Ethnicity and Orthodoxy

We are often astounded at the number of letters we receive from converts to the Orthodox Church who express absolute outrage at the idea that we refer to American Orthodoxy as immature and the Orthodoxy in Greece, Russia, Romania, Serbia, and so on as an example to be drawn on. Often the nastiness towards ethnic Orthodox —what one Priest recently called "ethnic bashing"— is so extreme that it goes beyond the boundaries of common civility. The consequent feelings of hatred and disdain towards "ethnic Orthodox" thwart objective thought about this issue and more often than not preclude further dialogue. This is unfortunate.

We recently saw a statement by the late Hieromonk Seraphim of Platina rather misleadingly used to suggest that Christianity is meant to change people, not society. At a basic level, since people do, indeed, constitute society, the Christian journey begins with individuals; but it triumphs in our common salvation. As Khomiakov the Russian philosopher noted, in an oft-cited aphorism, we may be lost individually, but we are saved only together. After all, this vision of God's people is as old as the covenant between God and the Jews. And just as the Jews passed on the fruits of that covenant to the New Israel, so in modern times —like it or not— the West, which lost and squandered its Orthodoxy, inherited from Byzantium and from the Eastern European Churches the treasury of Orthodoxy. Those who cannot accept this are not mature Christians. Those who do not appreciate it are poor receivers.

Talk about "those Greeks," "the Russians," etc. in deprecating terms is un-Christian. Certainly ethnic Orthodox are not all good members of the Church. And certainly many converts surpass them in piety. But the ethnics are the hosts and the converts are the guests. Those who fail to see this also fail to learn the lesson in humility contained in the Gospel accounts of Christ's statement to the Greek woman who asked that He heal her demonized daughter: that the children's bread should not be cast to dogs. Rather than expressing rage at being called a dog, the woman humbly told Christ that the dogs under the table also eat of the children's crumbs. Thereupon, "for this saying" [St. Mark 7:29], her daughter was healed. Such humility can quickly heal the strife between so-called "ethnic Orthodox" and converts, too, for it demonstrates the great error of those who demand rights and equality in a realm where privilege should always succumb to humility and submission.

Using the word "Byzantine" in an anti-Orthodox, polemical way, denigrating those who, however imperfect in their Faith, have bequeathed that Faith to a lost West, and insulting others because they may have insulted you — these things are not, again, Orthodox. Nor are they basically Christian.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VI (1989), No. 1, p. 2.