not distinguish the Slavs from the native Alaskans. The Siberians had been completely acculturated into the material culture of the Aleuts.
This pattern of intermarriage and gradual evangelization of the indigenous people provoked some resistance. A major uprising against the Siberians—during which some 200 Siberians and an equal number of Aleut warriors were killed—took place around 1764. Despite occasional outbursts, the Aleut, Russian, and Creole communities gradually returned to a generally peaceful coexistence.
Gregory Shelikov
In the 1780’s a Russian trader, Gregory Shelikov, argued that sending annual trading expeditions to the New World across the Bering Strait was unnecessarily expensive and dangerous. The time had come, he argued, for the establishment of permanent trading posts in Alaska. The importation of a few hundred Russian settlers, Shelikov reasoned, could lead to the systematic exploitation of the sea otter habitats all along the Alaskan coast—and vast profits. As the natives might not be receptive to such a colonial intrusion, Shelikov suggested that the commercial adventure assume a military dimension as well. A Russian settlement in Alaska, atop the North Pacific, would extend Russian political and military influence as far as Spanish California, British Hawaii, and the Spanish Philippines.
In the summer of 1784, Shelikov set out for Kodiak Island to establish his Alaskan base. By all accounts except his own, Shelikov’s expedition was greeted with hostility and armed resistance. Subduing the Kodiak islanders in a bloody encounter, Shelikov returned to St Petersburg to relate his conquest and present a request for a monopoly on the ensuing fur trade to the imperial court. He installed Alexander Baranov as company manager, governor, and virtual dictator of the small Russian colony. Shelikov did not live to see his Russian-American Trading Company receive its monopoly, nor did he ever return to Alaska. Baranov, however was to rule both the colony and the company with an iron fist for 27 years.
The Alaskan Mission
To convince the imperial court of the seriousness of his colonial scheme, Shelikov journeyed to Valaam and Konevitsa monasteries, located on the Russo-Finnish border, to recruit monastic volunteers for the new settlement in Alaska. One Archimandrite, three priestmonks, one deacon-monk, one lay monk, together with several staff members, left St Petersburg on December 21, 1793. They arrived in Kodiak on September 24, 1794, having travelled 7,300 miles in 293 days. Upon arrival, the monks were shocked at conditions in the colony.
It was not the poor living conditions, inhospitable weather, nor the strange customs and foods of the native peoples that so upset the monks, but the violent and exploitative behavior of their own Russian countrymen. Within a few weeks, the leader of the mission, Archimandrite Joasaph (Bolotov) was sending vivid reports of abuse back to Shelikov, believing that Shelikov would intervene. Receiving no reply, Joasaph, the priest-monk Makary, and the deacon Stephen returned to Russia in 1798 to report firsthand about Baranov’s outrageous actions. On their return to Alaska, their ship sank, and all aboard perished (1799). In retaliation for such continuing “interference,” Baranov placed the remaining monks under house arrest, forbidding them any further contact with the native peoples (1800).
St. Herman of Alaska
Despite continuing oppression by the Company, native Alaskans flocked to join the Orthodox Church. The priest-monk Juvenal reported baptizing several thousand himself. Although Juvenal would be martyred by hostile natives in 1796 [2], the more general success of the Alaskan mission can be explained only by the heroic efforts of the missionaries in defending the Alaskans from Baranov and his henchmen, as well as by the missionaries’ sensitive approach to the pre-Christian spirituality of the Aleuts. The Russian monks presented Orthodox Christianity not as the abolition, but as the fulfillment, of the Aleut’s ancient religious heritage. Most persuasively, the personal example of the monk Herman provided the natives with tangible evidence that the Gospel, when embraced with full dedication and commitment, produced God-like men.
To avoid harassment (and possible assassination at the hands of Baranov’s men), the monk Herman left Kodiak sometime between 1808-1818, and relocated to Spruce Island, three miles to the north. He named his small hermitage “New Valaam,” in honor of his former monastery, from earlier generations of Orthodox monks had set out to evangelize Karelian, Lapp, and Finnish tribespeople. At New Valaam, Herman spent the rest of his life teaching the Aleuts, nursing the sick, raising orphans, praying, and working miracles. Most importantly, through his kindness, compassion and personal holiness, Herman exemplified an ideal Christian life. The last surviving member of the original mission, Herman died in 1837. His remains repose in Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Kodiak. The Aleuts never forgot the humble monk nor his legacy of prayer and deeds. Largely at their insistence, Herman was canonized in 1970 by the Orthodox Church in America as the first Orthodox saint America.
St. Innocent
Following Baranov’s death in 1818, social and economic life in Russian Alaska stabilized. In 1824, Fr John Veniaminov, his wife, children, and mother-in-law arrived in Unalaska, opening a new chapter in the story of the Alaskan Mission. Quickly learning Unangan Aleut, the language of the Fox Islands, Veniaminov translated the Gospel of St Matthew with the assistance of local Aleut chief, Ivan Pan’kov. The two also collaborated on the translation of a catechism. Together they opened a parish school in Unalaska in 1828.
Traveling from village to village by sea kayak, for which he would later suffer constant pain and some crippling in his legs, Veniaminov impressed his parishioners with his fluency in their language, respect for their traditions, and pastoral concern. In 1836, he joined a Russian schooner traveling south to minister to those stationed at the most distant Russian outpost in America, Fort Ross, near San Francisco. While in Spanish California, Veniaminov visited the Franciscan missions along the coast, conversing with the Spanish monks in Latin. In a rare gesture of ecumenical goodwill for the time, Veniaminov even built small pipe organs for at least two of the Catholic missions.
Veniaminov returned to European Russia in 1839 to report on his missionary work. During this journey, his wife died in Siberia. After some hesitation, Veniaminov accepted monastic tonsure and ordination as the Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, in late 1840. Upon his return to Alaska, Veniaminov founded an All-Colonial School for the “training of native and Creole (mixed ancestry) clergy, seamen, navigators, physicians, accountants, cartographers, and artisans” in New Archangel (Sitka).[3] He quickly learned the local Tlingit language. In 1844 he designed and began the construction of St Michael’s Orthodox Cathedral for the capital of Russian Alaska—a structure which continues to dominate Sitka to this day.
In 1852, Veniaminov was raised to the rank of archbishop and transferred to Yakutsk, Siberia. There he learned yet another native language and continued his missionary work among the native peoples of Siberia. Veniaminov ended his days (+1879) as the Metropolitan of Moscow (the senior hierarch of the Russian Church), where among his other accomplishments he established the Imperial Missionary Society. At the request of the Orthodox Church in America, Veniaminov, who is buried at the Holy Trinity-St Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad, Russia, was canonized as “St Innocent, Enlightener of the Aleuts, Apostle to America and Siberia,” by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977.
Father Jacob Netsvetov
In 1828, Father Jacob Netsvetov, a Creole of Aleut and Russian ancestry and graduate of the Irkutsk Seminary, was ordained to assist Veniaminov (then still a priest) in the evangelization of the Aleutian Islands. Later, when Veniaminov was ordained bishop, he assigned Netsvetov to begin missionary work in the Yukon river delta. Making his headquarters at Ikogmiut, a village today called “Russian Mission,” Netsvetov labored for nearly twenty years among the Yup’ik Eskimo. At the invitation of Athabascan Indian tribes upstream, he preached to, converted, and baptized hundreds in the Innoko River in 1852, thereby narrowly averting a tribal war. Netsvetov described this accomplishment in his personal diaries: “What a joy to see so many joined to the Church of Christ; former enemies, now living together in peaceful coexistence.”[3] Without the benefit of technology, without the protection or physical support of military or legal authorities, and hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost, Father Jacob preached the Good News and brought salvation to thousands of Alaskans during his decades of service. In recognition of his outstanding work, Netsvetov was made a member of the Imperial Order of St Anna and knighted by Tsar Nicholas I. Fr Netsvetov was canonized by the Orthodox Church in America at St Innocent’s Cathedral in Anchorage on October 15-16, 1994. He is venerated as “St Jacob, Enlightener of the Peoples of Alaska.”
The Meaning of the Alaskan Mission
St. Herman moved to Spruce Island where he nursed the sick, raised orphans, and performed miracles.
Through St. Herman, the Alaskan Mission was blessed by the traditional monastic example which SS. Cyril and Methodius provided to the Slavs, centuries earlier. By SS. Innocent and Jacob, the Alaskan Mission demonstrated the linguistic adaptability, cultural sensitivity, and educational outreach characteristic of Orthodox missions from Moravia to Kamchatka. Unfortunately, the heroic missionary work of the Siberian traders who married, converted, and raised their families in the Orthodox faith, and that of their children, the first Native American Orthodox evangelists, have received less attention. Nevertheless, through all their efforts the foundations of the Alaskan Mission had been firmly laid.
With the transfer to American rule in 1867, most ethnic Russians, including the vast majority of Orthodox priests, returned to Russia, leaving the 12,000 native Christians, 9 Orthodox parishes, 35 chapels, 17 schools, and 3 orphanages to fend largely for themselves. In 1872, the diocesan see was transferred from Sitka to San Francisco, and the bishop was able to supervise the mission only from afar. Over the next 100 years, the Alaskan mission received only sporadic assistance from the Orthodox community in the “lower 48.”
Nevertheless, the mission continued to grow, largely through the efforts of indigenous leaders. Despite the fact that the mission never had more than 15 priests, scores of new parishes and chapels, as well as schools and orphanages, were built. Lay leaders continued to conduct services, preach, and teach even in the absence of clergy. The Orthodox Church in Alaska was able to survive because, from its very beginning, it was envisioned, in the best tradition of Orthodox missionary spirituality, as an indigenous church, not as a “diaspora..”[5]
Notes:
[1] This chapter was co-authored by Fr. Michael Oleksa.
[2] In 1980, the OCA Diocese of Alaska canonized Juvenal, together with other martyrs of Alaska, known and unknown.
[3] For a fuller listing of St. Innocent’s accomplishments see Paul Garrett’s biography, St. Innocent: Apostle to America (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979).
[4] Orthodox America, p. 19.
[5] For a more detailed discussion, see Richard Pierce, The Russian Orthodox Religious Mission in America, 1794-1837 (Kingston, ON: The Limestone Press, 1978); Bishop Gregory (Afonsky), History of the Orthodox Church in Alaska, 1774-1914 (Kodiak, AK: St Herman’s Seminary, 1977); and Michael Oleksa, Alaskan Missionary Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992).
