Orthodoxy in America
Bishop [now Archbishop] Chrysostomos once told a group of us OCA clergy about the
importance of Orthodoxy in America. I was very impressed by the accuracy of what he said
and by his insight. Will you please repeat this for the readers of Orthodox Tradition.
People in this country need such sober thoughts. (Fr. [initials deleted], PA)
We have asked His Eminence to answer your question himself:
"My view of Orthodoxy in this country I have gleaned from listening to and
assimilating the enlightened ideas of my spiritual Father, Metropolitan Cyprian. My ideas
may be wrong, and certainly, since they are only based on and derived from his guidance,
they are not Metropolitan Cyprian's thoughts. I simply mention his role in their formation
as a suggestion to others that, even in forming personal opinions, they should follow the
thinking of their spiritual superiors.
"First, Metropolitan Cyprian has always championed the catholicity of the Church.
The opposition of the extremist Old Calendarists and other resisters who have fallen to a
zeal 'not according to God' to his moderation rests on their view of Orthodoxy as an
ethnic or personal prerogative. They cannot understand his vision of a universal Church.
From His Eminence's constant emphasis on a universal Orthodoxy and on missionary work, I
have come to think that Orthodoxy in this country is a sign of the Church's catholic
nature. Existing here among people who come from many different national groups and from
many different religions, Orthodoxy, which is defined by its claim to be the very Church
of Christ, displays as in no other place its universal character. This is its first
significance for America.
"Second, my spiritual Father is a resister to the ecumenical innovations,
beginning with the calendar innovation, which have compromised even the Church's
definition, that is, its claim to Christian primacy. He has suffered the ugliest
condemnation from those betrayers of the Church who have been exposed by his honest
resistance. Yet, he has stood firm in his conviction that, unless we resist ecumenical
innovation and cut ourselves off, as the Canons of the Church allow and indeed dictate,
from Orthodox who are beset by spiritual ailments, we will hurt the very fabric of the
Church and usher in the spirit of Antichrist. His warning is obvious in America, where a
fabricated Orthodoxy, a hideous blend of Byzantino-Protestant-Latin formalism and arrogant
Evangelical fundamentalism, has declared itself 'official! The One Church of the Symbol of
the Faith has been replaced with the ecumenical vision of a 'new Church,' as Archbishop
Iakovos styles it, a would-be Church to which half-converted Protestant Evangelicals in
the Antiochian Exarchate in this country claim to be 'returning' the Holy Spirit. The
enigmatic mystery of inner enlightenment has been superseded by deluded sectarian notions
of sanctity, the Pentecostal charlatan preaching in the garb of the humble Orthodox
Priest. In America, Orthodoxy is being sold by the witless victims of their own spiritual
'hucksterism' and thereby transformed into what it is that an Orthodoxy that deviates from
Holy Tradition and spiritual sobriety can become. It has become an Orthodoxy of minimalism
which contradicts the very maximalism on which Orthodoxy is built. The second importance
of Orthodoxy in America, then, is that it gives us a clear vision of what we must resist,
what Orthodoxy is not, and how Antichrist will come to take away even the 'elect.'
"Finally, Metropolitan Cyprian once told me, when I complained about the limited
number of Americans, steeped in a superficial society of 'pizza and beer,' who respond to
the calling of True Orthodoxy, that one must, 'Boil the macaroni he has on his shelf.'
True Orthodoxy in this country is a rarity. It exists on the boundaries of so-called
"official" Orthodoxy and often suffers from a spirit of arrogance and
self-satisfaction and the cancer of gossip and slander. It has been exploited and used by
the unscrupulous. Thus, it is attacked from charlatans both from within and from without.
Nonetheless, a few of us have endured and have tried to 'transplant,' as it were, a mature
Orthodoxy into the soil of American society. Working with what we have and within the
limitations which I have mentioned, we have influence that far exceeds our numbers and
importance. Working with little, we have accomplished something. If nothing else, we exist
beyond all odds. I think, then, that American Orthodoxy also gives us an image of the
future of Christianity, an icon of the "small flock." Here, amidst artificial
Orthodox, we can hone our abilities to resist and fight the onslaught of the Antichrist.
Being poor among the wealthy, reviled by "officialdom," and a threat to the
anti-Orthodoxy of this "officialdom," we are living the future of Christianity.
In this third sense, America can be a positive teacher even for world Orthodoxy. Such is
my opinion, for what little it may be worth. If it has any worth at all, that worth is by
derivation from the good guidance of Metropolitan Cyprian."
From the "Question and Answer" section of Orthodox Tradition, Vol. X, No. 2, pp. 18-20.
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