Essays on Orthodox Christianity and Church History
Christian Philosophy in the Patristic and Byzantine Tradition
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What's
wrong with being ethnic? It seems to be a problem for Orthodox Christians
in this country. It need not be, but it is. Sometimes we forget that we
are ethnic. None of us live in a vacuum. Some are Greek-Americans, or Americans
of Greek extraction; some are Russian-Americans, or Americans of Russian
background. Some of us are Hispanos, and others Anglos, and even others
are Celts, or Navajos, but we are all ethnics.
Somehow we have failed to understand that the country which we call a melting-pot
is made up of many diverse sub-sets of cultures. At the same time, the basic
underpinnings of the United States are firmly fixed in an English (i.e.
Anglo) culture, which has been effected through the centuries by both Rationalism
and the individual rights of man, as well as Calvinism, which among other
things promoted an ethos of work which allowed both capitalism and individual
liberty to flourish.
We cannot get around this. It is fact. It is also the reason which we have
so attractive a place to live over the past three-and-a-half centuries.
No other nation has achieved what we have achieved, not even England, from
whence has come much of the original philosophical base on which our society
rests.
If we are going to have an effective theology of mission, it will not be
based upon abstract theory, but will be centered in the cultural reality
of American society. We are a pot, rationalistic-Calvinistic; but we have
not fully been melted, a fact underscored every four years in Presidential
campaigns. In this most American of practices, an orderly change of government
without rights or heredity or revolution, the great appeal is made to the
"ethnic voter." Upon closer examination, it might seem that just
about everyone is ethnic. This is precisely the point. Certain common values
now hold distinct peoples together.
Herein lies the particular problem for Orthodox Christians. How are we,
who by and large are "ethnic" in the more common sense of the
word, to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints? A
common response has been to condemn the concept of "ethnicity."
Now, one may condemn any concept to avoid dealing with it. Orthodox Christians
are no less guilty. As was recently noted at our Diocesan Assembly, it is
somehow wrong to be Russian in the O.C.A. at present, though not wrong to
be Albanian, Bulgarian, or Romanian. Yet no one can just stop being ethnic,
unless, of course, he dies. We do not seem to understand this.
The early Church, too, had an ethnic problem. It existed because there was
from the beginning two ethnoi at least in the Apostolic community: Palestinian
Jews, who spoke Aramaic, and Jews from the Diaspora, referred to as "Grecians"
in the Book of Acts.
It is interesting to note that the first internal difficulty, one which
threatened to impede the mission of the Church, was one involving these
two groups of Jews comprising the Church. The "Grecians" complained
that the "Hebrew" widows were receiving greater quantities in
the daily food allotments than their own. The Church's response was not
to say "Don't be ethnic." Rather, the first seven deacons, all
of them with Greek-rooted names were selected by the faithful and ordained
by the Apostles.
We are told that as a result of settling this question of ministry the Church
multiplied greatly, (Acts 6:1-8). Behind their solution was what members
of the Church Growth Movement now identify as the "homogenous unit"
principle: people tend to group themselves around people like themselves.
This may or may not be an "ethnic" or a linguistic grouping. Yet
we all feel more affirmed as people when ministered to by someone "like
we are."
The Apostles did not let "ethnicity" impede their work. They,
in fact, affirmed it and the Church was blessed as a result. The issue would
arise again over the admission of Gentile converts to the Church. Did they
have to become Jews first? Again, they responded to the two distinct groups
in the Church. Gentiles did not have to be circumcised, but Jews were not
admonished to cease the practice, or Sabbath observance in the synagogues,
or all of the dietary commandments of the Torah.
Finally, it was decided for St. Paul to be the Apostle to the uncircumcised,
the Gentiles. He, himself, was a Hellenized Jew, from Tarsus, not from Palestine.
St. Peter became the Apostle to the circumcised, he being the Palestinian.
Ethnicity was not denied. It was not obscured. It was simply accepted as
fact and responded to creatively. When the Judaizers persisted in calling
for circumcision of Gentiles, their Jewishness was not the issue. Rather,
it was their failure to understand that in Christ there was neither
Greek nor Jew. It did not mean that the Greek became the Jew, or vice versa,
any more than it did that the male became the female; the Scythian, the
Barbarian; or the slave, the master.
Only when anyone insists upon the acceptance of his culture as salvific
should we view "ethnicity" as a problem today. It is becoming
one in Christ which saves, not one in culture. Attacking "ethnicity"
as the "great Satan" is not the principle employed by the Apostles.
It should not be employed by the Apostolic Church in the twentieth century,
either.
A personal example might prove helpful. When I sought guidance in my conversion
to Orthodoxy, I was referred by Archbishop John of San Francisco to a church
whose pastor had also been an Anglican, as I was, and whose founding pastor
had been a Baptist. The parish itself was at least fifty percent "converts."
This was the homogenous unit principle.
My conversion was facilitated, not merely because the services were in English
- I was ready to learn Swahili, if it took that - rather, because the parish
priest could speak my real "language." He had made a similar decision.
He had come from a similar cultural ethos as my own. I could relate. I felt
at home. I neither had to adopt an ethnos foreign to me, nor did I have
to abandon my own.
This is the crucial task facing us today. Perhaps, we do not like some of
the implications, but we are going to have to deal with the fact that, in
the main, a convert is going to feel more at home among other converts,
at least while he is converting. This does not mean that only convert priests
can speak to converts. We would never have gotten out of Jerusalem if that
were the case. Yet it does mean using the homogenous unit principle as a
bridge into other cultures, other peoples, other nations.
As noted above, St. Paul went to the Gentiles. Culturally and linguistically
they were comfortable with him, "and he with them." Note what
happened, however, when St. Peter went to Antioch to visit the Gentile church.
Everything went fine until others from Jerusalem came, and then St. Peter
withdrew from the Gentiles' company and other Jews with him.
St. Paul rebuked Peter to his face, "because he was to be blamed .
. . (for he) walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel,"
(Cf. Gal. 2:11-14). It was obvious why it was decided for Peter to minister
to the circumcision. He could fit into one cultural idiom, but not another.
This did nor mean smooth sailing at all times. Paul still circumcised Timothy,
whose mother was Jewish but whose father was a Gentile, and Titus who was
a Gentile convert. Yet, this too did not mean the abandoning of the principle.
Rather, it affirmed it. Timothy's ministry would get no where among the
Jews, because of his mixed background, without it. Neither would Titus.'
For us, it means that mission work seeking converts, usually, is going to
be best carried out by those who understand the conversion process from
one of the denominations into the fullness of faith. It means that seeking
the lapsed Orthodox, American-born, English-speaking, "native"
Orthodox clergy. We should not be dismayed by this but seek to benefit from
it.
The growing denominations of the protestants have long been employing just
these observations and realities. They affirm a unity in Christ but permit
diversity in culture. They seek as soon as possible to raise up indigenous
clergy to minister to indigenous peoples. It strengthens them and they are
being multiplied. The Baptists, for example, minister in 26 different languages
in the Los Angeles area alone. There is no wonder there are not only Korean
Baptists, but Cambodian and Laotian as well. They do nor fight ethnicity,
and yet this is being done by a denomination which still calls itself "the
Southern Baptist Convention." They have never asked their "own"
people to sacrifice their identity.
Why should we ask our own people to sacrifice their identities, their ethnoi,
whatever they are? In my own case, it was a Russian Archbishop who affirmed
my Anglo- Saxon-Celtic ethnos. He did not ask me to become Russian. Why
should I have asked him to cease being Russian? We are now one in Christ.
This is the power of the Gospel, one which the homogenous unit principle
helps effect in practical terms.
Instead of a melting-pot theory, we have to understand that the Church is
really called to be more of a congealed salad. We are not called to salvation
to be boiled down into a lump. We are held together, one together in Christ,
grapes and cherries and pineapple chunks: sanctified and transformed, not
conformed and melted.
In the main, the specifics are the following. To minister to any ethnos,
we need members of that ethnos to minister most effectively, to minister
as did the Church when it began to multiply in Jerusalem. Yes, Anglos for
Anglos, Hispanos for Hispanos, American Blacks for American Blacks, Tlinkits
for Tlinkits, Navajos for Navajos, this is what we must learn to do, if
we are serious about evangelism.
This is not racism, rather its antithesis. This is simply how the Church
has gotten people inside her doors down through the ages. It was the Ebionites,
those Judaizers who insisted on a common culture, a common ethnos, who failed.
They died out by the end of the first century. We might well fail in North
America for similar reasons, the failure to appreciate ethnic diversity
as a sign of the catholicity of the faith. After all, if we don't get 'em,
the Baptists will. They will even get the Russians, if we are not careful.
Reprinted from the September 1988 issue of "The Dawn,"
Diocese of the South, OCA.
From Word
Magazine
Publication of the Antiochian Orthodox
Christian Archdiocese of North America
December 1988
pp. 15-16
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