Ortho-dixe. Ortho-yankee, Orthod-doodle dandy.

This past Sunday, at the time of writing this article, many Orthodox churches in N. America celebrated the feast of “All Saints of N. America.” The Sunday after All Saints is dedicated to the saints who labored in the local land. Not all jurisdictions in America celebrate all saints of N. America. Quite a few still celebrate all saints of whichever land their jurisdiction originated from.

I encountered a couple of articles on Substack that had me thinking about Orthodoxy in America. The recent feast simply added to it. I recalled reading some passages from Fr. Roman (Braga) of blessed memory in which he gave his considerations and thoughts on Orthodoxy in America. So, I found those passages to help fuel my own musings. But since I was at it, I thought I would share them with you, dear reader. The passages are taken from a book entitled, “Exploring the Inner Universe” (Dormition Orthodox Monastery. Rives Junction, Michigan). All page number notations are from this book.

Fr. Roman was a confessor for the faith. He suffered many years in the Romanian Communist prison camps. Eventually, he was freed and made his way to America. Here he ended his days. He is speaking from his own experience in Christ Jesus and his encounter with Americans. I will add a few comments here and there, but primarily, I will simply present his words for consideration.

“We are now spreading Orthodoxy in America in a formal way. We should go further, though, and move also on the vertical dimension and teach by our own example, by our liturgy, and work at developing an Orthodox spirituality. Spirituality does not come just because we know Church history and dogma. Orthodoxy is not a philosophy; we live our faith. But we must keep in mind that we are working here with Protestants who are not simple people as we are used to. The seed of faith does not grow directly in their hearts without passing through their minds. They search documents, compare dates, establish authenticity, learn by heart Scriptural texts, intersperse their speech with quotations, and this is not bad, because they have discovered the Holy Sacraments mentioned in Church history have been lost in the development of various new doctrines. They see the Holy Liturgy is something other than what they are used to in their churches, that the ordination of women to the priesthood is a scandal, and then they ask themselves, ‘What happened? We are not in the true Church. Let us search for the Church.’ This is how they find Orthodoxy. We do not find them; they find us. They do not come because they are impressed by the depth of Orthodoxy spirituality, because in retrospect, many of us do not have anything to offer them. They look for the Church as a divine institution, and today are in the stages of finding their true place in Orthodoxy. Spirituality will come later” (pg. 124).

Fr. Roman rightly diagnoses the main factor stimulating people in their search for Orthodoxy. Today, we can add that folks watch a bunch of YouTube videos and consume online content. But this is all still missing the “vertical dimension.” The lack of Gospel simplicity in the Protestant mind is rooted directly in the fact that it is a movement of “Protestism.” It is a fruit of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment movements. It approaches the Scriptures not with the ancient mind of Faith but with the late European mind. It flows well in America because it appeals to the European-formed mind, but it is not authentic in the eternal things of the Gospel.

“As I said before, no one came to establish hermitages and to bring to America the hesycastic spirit of sacrifice and the Prayer of the Heart. But that does not mean that Americans did not hear about the Prayer of the Heart. In fact, Americans are quite interested. However, their interest stops at the method because it has a nice resonance. They read the Way of the Pilgrim, the Philokalia, but only as a curiosity as something available to everyone. And they all ask ‘What can I do to see God, to feel His warmth, to become like the Russian pilgrim or the saints from the Philokalia?’ Their question is totally devoid of spirituality, because it is not the technique that introduces you to the spiritual state, but the spiritual state is expressed through a certain discipline that can hardly be defined as technique. The Holy Fathers were not preoccupied with the technical aspects of spirituality and the spiritual life. Nevertheless, we are impressed by their yearning for a pure Orthodoxy. They start by reading the Philokalia. Some are interested in hesychasm in such a way that you must temper them because you cannot build a church starting from the top to bottom. They are very much interested in methodology, because you know that hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer sound very beautiful. But what concerns me it that we do not have spiritual fathers to supervise their zeal and to help them find their own Orthodoxy spirituality without trying to make them Romanian or Russian or Greek.. A Roman Catholic priest once came to see me asking how many times he should say the Jesus Prayer to see the Uncreated Energy, and I stopped him saying, ‘Do not say the prayer anymore.’ This is Western mentality; they are more interested in the technique than the spirituality. It will take time for them to understand that spirituality comes from the Holy Spirit and is not the result of ascetic exploits” (pg 125-126).

It’s not a totally bad thing, but the journey for many in America starts primarily in the mind. Yet, the mind must enter the heart and work together. There is such a rupture of the mind and the heart today. Healing is quite the task. But the Lord can do all things. We have been instructed from our youth to be mostly in our brains. Lacking the authentic experience of the heart, the emotions are then taken to be “spiritual.” This is why many American religions are either very intellectual or emotional. Neither is completely wrong; the task is finding the balance.

“At the risk of being redundant, I will repeat that Americans who embrace Orthodoxy are not simple people … those who are fascinated by the Eastern Holy Fathers are the intellectuals. They are searching, studying the traditions of the Apostles and the Church Fathers … Because of their Puritanic background, American converts want the pure Orthodoxy of the early fathers, while our parents, the immigrants from Eastern Europe, brought with them local traditions and modifications that had been made due to historical circumstances” (pg. 126-127).

This seems to be a very simple observation, but it is profound. Having something pure is good, but we must be prudent in our search. In the name of “purity,” much abuse is hurled in many directions. Of course, the total lack of concern for the purity of the faith is problematic too. I encountered a piece about Fr. Seraphim (Rose) arguing against his canonization (your personal position on this is not my point right now). One of the strikes given was because he may have had a Thanksgiving dinner with a group of protestants, and in doing so, he probably prayed with them; thus, he prayed with heretics, and so he can’t be a saint. I think this greatly exemplifies the Puritanic mind that Fr. Roman addresses. We start straining gnats and still end up swallowing camels. For the record, I’ve had Thanksgiving with protestants and prayers have been offered at the meal, so excommunicate me as you will. In some places, it seems that if an Orthodox sneezes with a non-Orthodox, he is anathema! I fear we also forget that with the measure that you measure, it will be measured back to you (cf. Matt. 7:2). Certain people may be strained out by the very purity filters that they applied to others. May the Lord help us.

“No one denies the fact that the Orthodox churches in America keep the name of the national church of their founders; this is a reality. But the chaos that these separate jurisdictions create is another reality … You know that priests and bishops in America serve for anyone who enters the church; they do not ask what jurisdiction the people belong to. Nobody fights with anyone else in this respect. We even have meetings together, we take Communion from the same Chalice, and we share our modes of understanding Orthodoxy. People are united in the same Church, without losing their ethnicity. Priests collaborating in mission work, even if we are in many different jurisdictions. If we use the English language, there would be no problem because after being in America a year, every immigrant should speak English at least enough to understand the Liturgy. Maybe at the administrative level of bishops it is a problem because at that level there are financial contributions, territorial divisions, interests of Byzantine politics, external frictions; and then the Canons of the Church, territorial divisions, and history are all evoked” (pg. 127-128).

He identifies that the greatest hurdle to certain things is not typically on the local level but on the greater administrative level. Alas.

“I think that the American spirit of organization will always be characteristic of the Church here, a spirit that has influenced even the immigrant Church. The deep, mystical sense of Church as the Mystical Body of Christ will not be a contradiction to this spirit. Of course, it is more difficult for converts to understand the Church as an interior universe, an inner Church, as a Eucharistic community, but that will come in time. Most converts come from a Protestant background and did not have the Sacraments, so it is at first difficult for them to understand St. Maximus the Confessor’s vision of the cosmic liturgy. But they have started to understand the importance of monasticism for the spiritual life of the Church” (pg. 128).

In other words, we still have to learn a lot. I believe it is St. Sophrony who said that it takes around 20 years for a person to start becoming Orthodox. Not surprisingly, as it takes about the same time for a boy to start becoming a man. I hope that we can cultivate the deeper understanding of which Fr. Roman speaks. We read about it, certainly, but living it is something else.

“To them, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church as a living organism, is for the moment a theological system, but tomorrow it will become a mode of spiritual life. You must understand that there is growth in everything, but it takes time” (Pg. 129).

“St. Tikhon was a missionary bishop in America, and he insisted that the priests preach in English; he had the vision of an American Orthodoxy very early” (pg. 129).

St. Tikhon had a very beautiful vision for Orthodoxy in America. The original Imperial Russian Mission in Alaska worked diligently to cultivate a uniquely native Alaskan Orthodoxy. This is what authentic Orthodox missions do. It is not a monoculture. It is truly catholic, that is, for all people in all places. And it takes the good and particular there, and it cultivates it for the Kingdom of Heaven. St. Tikhon seemed to take the mission approach in Alaska and sought to apply it in the “lower 48.”

“What is in fact Orthodoxy? It is not a theory, it is not created in a theological institute, it is not a dictated doctrine, it is our experience in God. And our [Romanian] experience in God has been preserved mainly in the peasant population. Here in America, we do not have this kind of theology. We do not have this social group. Even the American farmer who has hundreds of acres is a type of industrial owner … there is no peasant class that lives in nature, who sees God in the grain of wheat, in bugs, or in small animals. There are no shepherds like the ones in our country … Perhaps American Orthodox monks will not live the same mystical harmony of the monks in the Carpathian Mountains; Romanian spirituality will never be planted here. Eastern European Orthodoxy can contribute to the formation of American Orthodoxy, but it will never be the same. I believe that God has as a plan for America a new form of Orthodoxy. This does not mean that it will not be authentic, but it must be American, just as Orthodoxy in Russia, Romania, or Bulgaria is not exactly the same. It is Orthodoxy, but it is modeled to each country’s own ethnic culture. Why should we deny the American people the right to develop their own Orthodoxy” (pg 130-131)?

I posted a portion of the above section as a note on my Substack. A perceptive commenter noted that this American expression should also be unique to the local cultures. Anyone who travels across the States knows that there exist cultural differences. A while ago, I read a book called “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.” Overall, it’s interesting and helpful for understanding the cultural construct of this Nation. Sadly, I don’t think any Orthodox jurisdiction has bothered to consider this reality. The dioceses in America typically span varying cultures. Some are ridiculously large. Depending on the jurisdiction, you may find places like Colorado and Louisiana, or New Mexico and Florida, or Montana and California, in the same diocese. These are very different regional cultures. Any serious concern for Orthodoxy in America should give this healthy consideration. It also might help the Bishops in their work. Expecting a bishop from coastal California to understand a cowboy culture in the West, or from the heart of the South to understand the Southwest, seems counterproductive on certain levels.

Maybe I will stay outside the American understanding of Orthodoxy but, as St. Paul, I must use the method of becoming all things to all men. Let them develop in their own way. No Orthodox Holy Father imposed to his disciples that they should be like him, but he watched carefully so that they would not imitate anybody but become themselves. In the same way, I consider it wrong for the patriarchs of Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, or Greece to send monks to America to establish Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, or Greek monasteries with the intention of imposing on Americans their own spirituality. This would be totally wrong. First, it would not fit in with the psychological structure of these people. We need monasticism in America, but we must mold our vision according to the American way of understanding. We cannot come to America with a ready-made Orthodoxy or make some mishmash like some Orthodox stew; that would not be good for anybody” (pg. 132).

I guess I’ll reveal how much of an American I am and say that I very much agree with this observation. I’ve seen some folks go to places and come back confused due to issues that Fr. Roman touches upon above. I’m very thankful for the nations that have been faithful and cultivated their own garden in Orthodoxy, but there does seem to be a tendency in some places to set the ethic designation above Orthodoxy. I guess we are still human after all. Ultimately, it is the imposing upon that Fr. Roman says is totally wrong. I hope that we can be thoroughly pollinated by the beauties of Orthodoxy that are unique to particular lands, and which we are blessed to have expressed in ours. This is important. We cannot bring forth some sterile, generic, and mass-produced “American Orthodoxy.” The Lord preserve us from such a thing! It must be of the land and the people, as it was in other places.

“Yes, I forgot to add something about many young converts to Orthodoxy. They are fascinated by the Russian mysticism, but I do not think they are able or should try to copy it; their realization should be their own, anything else will be damaging” (pg. 133).

I’m thankful that Fr. Roman had the spiritual concern for Orthodoxy in America to try to tackle some of the issues that it faces. They are not easy questions to wrestle with. As Orthodoxy continues to grow, these issues will also. My thought is that whoever can healthily cultivate a grounded Orthodoxy in America will see fruit. It’s a big task. Even the Orthodox Church in America (the jurisdiction) sometimes seems unsteady in its intentions. I deeply appreciate the vision for an authentic Orthodoxy in America. I’m part of this jurisdiction. Yet, sometimes it even falls back into simply following a rather Russian cutout. In certain areas, strict Russian rubrics guide all. Guys geek out about kamilavkas. In other places, it seems that the mishmash carries the day.

The next-to-last commemoration of proskomedia seems a pertinent example. Typically, it commemorates the primary enlighteners and apostles of the land. The OCA book still commemorates Ss. Cyril and Methodius, together with the Great Prince Vladimir. All very wonderful saints. Yet, if we are to cultivate Orthodoxy in America, I offer a small suggestion: for this commemoration, could we commemorate St. Herman, the North Star of the Church in America, and St. Tikhon, Enlightener and Apostle to America?

“In Orthodoxy, we give freedom to every person to develop according to the characteristics received from God. As missionaries in America, we need a lot of discernment” (pg. 134).

May the Lord grant us the discernment. At times, it seems that we shy away from frankly addressing the topics Fr. Roman brings up because we don’t want to be perceived as “untraditional.” As with all the people who have gone before us, the question of Faith and the local culture can be addressed in a very traditional manner. In fact, I would say these questions are very much in the realm of tradition. It may be that Orthodoxy will be the ark that holds whatever is good in our culture. Most of all, as it seems to be a habit of secularism to cannibalize every culture.

So, as missionaries in America, we truly need a lot of discernment. All Saints of N. America, pray to God for us!