Making America Orthodox

A cursory study of the beginnings of the American mission shows us that each of the migrant missions began as actual Orthodox neighborhoods. This is historic Orthodoxy! Orthodox people are not only in communion with God and the reposed saints, but also with one another. How is this being done within the new expansion of American converts? Are converts aware of how Orthodox community is now radically different than their old Protestant way of going to church and then to the secularized web of organizations and homes…going back and forth from one community to the other?

Orthodox people have one community, and only one community. This community is never departed from even when we are within the world. There are never “two cities.” There is the world, and there is Orthodox community, and if there are multiple Orthodox gathered together as Christ says, that place is becoming holy. That place is becoming Orthodox…whether we can see it or not. That place is ours, and we are to share it with the non-Orthodox. This is always how Orthodox communities and nations have been built. We do not do what the west does, with “pure” Christian community and nationalism, with no respect for other religions and peoples, as if we are to have a perfect city, and then the others have their cities. This was settled a very long time ago, around the same time as the biblical canon.

We share our community! We give within our community. We become ascetic within our community. And those that we share with do not get to silence us and manipulate us into becoming salespeople. We get to speak on God’s behalf without fear and control. We are charitable, which means that we do not argue. We have conversations, and not debates, although, there is certainly a place for debate. We are charitable with the way we encounter people, not by pretending to be like them. No saint has ever done this. Being a chameleon with our liberty is one thing, but being a chameleon with our spirit and person[ality] is another thing. In other words, we may “eat meat,” as Paul says, so as to not offend, because this is an ascetic struggle that we have liberty within. We can be flexible within certain aspects of culture, but not in spirit and personhood, and certainly not in doctrine and philosophy of community/nationhood. We do not live as Orthodox one day and MAGA the next, for instance. 

We have community wherever we live, and if a leader can be coronated into our community, glory to God, and we can work with him in symphonia as our eagle flag shows.

What if we continue to grow as a community and no leader presents himself as Constantine once did? We press on, and we pray that God would protect us with His heavenly angels, who are literally ranked for our protection. This does not mean that we never experience devastation from the enemy. Of course we do, according to God’s perfect will. If at one point we are not mature enough to honor a kingly person, a tyrannical person will be sent to us so that we can then become mature.

NOTE: There are naysayers in our day, even amongst our Orthodox communities, who dis historic Orthodox nations because they do not seem holy enough to them. To these people I will say that what they are presupposing is Augustine’s western view of community, as I discussed in the last blog entry. Orthodox nations, neighborhoods, families, etc., are never without non-Orthodox, and they are never even without non-Orthodox leaders. So in some sense, we have never and will never have an Orthodox community like the west always wanted and tried to manipulate in their “Holy Roman Empire.” Orthodox community is always a struggle, and it will never be completed until the “New City” is here, as St Paul the apostle states. 

Thank You,

Reader Michael 

Lord, grant us, your servants, the humility and wisdom to grow as an Orthodox community, and to not be detoured by fear or feelings of guilt - Amen

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