better than no steps forward, two steps back

In the continuing saga of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, maybe one step forward, two steps back is the best we can hope for. The last thing I heard was that the PA and Jordan were backpedaling from their earlier recognition of Pat. THEOPHILOS Now it appears that Israel is finally going to approve his enthronement (was it waiting for the others to change their minds?), assuming it doesn't get overturned by appeal. Again, it's all about the land, which is getting to be a rather dead, bludgeoned, maimed, mangled horse.

Meanwhile, life just got a bit harder for Arab Christian clergy in Palestine . . .

American chant?

As usual, I'm way behind the curve on this one. In Clark Carlton's most recent podcast, he continues his musings on the role of Southern culture in forming an American Orthodoxy. He refers to the music of the Old Regular Baptists in Appalachia and its striking similarity to Byzantine Chant. Carlton alludes to prior discussion in the Orthodox blogosphere; in fact, you could get just about everything he says about it by reading this post on Christ in the Mountains (from back in February, I'm so far behind), and following the included links. There really are some interesting similarities, and given that the musical tradition goes back to the earliest days of English Protestantism, it's not out of the question that something is preserved here from pre-Reformation liturgical singing.

In any case, it would be a potential vehicle for some American adaptation of Byzantine chant, though I'm not sure exactly what that would accomplish. Perhaps in some parts of the South it would resonate enough for people to adopt it more comfortably than Byzantine chant. But I could see a lot of Northerners and Northern-minded urbanites having no more affinity for what sounds to their ears like a very depressing form of country, or southern gospel, or bluegrass (most of us probably wouldn't have a clue of the proper categories) than for Byzantine or Russian chant. The fact is, you'd be very hard-pressed to define anything as a national American musical form. Probably the safest bet is the ubiquitous, bland pop, pumped by the globalist media, but it's also the least suitable candidate for Orthodox liturgical music.

It may be that making liturgical music truly American inevitably requires a regional or local approach. For a rural area like Appalachia, maybe there are surviving musical traditions with enough popularity or familiarity that it would make sense to adapt them for Orthodox worship. On the other hand, a northern city with substantial immigrant communities might just as easily embrace the "ethnic" feel of Byzantine. For those who appreciate the sound and feel of Classical European, later Russian liturgical music might suit just fine, or at least might form the most convenient starting point to adapt something more familiar. Beyond those categories, however, I can envision a rather large chunk of the American population raised on more contemporary forms (increasingly used in churches as well) that would not care for any of the above. What do we do with them?

I really don't profess to have any answers here. Personally, I think I could get into the style used in these Old Regular Baptist churches, but then I had a quick and natural affinity for Byzantine chant, so I'm hardly the person to judge what will work for Americans in general. I like the idea that Orthodoxy could take on more indigenous forms in the South, and if Carlton is right, maybe that's where the ball will really get rolling for America as a whole. As for me, I'm just trying to learn the music as it stands right now. Lately I've been trying to learn some key troparia--for major feasts as they come along, and for patron saints. Occasionally I play around with how they're sung, since I'm mostly singing to myself and anyone in the spirit world who happens to be listening. To me, the troparion to St. Peter the Aleut (my patron saint) sounds good sung loud, forceful and raspy. I could hear it in some kind of rock ballad. St. Nicholas and St. John of Damascus sound better with a relaxed, jazzy feel (I'm sure there are more technical terms to use here--I just don't know what they are). Not that I want Orthodox liturgy to sound any more like a rock opera than it does like a free-form jazz odyssey--just pointing out how little I have to offer on the issue :-)

coming full circle

It's always interesting to see how things come back around. I mentioned in my post on Crunchy Cons how I'd started out conservative, shifted liberal, then radical, then back to some kind of conservative. This particular progression just keeps getting "curiouser and curiouser." If I haven't already mentioned my bad habit about reading, I probably should have. Julie's been saying a lot lately that I read too much. In general, that's a fairly accurate statement, but if it's seemed more applicable in recent weeks, it's largely due to how I read. When I read something that really strikes me, like Dreher's book, I comb it for references to other sources. I read those sources, and if any of them strikes me similarly, I repeat the process, until I've exhausted the library, or myself, or this crazy impulse I have. I'm pessimistic about a lot of things, but in at least one area I'm the eternal optimist--I think that if I rush through this pile of books and get them all done, I'll be able to move on to more significant things than reading. Of course, it never works that way--I just end up with an even bigger pile before I finish what I started with.

So, since reading Crunchy Cons, I've kept myself pretty busy with follow-up projects. Many of them have been fairly short rabbit-trails--books that were only marginally interesting and turned out to be much less useful than I'd hoped. I could simply skim through them and be done with that particular excursion. One of the more interesting diversions, however, has given me this weird feeling of "I've been this way before."

In something of a throw-away remark, Dreher refers to an Internet publication called The New Pantagruel. I believe he's discussing Caleb Stegall, the site's editor, as an example of a Protestant Crunchy Con (though my memory's a bit fuzzy on this point--it may have been someone else associated with the site). I thought it would be good to check out an actual, on-going periodical with this kind of outlook, and if it was Internet-based, so much the better. I had no trouble finding the site, but as I might have expected, it was defunct. (I have an unnatural attraction to dead authors, artists, projects, etc.; by the time I get interested in something, it's already gone.) Fortunately, the archives were still up, so I had a chance to browse through the few years' worth of material. I found interesting tidbits here and there, most notably a reference to an even more short-lived (by design) blog about Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists, a book by some guy named Bill Kauffman. (Dreher has reviewed the book, for whatever it's worth.) With key words like "radical" and "anarchist," my first thought was, I gotta read that book!

They didn't have it in our county library system, so I had to wait a bit for it to arrive from elsewhere in Maryland. When it arrived, I devoured it in short order. Like Dreher (at the time he wrote Crunchy Cons), Kauffman is Catholic; unlike him, he was born into that tradition and takes religion in general somewhat less seriously. Not that he doesn't see it as culturally significant--he just isn't exactly what everyone would call devout. On the other hand, the book is decidedly more fringe/radical/anarchist. (Dreher accuses him of missing the "fine line between hale eccentric and outright kook," in his chapter on Carolyn Chute, acclaimed Maine author turned militia leader. Personally, I found this particular chapter to be one of the more endearing.) Kauffman also has a more biting (and crass) sense of humor. Actually, I'm not sure "crass" is an appropriate word to use here. He certainly has his vulgar side, but I get the feeling I've missed at least half of his jokes due to my unsophisticated grasp of culture, literature, and vocabulary.

Part-way into the book, I discovered something unsettling--actually two things:

1. Kauffman is from Batavia, NY, where I grew up (if anywhere), and
2. Julie had already read him, long before I did.

And she thinks I held out on her! Here, all along she's been reading radical, anarchist literature behind my back, and saying I'm too political. Here's how it went down. Back in 2003, Kauffman published a book called Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette: A Mostly Affectionate Account of a Small Town’s Fight to Survive. For those of you who don't know, a Muckdog is a mythical beast that was adopted a few years back as the new mascot for the minor-league baseball team in Batavia, NY (rated best hometown in New York State by ePodunk). It became an insanely popular nickname, inspiring several little league teams around the country, and selling merchandise to the four corners of the globe. (Muck, BTW, is a rich kind of soil in abundant supply just north of Batavia--actually in Elba, where Kauffman currently lives--great for starting onions and cabbage.) The book is about Batavia, which deserves to be listed on a site called ePodunk (we have a friend who lives a couple of towns over, in the only house on Podunk Rd.--no kidding)--a small town in Western New York State, about half-way between Buffalo and Rochester. After bouncing around the country, my family settled there when I was in sixth grade and stayed until after I got married. We ended up there mostly because it was cheaper than Rochester, where my dad was working at the time we moved.

Julie, on the other hand, was born and raised in Genesee County, not in Batavia proper, but the adjacent town of Oakfield. Both sets of grandparents lived within a couple of blocks of her house. She walked to the same school her dad had attended before her. Her brother ended up moving into her grandparents' house and pastoring the church we all went to. For several years now, their high school has had an e-mail list for the alumni (all of them, since there are so few), and I think that's how she found out about Kauffman's book when it came out. She read it and liked it; I decided I was too busy with who knows what other reading and didn't think much of it. (How could we both like the same thing?) Little did I know . . .

Once I realized the connection, I requested Dispatches as well (fortunately, they had it in our library, so I was able to get my hands on it more quickly) and devoured it over the past couple of days. I must say, though, that I enjoyed Look Homeward somewhat better, where he draws on uniquely positive examples; in Dispatches, he paints small-town life in all its stark, often depressing reality. Both books are quite good (though I must warn--Dispatches has a good deal more profanity), and both are hopeful in their own ways, but Dispatches has a lot more about how small towns have got themselves into their current mess. Still, you come away (or at least I came away) with a strong message that they're worth fighting for. And it was nice to learn a lot about the town I (sort of) grew up in.

We moved to Batavia after it was pretty far gone, and lived so far out on the rural margins that we never identified that much with it. We were actually in the school district for the next town over, we commuted to Buffalo for work, and we happened to be on the side of town where most of the big-box expansion outside the city limits was going in. We made a fair number of trips "downtown," but we mostly grumbled about the ill-timed traffic lights and run-down buildings. We got a taste of what Batavia was, but in a lot of ways we were original exurbanites, as likely to head for Buffalo as anywhere closer at hand. We may have been surrounded by corn fields, but it was still just our house with the (really) big yard, from which we commuted to pretty much everything we did.

Don't get me wrong--we were hicks enough. We had our vegetable garden and a big, smelly compost heap. We burned our paper trash in a 55-gal. drum out back. We wore jeans and flannel before it was cool to be grunge. We ate venison when we could get it and beef from a locally-raised and -slaughtered cow, including the tongue and heart sandwiches I took to school to gross out my friends. My dad had an ongoing feud with the woodchucks, which did not stop short of burying our dead dog in one of their holes. (Not entirely out of spite--we had him put down in winter, when the ground was frozen solid.) I never did much with guns myself, but I can't even remember when I started carrying a knife in my pocket pretty much everywhere. When I wasn't mowing, I stumped around the homestead pruning trees with my trusty hook saw and went on four-mile walks around the block with an ax handle to ward off the dogs that were never tied or fenced. It was a rich experience in its way, but we were never really part of small-town life.

Yet here I am, finding about the strongest political resonance I've encountered, with a native Batavian, who left home for DC but returned to stay for good. Go figure. My family is long gone from that area--parents are in SC, we're here in MD, grandparents deceased, aunt in PA, and brother in Springfield, New York but still a few hours away (I normally say he lives near Cooperstown, but here I'll say he lives near Jordanville)--but Julie's parents are still there, which has made us think seriously about moving back, if the circumstances ever seemed right. Right now, it's looking more like we'll stick around in this area, but who knows? In any case, I'd really like to pick somewhere and stay put. It would be great if we could do that close to grandparents, but right now this area looks more promising for jobs. (Kauffman has an advantage--professional writers can work from pretty much anywhere, so for him it doesn't matter if every job in town disappears into a sinkhole.)

But perhaps the best part was finding that Julie and I both liked the book. If we can find common ground with something this wacky, maybe there's hope . . . (She says now she wants to read Look Homeward, America.)

Clark Carlton

A few months back someone gave me a book called The Life: The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation, by Clark Carlton. I was finding that the Orthodox notion of salvation seemed to be one of the most pressing issues for Evangelicals I talked to, and I liked the straightforward presentation. At the time I thought, huh--this guy graduated from the Catholic University of America (where I went to school most recently). Since then, I've discovered his podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, which I now listen to regularly. Most of the time I find it entertaining, if not necessarily informative.

Then, the other day, someone posted a link to his testimony of how he became Orthodox. I've read a lot on that site over the past few years, so it's possible that I've already read it before. But now that I have some sense of who he is, I was a bit more interested in what he had to say. It's a very interesting story, especially as I saw a lot of common threads with my own. There are marked differences, of course. He was Southern Baptist, while my background has been in more independent churches. As such, we went through some of the same things, but his were on a larger scale. Prof. Carlton also went through the process at a younger age. From what I can tell, I explored further down the road of theological liberalism (to use the term rather loosely) before finding Orthodoxy. Still, the similarities definitely outweigh the differences.

It's a rather long story, but I would definitely recommend it as worthwhile reading.

crunchy cons

Whether by references from his friend Frederica Mathewes-Green, podcasted interviews, or an old blog entry I ran across while browsing, Rod Dreher and his book Crunchy Cons have been drifting in and out of my awareness over the past few months. It sounded like it might be vaguely interesting, so I finally broke down and requested it from the library. Ever since, it's been hard to put it down.

It's not so much that I'm learning new information here. Quite to the contrary, it seems like Dreher and I have similar reading lists: The Geography of Nowhere, Fast Food Nation, Small is Beautiful--the list goes on. What I've been finding through other channels is all wrapped up here in one, neat package. I've been finding myself difficult to classify in social and political terms, but this may be about as good a fit as any.

It's kind of a weird experience to find this kind of resonance in one source, especially on what we might lazily call the right end of the political spectrum. I started out a fairly mainstream conservative, at least from the earliest time when I thought in such categories. I was a ditto-head in high school, who loved to antagonize my liberal teachers. I protested outside abortion clinics, joined the county committee of the NYS Conservative Party, and voted for mostly Republican candidates. Throughout seminary, I lost interest in politics along with most facets of real life. I would still have considered myself conservative, although my outlook was shifting a bit more Anabaptist, in that I saw a stronger biblical argument for staying out of politics altogether.

Toward the end of seminary and into grad school I started learning about more radical politics by way of ideological literary criticism and such overtly political music groups as Rage against the Machine and System of a Down. My interest in this area accelerated when I finished my coursework and started paying attention to social issues once again. Particularly, I found myself siding with the Palestinian cause against Zionism. Reading in this area led me to look more critically at Western imperialism in general and to explore a wide range of sources on both left and right, which were united in their opposition to current U. S. policy in the Middle East. On issues of personal morality, I still found myself leaning more conservative, but I sympathized a great deal with the left on larger-scale issues like economics and the environment. I saw some hope of fitting in with the religious left of Ron Sider and Jim Wallis, but their approach didn't seem radical enough to me. I found much that I liked in the populist anarchy of Howard Zinn and the monarchist anarchy of Matthew Raphael Johnson.

During this time, I voted for Ralph Nader, when I didn't abstain from voting altogether. Of course, I knew he'd never get elected, but I just couldn't stomach the alternatives. My second choice was Pat Buchanan, which may seem like a contradiction, but not as far as I was concerned. I flirted for a while with the idea of joining a local group to protest the war in Iraq, but I didn't figure they'd much care to have me. (When you're already engaged in activities that some would call anti-American, you generally try to avoid anyone who's in favor of violent revolt as a principle.) In general, I felt like I didn't fit anywhere politically, nor could I exactly define for myself what kind of political creature I was. I knew I was outside the mainstream, but beyond that, I couldn't say much about it.

What Dreher calls a "crunchy con" is someone who values permanent things--tradition, family, the environment, religion, etc. I may not agree on every particular (I don't think he expects me to), but in general, I think I identify with the major points. I like the idea of conservationism (vs. environmentalism), and the push toward smallness makes a lot of sense to me. I'm certainly more comfortable classifying myself as a conservative on issues of personal morality. Plus, I've tended to see where there might be room for someone like me in classical conservatism anyway, as distinguished from the unbridled economic libertarianism and imperialistic madness that seem to pass for conservatism these days.

One area that concerns me, though, is his take on Islam, which isn't a large element in the book but comes out more in his other writings. Perhaps it's not an integral element of crunchy conservatism anyway. I don't have a clear stance myself at this point, but I do tend to recoil from what seems like a high level of paranoia in some groups. Conservatives aren't the only ones. I've seen the same thing--perhaps even stronger feelings, though to some degree justifiably--in Greeks, Serbians, and other Orthodox groups of the former Ottoman Empire. There's a lot of jumbling of religion and politics in this area, and I don't profess to have it all sorted out myself. I guess I tend to react with a high level of political pragmatism. I disagree with Western imperialism, so I sympathize with those who are trying to stand against it. If there's a threat of Islam taking over the West, I see it mostly as a problem we've created for ourselves. Maybe it's a force that does need to be dealt with, but it's hard for me to side with secularism over against a traditional faith (even if it's not my faith).

But assuming there's room for disagreement in that area, I think I'm pretty comfortable calling myself a crunchy con. It still doesn't give me anyone to vote for, but it's nice to know I belong somewhere.

my patron saint

If you're relatively new to this blog, you might have missed my post on Peter the Aleut, which I wrote right before I decided on him as my patron saint almost a year ago. If so, and if you've been wondering what his picture is doing on my site (and why I'm asking him to pray for me), it might be worth a look back. For a brief life of St. Peter (which is about all we have), try the OCA saints site.

As for the broader question of why one would need a patron saint in the first place, or why we ask their prayers, it's just one of those things that has been part of Christian Tradition from about as far back as anyone can tell. The early Christians met in secret, often in tombs and catacombs where they buried their dead. The practice of using the tomb of a martyr as an altar in their services links directly to John's vision of the martyr souls under the altar in heaven (Rev 6:9-11) and to the continuing practice of placing saints' relics in the altar and antimension of every Orthodox church. (I'm not sure if Catholics still follow this practice--I'm pretty sure they used to.) Back then, they had no problem understanding that departed saints were still very much a part of the life and worship of the Church. We pray for them, and they pray for us, and even outside the corporate worship of the gathered Church, their presence before the throne of God in heaven ensures that we always come before him as part of Christ's body.

The taking of a saint's name is not practiced in every Orthodox culture (though I think even when it is not each individual, or at least each family, still has a patron). But assigning of new names has been part of God's interaction with his people for millennia. He changed the names of the patriarchs Abraham and Sarah and of Jacob. The prophet Daniel was actually given a new name by the Babylonians, but it was important to retain his original, Hebrew name as well. Christ gave St. Peter his name, and St. Paul seems to have changed at least the name he went by after his conversion. Again, we see in St. John's Revelation (2:17; 3:12) an allusion to the early Christian practice of taking a new name in baptism. This practice continues among the Orthodox to this day.

When we are born into this world physically, God gives us in particular to one set of parents. Although we are called to love all humankind, we learn first to love those in our family, because love over-generalized is no love at all. Similarly, it is easy to get lost among the myriad of saints. Having one patron assigned at baptism helps to narrow the focus. All the thousands of saints remembered throughout the year are important, but one day a year I celebrate in particular the memory of my saint. Any of them might pray for me, but there is one I can always go to by default. If I can learn to love this one saint in particular, it will be that much easier to develop my relationship with others. I see his icon when I pray at home, I sing his troparion when I think of him, and I remember that the saints in heaven pray for us in our struggle here on earth.

my racist friend

(For those who aren't familiar, the fairly inaccurate title of this post is an allusion to a They Might Be Giants song.)

So, last night we were in Barnes & Noble. We almost never actually buy anything there, but Ian likes to play with the train table in the kids' section, and it can be a good place to see what's new or interesting, so we can get it from the library. (Julie was flipping through a book of Mother Teresa's writings, which surprised me. On the way in, I got sidetracked by a book called The Year of Living Biblically, in which an editor for Esquire spends a year taking the Bible as literally as he possibly can.) At one point, I was supervising the kids, while Julie was browsing, and another kid came over with his mother to play at the train table. Ian kept me busy enough by pushing his way around the track, regardless of who got in his way. Eventually, they seem to have worked out a system--the younger boy, who wasn't as intent on actually making his trains travel a full circuit, would step out of the way whenever Ian passed by. When he didn't, Ian would stop and wait impatiently, but at least he stopped. (Sometimes, with a kid his age, that's about as much as you can hope for.)

Anyway, at one point they got into a conversation. I wasn't paying much attention until I heard Ian protest, "Don't say it in Spanish; you have to talk like me!" I was relieved to see the other kid's mother laugh at the remark. I don't think he meant it to be offensive, though it could have been taken that way (unreasonably, I would think, when it's coming from a four-year-old). I might have been a bit more concerned about what led him to say it, except that earlier that evening when we were playing hide-and-seek he'd yelled at me for counting in Spanish (and Japanese). Just one of those things, I guess. This is the same kid, after all, who freaked out when Julie moved the new shoe rack from where it had been sitting temporarily in the dining room to its rightful home by the door. He gets something in his head, and anything else really bugs him. At least he knew enough not to call it "Mexican" . . .

caught by surprise

I keep meaning to say something about this but forgetting when I'm actually at the computer. The other day, on the way home from work, I caught myself repeating the Jesus prayer in my head. I have no idea when I'd started or how long I'd been doing it, but I think it's the first time I've noticed myself doing that involuntarily. I make no pretense that it's prayer of the heart (though I wouldn't say my attitude was out of line with what I was saying). More realistically, I'm just forming a habit in my head. Still, it's got to be a good first step to something, right?

what kind of reader are you?

I don't normally post this kind of thing, but this one is kind of interesting, especially the rating I got:

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

The graph doesn't seem to have come across quite right in blogger, so I'll need to clarify a bit. My ratings for "dedicated reader," "literate good citizen," and "book snob" were noticeably lower by degrees, but still fairly high. I apparently got zero for both "non-reader" and "fad reader" (no surprise there).

One thing that was lacking from the quiz was a category that would let me say what I'm really reading these days--mostly a fairly narrow selection of religious and political books. But I suppose I'm still applying the same reading style that I've used over the past few years, so it's probably not far off.

Lutheran service

We attended a Lutheran service this morning. We had planned on it for next week, but Julie decided to move it up. My first reaction was to notice several similarities with the Orthodox liturgy. For some reason, I had more of a feeling that it was a very stripped-down Orthodox liturgy (at least in its shape) than I had with the Episcopal services. It probably helped that one of the first things we experienced (we arrived a few minutes late) was the kyrie--basically, a shortened form of the litany of peace. It was almost identical through the first three petitions, then finished with "help us, save us," etc. We'd missed the confession, which doesn't seem to have a corresponding element in the Orthodox liturgy, perhaps because it is intended to replace individual confession before a priest. The framing of the Gospel reading was somewhat similar to that in an Orthodox service. They recited the Nicene Creed (with the filioque, of course) before the sermon instead of after. There was a section very similar to the Orthodox anaphora: "The Lord be with you . . . lift up your hearts . . . let us give thanks to the Lord our God . . . it is right . . . ," and finishing with the pastor's prayer and "Holy, holy, holy . . . ." There's a prayer of thanksgiving before the Lord's prayer, which I suppose is meant to substitute for the elaborate offering ritual in Orthodoxy. They practiced open communion, though not as open as in the Episcopal church. You're only supposed to commune if you believe in Christ and believe that his body and blood is present. A couple of people indicated that we could go forward just to receive a blessing, which I think I saw one of the clergy (a deacon, maybe?) give to some of the people, making a cross on their forehead. They had little cups, which I guess gave people the option to take their own or drink from a common cup.

The people were very friendly. We (mostly I) talked for a while afterward with the pastor, and then out in the vestibule with his wife and another woman. They have Sunday school between the traditional and contemporary services, so there wasn't much time for people to hang around. Ian was getting pretty active and usually doesn't do well anyway with a new Sunday school, so we were heading out. The pastor said that we'd probably find Missouri Synod Lutheran was the best compromise for our situation, but offered that Wisconsin Synod might be more conservative. He also recommended a church nearby that's a bit more traditionally liturgical than they are.

I guess I'd have to say I found it to be an OK service. There was nothing particularly offensive about it. It seemed to be lacking important elements (no surprise there), but as compromises go, it certainly has its strengths. I missed the beauty of the Orthodox liturgy. There were no icons, of course, most of the liturgy was spoken rather than sung, no incense, etc. There was also a lot of missing content, and the ascesis was weak. I think I've mentioned before that one struggle I have is that I don't care for organs, which are pretty much a required element of any Western liturgical service. (This issue complicates our search for "something in the middle," since stylistically I prefer contemporary worship with a praise band to Western traditional music accompanied by an organ.) But I think I would find it tolerable if given an otherwise even choice between that and Bethany.

The problem, though, is that it's not an otherwise even choice. Julie has no particular attraction to the Lutheran service--has many of the same objections she has to Orthodox services. I know I would be unhappy with the Western theology and disappointed with the thin liturgy. As I was talking to the pastor, and he was explaining why he found it to be a good option in his own search, I found myself disagreeing with his argument. He saw Orthodoxy (and Catholicism) as too extreme in its embrace of tradition, which skewed theology, and sola scriptura as the necessary corrective. Although it may be a more moderate form of sola scriptura than what I'm used to, it's still the kind of argument I was trying to get away from in the first place.

So, I think our search continues elsewhere. I think we owe it to ourselves at least to visit the Reformed church I mentioned earlier, especially since we both already respect the pastor there. But I must say, I'm not getting any more optimistic about finding something we'll both like.

marriage is a vast ocean . . .

Hard, but encouraging, words from "Marriage: The Great Sacrament" (a sermon delivered in the Church of St. Nicholas, Trikala, Greece, 17 January, 1971) by Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra, Mount Athos:

. . . Remember: from the moment you marry, [St. Paul] says, you will have much pain, you will suffer, and your life will be a cross, but a cross blossoming with flowers. Your marriage will have its joys, its smiles, and its beautiful things. But during the days of sunshine, remember that all the lovely flowers conceal a cross, which can emerge into your sunshine at any moment.

Life is not a party, as some people think, and after they get married take a fall from heaven to earth. Marriage is a vast ocean, and you don't know where it will wash you up. You take the person whom you've chosen with fear and trembling, and with great care, and after a year, two years, five years, you discover that he's fooled you.

It is an adulteration of marriage for us to think that it is a road to happiness, as if it were a denial of the cross. The joy of marriage is for husband and wife to put their shoulders to the wheel and together go forward on the uphill road of life. "You haven't suffered? Then you haven't loved", says a certain poet. Only those who suffer can really love. And that's why sadness is a necessary feature of marriage. "Marriage", in the words of an ancient philosopher, "is a world made beautiful by hope, and strengthened by misfortune". Just as steel is fashioned in a furnace, just so is a person proved in marriage, in the fire of difficulties. When you see your marriage from a distance, everything seems wonderful. But when you get closer, you'll see just how many difficult moments it has.

God says that "it is not good for the man to be alone" (Gen 2.18), and so he placed a companion at his side, someone to help him throughout his life, especially in his struggles of faith, because in order to keep your faith, you must suffer and endure much pain. God sends his grace to all of us. He sends it, however, when he sees that we are willing to suffer. Some people, as soon as they see obstacles, run away. They forget God and the Church. But faith, God, and the Church, are not a shirt that you take off as soon as you start to sweat.

Marriage, then, is a journey through sorrows and joys. When the sorrows seem overwhelming, then you should remember that God is with you. He will take up your cross. It was he who placed the crown of marriage on your head. But when we ask God about something, he doesn't always supply the solution right away. He leads us forward very slowly. Sometime he takes years. We have to experience pain, otherwise life would have no meaning. But be of good cheer, for Christ is suffering with you, and the Holy Spirit, "through your groanings is pleading on your behalf" (cf. Rom 8.26).

Orthodox Europe gets noticed

I don't know how long this article in the Christian Science Monitor will be available, but it's good to know it's out there. It may not be of direct relevance here in America, but if the tide of religious atrophy in Europe is going to turn, it will likely involve the Orthodox. That should be relevant to all Christians.

Reformed worship

After a substantial hiatus around Jenna's birth and Julie's subsequent gall bladder issues, we're gearing up to try visiting a few more churches. First on the agenda, this month, is a Lutheran church of the Missouri Synod. This particular type of Lutheran church is noted for its conservative theology, and I guess its conservative liturgy as well, though that part is changing. Someone has already warned us that he knows of Lutherans who live in Columbia but bypass the local Missouri Synod church for one in Northern Virginia, because this one just isn't traditional enough (or some such thing).

Beyond that, we plan to try something from the Reformed tradition, and just today we received a recommendation for a church in Annapolis, Christ Reformed Evangelical Church. It's too far away for us to think seriously about attending there regularly, but it's probably worth checking out anyway. The first selling point is the pastor, who filled in at Bethany for a communion service while the pastor there was sick. We both somehow liked his message, though for some different yet overlapping reasons. (Personally, I found his presentation of communion to be shockingly sacramental--so much so, that I questioned how much thought had gone into picking him for that particular service.) In addition, they place a strong emphasis on liturgical worship, which seems promising. Considering that it comes from an Evangelical perspective, the section on their Web site that explains their take on worship is worth reading.

One big apprehension I have is that it doesn't seem likely that we'd find a church similar enough close by to gain much from the visit. As I've said before, it's all well and good to find one specific congregation that seems to meet our needs, but if its denomination as a whole is repulsive or, as in this case, so small that finding another church like it is next to impossible, it may not be of much practical use. On the other hand, if we try a church like this, and it doesn't seem like it would meet our needs, it may help us to rule out a whole strand of tradition as unlikely. In any case, it's probably better to start there than to pick something blindly just because it happens to be close by. More to follow . . .

men and Orthodoxy

That article I mentioned about men and Orthodoxy has been published. I don't see it yet on beliefnet, but Frederica has a copy on her blog. Maybe I should give out a prize for anyone who can identify my quote(s) :-)

reviewing my story

Recently I was asked to contribute some thoughts to an article about men and Orthodoxy. There's no particular distinction in that--I was one of something like a hundred men contacted for that one article, and it's anyone's guess which quotes will make it into the final product. It's got me thinking, though, about my journey to Orthodoxy. I still have no idea how many people read this blog or who most of them are, but it's possible that some have started here too late to see my rather lengthy, multi-part account of my journey, which I posted more than a year ago, which I wrote about a year before that. The nine segments that I posted were:

Coming Home: Why I Have No Choice but to Be Orthodox

• Seeking a Homeland
• A Wandering Aramean
• From the Desert of Paran
• Passing through Samaria
• A City with Foundations
• The Gate Is Narrow
• The Road Is Difficult
• The Road Goes Ever On

For the most part, it still seems like an accurate representation. If I were to write it over again, I'd probably emphasize certain points differently.

If you want a quick-and-dirty chronology, either so you can skip the narrative altogether or to help keep straight what happened when, here's the gist:

My Philippians 3 list:

• born into an Evangelical home (1975)
• active in my youth group--quiz team, Scripture memory, choir, writing, preaching, etc. (1987-93)
• graduated top of my class from Bible college (1996)
• graduated top of my class from seminary (1998/2000)
• taught college classes in Bible, theology, and language (1998-2000)
• earned an M.A. (and ABD) in Semitic languages (2003/2004)

Key Milestones:

• 1994--adopted a strong, four-point Calvinism
• 1996--Tony Badger fired from PBC for teaching against Lordship Salvation (I later adopted his view)
• 1997--adopted a radically biblical approach to theology; adopted Arminianism (with eternal security, not Calvinist perseverance)
• 1999--controversy erupted at WBC/CBS over the Openness of God (pros were mostly WBC faculty, cons were mostly CBS--I was teaching at one school and still finishing up as a student at the other)
• 2000--started exploring non-Evangelical hermeneutics
• 2001--started exploring Oriental Orthodoxy and traditional fasting
• 2002--started exploring Orthodox Judaism and liturgical prayer
• 2003--started exploring Messianic Judaism
• 2004--first Eastern Orthodox prayer book; first visit to St. Matthew's
• 2005--resumed Orthodox fasting; first visits to Holy Cross and Holy Apostles; informed Evangelical friends
• 2006--informed parents and in-laws; became a catechumen at Holy Cross
• 2007--first visit to St. Tikhon's Monastery

more Chrysostom on prayer

In his fourth homily on Hannah, St. John discusses at length the practical application of frequent prayer:

Blessed David also practised [prayer], and hence said, "Seven times a day I praised you for the judgments of your righteousness." Now, if a king, a man immersed in countless concerns and beset from every quarter, beseeches God so many times a day, what excuse or pardon would we have, with so much free time on our hands, not to implore him incessantly, especially as this puts us in a position to reap such benefit? . . .

How is it possible, you ask, for a man of the world, tied to the bench, to pray three times a day and betake himself to church? It is possible and quite simple: even if heading off to church is not manageable, it is possible even for the man tied to the bench to stand there in the vestibule and pray. After all, there is not such need for words as for thoughts, for outstretched hands as for a disciplined soul, for deportment as for attitude, since Hannah herself was heard not for uttering a loud and clear cry but for calling out loudly inside in the heart: "Her voice was not audible, but the Lord hearkened to her," the text says, note. Many other people also did this in many cases, despite the officer calling out from inside, threatening, ranting and raving, while they stood in the porch making the sign of the cross and saying a few prayers in their mind, and then going in and transforming and soothing him, turning him from wild to mild. They were not prevented from praying like this by the place or the time or the absence of words. Do likewise yourself: groan deeply, recall your sins, gaze towards heaven, say in your mind, "Have mercy on me, O God," and you have completed your prayer. The one who said "Have mercy," after all, gave evidence of confession, and acknowledged their own sins: it belongs to sinners to have mercy shown. The one who said "Have mercy on me" received pardon for their faults: the one to whom mercy has been shown is not punished. The one who said "Have mercy" attained the kingdom of heaven: the one on whom God will have mercy he not only frees from sin but also judges worthy of the future goods.

Accordingly, let us not make excuses, claiming a house of prayer is not close by: if we have the right dispositions, the grace of the Spirit made us personally temples of God, and there is ease for us in every respect. Our worship, after all, is not of the kind that formerly prevailed among the Jews, which was long on appearance but short on reality. In that case, you see, the worshiper had to go up to the temple, buy a turtle-dove, get hold of wood and fire, take sword in hand, appear before the altar, and carry out many other requirements. In our case, on the other hand, it is not like that: wherever you are, you have the altar with you, the sword, and the victim, you yourself being priest and altar and victim. In other words, wherever you are, you can set up the altar, giving evidence only of an attentive will, place being no obstacle, time no hindrance; even if you do not go down on your knees, do not strike your breast or raise your hands to heaven, and merely demonstrate an ardent disposition, you have completed the whole of the prayer. It is possible for a woman with distaff in hand working at the loom to gaze towards heaven in her mind and call upon God with ardor; it is possible for a man venturing into the marketplace and walking by himself to pray with attention, and for someone else seated at the workbench sewing skins to direct his soul to the Lord; it is possible for a servant making purchases and running hither and yon, or standing in the kitchen, when there is no possibility of going to church, to pray attentively and ardently. Place is not something God is ashamed of: he looks for one thing only, a fervent mind and sober spirit. . . .

In saying this, I exhort you unceasingly to keep up the habit of visiting the churches and praying at home in tranquility, and when time allows going on your knees and stretching out your hands. If, however, we are caught up by reason of time or place with a crowd of people, let us not on that account abandon prayer, but in the fashion I mentioned to your good selves pray and beseech God in the conviction of gaining your petition nonetheless with that prayer. I said as much, not for you to applaud and marvel, but for you to practise this yourselves, night time and day time, interspersing the time of work with prayers and petitions.

Chrysostom on prayer without ceasing

In St. John Chrysostom's second homily on Hannah, he writes:

But how is it that the text says that "she continued" her prayer? Surely the woman's length of prayer was short . . . . She kept saying the same thing over and over again, and did not stop spending a long time with the same words. This, at any rate, is the way Christ bade us pray in the Gospels: telling the disciples not to pray like the pagans and use a lot of words, he taught us moderation in prayer to bring out that being heard comes not from the number of words but from the alertness of mind. So how is it, you ask, that if our prayers must be brief, he told them a parable on the need to pray always, namely, the one about the widow who by the constancy of her request wore down the cruel and inhumane judge, who had fear neither of God nor of men, by the persistence of her appeal? and how is it that Paul exhorts us in the words, "Persevere in prayer," and again, "Pray without ceasing"? I mean, if we must not reach to lengthy statements, and must pray constantly, one command is at variance with the other.

It is not at variance, however--perish the thought; it is quite consistent: both Christ and Paul bade us make brief and frequent prayers at short intervals. You see, if you extend your prayers to great length without paying much attention in many cases, you would provide the devil with great security in making his approach, tripping you up and distracting your thoughts from what you are saying. If, on the other hand, you are in the habit of making frequent prayers, dividing all your time into brief intervals with your frequency, you would easily be able to keep control of yourself and recite the prayers themselves with great attention.

His argument here is quite plain and is repeated in many Orthodox sources. I'm not sure how or where it was lost somewhere between the fourth century and today's Evangelical thinking about prayer, but it bears consideration in any case.

Till We Have Faces

Several years back I discovered C. S. Lewis's novel Till We Have Faces--an adaptation of a Greek myth about Psyche, who though mortal is so beautiful that she provokes the jealousy of Aphrodite. She ends up chained on a mountain as an offering to a dragon, but Eros rescues her and marries her. He will not let her see his face, but her sisters persuade her to sneak a peek while he's sleeping. She is caught and banished as a result. I never actually read the book back then, and it slipped my mind until recently, when someone referred to it in a talk I was listening to. I decided to get it from the library so I could finally read it.

It's a good story, all in all, and an interesting twist on the myth. What we get is the "back story" from the perspective of the sister (there are two sisters, but only one visits Psyche and persuades her to disobey her husband). She writes in protest against the gods, to set the record straight and present her complaints about their manipulation. We discover late in the book her specific motivation--that years after the key events take place, she encounters a temple to Psyche and is told the story in a different form. Essentially, the priest at the temple presents the classical version of the myth, but her own recollection of things is more complicated. One major difference is that the palace in which Psyche lives is invisible to outside observers. Aside from one brief glimpse at night, her sister cannot see it, or Psyche's clothes, but what appears to be a girl in rags, living (though living well enough) in the woods. She struggles with various doubts and theories about what is going on, until she finally determines to force Psyche by whatever means necessary to look at her husband and see whether he is actually a god.

There is a teacher in the story--a Greek slave--who speaks for secularism (he seems to be a stoic, but Lewis is, after all, writing for a modern audience), while the barbarian natives have a more ingrained trust in the supernatural. Neither contingent sees the truth, however, so for instance when the sister is processing Psyche's situation, one side says the "husband" can only be a criminal vagabond of the mountains, while the other allows that he is probably a demon or monster.

Probably the most poignant part of the story for me comes when the two sisters meet after Psyche is sacrificed. The joy that she is alive gives way to confusion when she speaks of a palace that should be present but isn't. To Psyche it is real and present and substantial; to her sister it is invisible and most likely a hallucination. There is a strong echo here of the dwarfs at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia. In the final chapters of the last book, when that world reaches its end, and those who refuse to side with the Antichrist figure are cast into a stable to be killed, most find the door to be a portal into heaven. A few, however, experience it as merely the entrance to a dank stable and act accordingly. The others can see them as if they were in heaven with everyone else, but as far as they are concerned, it's dark, and small, and smells and feels exactly like a stable should. A group of dwarfs who chose in the end to take no one's side falls into this latter category, and they sit in a tight circle, oblivious to the world around them. No matter what the others try, they cannot convince them that they are anywhere but a stable.

In Narnia, it's a pretty clear image of the notion that Lewis expresses elsewhere--that people who end up in hell are there by their own choosing, not even in some special place per se, but experiencing the presence and love of God through the darkness of their own hearts. This is a fully Orthodox notion--the light that the blessed will experience will be fire to the damned, only because they choose to experience God's love as hatred. Here, the interaction is very much the same, but without the kind of finality you get in the other story. What struck me when I read it was not so much the connection with Narnia, but with my own situation. Sometimes when I'm trying to communicate with Julie about Orthodoxy it feels like Psyche trying to tell her sister about the palace. To her, it is there, it is real and plain as anything, and she need only take it in--but to her sister, it is totally invisible and can only have some dark explanation (whether natural or supernatural).

In the same way, what seems so real and meaningful to me about Orthodoxy (I can only imagine) seems half-baked, if not downright insane to Julie. It's a desperate moment when you realize the other person can't see what seems so plain to you. You realize that the things that seem most obvious are that much harder to explain to those who can't see them, much less convince them that they're there. At the same time, you can't help but feel sympathy toward the sister in the story, who for all that she can see has no good reason to accept Psyche's story. (Except, of course, that she was formerly a very honest and very real person, who was not at all likely to make up such things--but there is no Professor Kirk in this tale to point that out.) Likewise, I feel sympathy for Julie and other Evangelicals who react the same way. There's simply no room in their world for all this mystical hocus-pocus. I didn't get here by "figuring it out" or by forcing my will to accept it. Only God knows what it really took to open my eyes so I could see, and only he knows what it will take for them.

The real problem is if someone does see and still refuses to believe. In the story, after Psyche glimpses the god and is banished, he appears briefly to her sister as well, and in no uncertain terms. From that point on, her continued resistance is of a different sort, because now she knows and has no excuse. It seems to me that something similar happens with Orthodoxy. For most Evangelicals, the big hurdle they'll never even bother to clear is recognizing Orthodoxy for what it is. Many never really encounter it at all; others might have some exposure but see it through the lenses of what they already know and believe and decide it doesn't measure up. It's when the glasses come off, and they see Orthodoxy in truth that the decision to reject it becomes particularly problematic. At that point, they've moved from not knowing to not wanting what they do know. Certainly such a response is possible, but if the Spirit has truly been at work in their lives, can it be common? I hope not.

can we ever make them happy?

I want to start out by clarifying the tone of my title here. It's not an exasperated exclamation, but a thoughtful and honest inquiry. I don't know the answer, but it bears considering. That said, what am I talking about?

Today I ran across a talk given by Hieromonk Damascene about a year ago, on the subject of Orthodox Evangelism. Whenever I encounter such things, I'm initially excited about the prospect of passing them along to Evangelical friends, or at least taking away useful tidbits for possible discussion. In most cases, however, as in this one, initial excitement gives way to frustration. I don't mean to blame Fr. Damascene here, or any other writer or speaker whose materials have provoked this kind of response. There's nothing they're doing wrong. It's just that I know how some of what they say will be received, and how it will tend to color the reception of their overall message.

I wrote last year about how it seems that Evangelicals react negatively to Orthodoxy in opposite directions, when they judge its view of salvation as both too legalistic and too universalist. Here, it seems like there's something similar at work. On one hand, they accuse Orthodoxy of ignoring the Great Commission. And certainly, Orthodoxy has had its share of problems in this area. Although there are plenty of historical examples one can point to, where Orthodox saints have brought the Gospel to unreached peoples, in recent history they seem to be few and far between. Although present trends in America and some other places are more favorable, with Orthodoxy experiencing significant growth, the reaction is often that they are growing mostly by taking in disgruntled Protestants. (This is not altogether accurate or fair, but there is a certain amount of truth. Case in point--I recently listened to an interview with the editors of Death to the World, an Orthodox punk zine, who set up shop at Christian music festivals, where presumably most of the target audience already has some connection with Christianity.) There is important stuff happening, to be sure, but it still looks rather inward focused by comparison with what a lot of Evangelicals are used to.

On the other hand, when you do find someone promoting evangelism with an Orthodox audience, as in Fr. Damascene's talk, there is another problem for Evangelicals. To motivate Orthodox to take the Great Commission seriously, he stresses that it is not enough for Christianity to be spread around the world--it must be Orthodox Christianity. So (Evangelicals reply), now Orthodoxy has the only true Gospel, and what the rest of us are doing is worthless! Well (we say), which do you want? First you don't think we get what a pressing need there is to go out and preach the Gospel, then when we do, you think we overestimate the message that we uniquely have for the world.

I think I know the Evangelical response--we don't want you to evangelize on your own terms, but to join us in evangelizing on ours. At least, that would be the honest response. Evangelicals obviously aren't going to accept Orthodoxy's claim to be the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church. For one thing, if there is such a thing, it can only be the invisible Church comprising all believers everywhere. For another, if they accepted the Orthodox view on this point, they would themselves become Orthodox--there would be no other rational response they could give. So they'll always see a claim to be the one, unique Church as exclusivistic. For Orthodox to evangelize properly (they would assume), they must first straighten out their ecclesiology and enter the arena of evangelism as part of the Protestant team. If Orthodoxy does not proactively evangelize, it will be judged as ignoring the Great Commission; if it tries to evangelize on its own terms, it will be perhaps worse yet--it will be working against the Evangelical effort.

So, to return to my question, can we ever make them happy? Is there a way for Orthodox as Orthodox to evangelize the lost without antagonizing Evangelicals? Should we bother trying? One thing that I think needs to be communicated as clearly as possible is that we're not in the business of proselytizing Evangelicals or other Christians. We believe Orthodoxy is the true Church, but we don't generally go around telling people they need to leave their churches or face the wrath of God. For one thing, we don't believe that per se--mostly we're agnostic about what will happen if they stay where they are. For another, we just don't see that kind of thing as our mission. A lot of Evangelicals have come into the Orthodox Church, but for the most part, they've done it on their own initiative. If anything, Orthodox have probably been less helpful than they could have been to these Evangelical seekers.

Holding to the idea of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church may sound like "us vs. them," but that's not how we treat it. This may sound offensive, but in a sense, there can be no "us vs. them," because there is no "them." It's never "our church vs. your church"--there is only one Church. We think we're in, and we think everyone else should be too. But whether they are or aren't is a matter of individual standing--there's no other team "out there" for us to play against. (Not a Christian one, anyway.)

I could go on with this, but I think I've already dug myself a deep enough hole, with no hope of climbing out. Maybe I'm trying too hard for something that doesn't exist. Maybe this is one of those things that you only get once you're in and can see it from a place of faith. Maybe I'm not the one they should be listening to, anyway.

more from the Gulag Archipelago

In the lengthy excerpt that follows, Solzhenitsyn recounts two trials related to the famine in the Volga region after the Russian Civil War. The question of spending money to make worship beautiful vs. giving it to help the poor is a long-standing one; the agenda of the Soviet government, however, seems to have gone far beyond any legitimate critique in that area, to manipulate the circumstances as an excuse to attack the Church:

[342] In the two trials following we will take leave of our favorite supreme accuser for a while: he is occupied with his preparations for the major trial of the SR's. This spectacular trial aroused a great deal of emotion in Europe beforehand, and the People's Commissariat of Justice was suddenly taken aback: after all, we had been trying people for four years without any code, neither a new one nor an old one. And in all probability Krylenko himself was concerned about the code too. Everything had to be neatly tied up ahead of time.

The coming church trials were internal. They didn't interest progressive Europe. And they could be conducted without a code. We have already had an opportunity to observe that the separation of church and state was so construed by the state that the churches themselves and everything that hung in them, was installed in them and painted in them, belonged to the state, and the only church remaining was that church which, in accordance with the Scriptures, lay within the heart. And in 1918, when political victory seemed to have been attained faster and more easily than had been expected, they had pressed right on to confiscate church property. However, this leap had aroused too fierce a wave of popular indignation. In the heat of the Civil War, it was not very intelligent to create, in addition, an internal front against the believers. And it proved necessary to postpone for the time being the dialogue between the Communists and the Christians.

At the end of the Civil War, and as its natural consequence, an unprecedented famine developed in the Volga area. They give it only two lines in the official histories because it doesn't add a very ornamental touch to the wreaths of the victors in that war. But the famine existed nonetheless--to the point of cannibalism, to the point at which parents ate their own children--such a famine as even Russia had never known, even in the Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century. (Because at that time, as the historians testify, unthreshed ricks of grain survived intact [343] beneath the snow and ice for several years.) Just one film about famine might throw a new light on everything we saw and everything we know about the Revolution and the Civil War. But there are no films and no novels and no statistical research--the effort is to forget it. It does not embellish. Besides, we have come to blame the kulaks as the cause of every famine--and just who were the kulaks in the midst of such collective death? V. G. Korolenko, in his Letters to Lunacharsky (which, despite Lunacharsky's promise, were never officially published in the Soviet Union), explains to us Russia's total, epidemic descent into famine and destitution. It was the result of productivity having been reduced to zero (the working hands were all carrying guns) and the result, also, of the peasants' utter lack of trust and hope that even the smallest part of the harvest might be left for them. Yes, and someday someone will also count up those many carloads of food supplies rolling on and on for many, many months to Imperial Germany, under the terms of the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk--from a Russia which had been deprived of a protesting voice, from the very provinces where famine would strike--so that Germany could fight to the end in the West.

There was a direct, immediate chain of cause and effect. The Volga peasants had to eat their children because we were so impatient about putting up with the Constituent Assembly.

But political genius lies in extracting success even from the people's ruin. A brilliant idea was born: after all, three billiard balls can be pocketed with one shot. So now let the priests feed the Volga region! They are Christians. They are generous!

1. If they refuse, we will blame the whole famine on them and destroy the church.
2. If they agree, we will clean out the churches.
3. In either case, we will replenish our stocks of foreign exchange and precious metals.

Yes, and the idea was probably inspired by the actions of the church itself. As Patriarch Tikhon himself had testified, back in August, 1921, at the beginning of the famine, the church had [344] created diocesan and all-Russian committees for aid to the starving and had begun to collect funds. But to have permitted any direct help to go straight from the church into the mouths of those who were starving would have undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat. The committees were banned, and the funds they had collected were confiscated and turned over to the state treasury. The Patriarch had also appealed to the Pope in Rome and to the Archbishop of Canterbury for assistance--but he was rebuked for this, too, on the grounds that only the Soviet authorities had the right to enter into discussions with foreigners. Yes, indeed. And what was there to be alarmed about? The newspapers wrote that the government itself had all the necessary means to cope with the famine.

Meanwhile, in the Volga region they were eating grass, the soles of shoes, and gnawing at door jambs. And, finally, in December, 1921, Pomgol--the State Commission for Famine Relief--proposed that the churches help the starving by donating church valuables--not all, but those not required for liturgical rites. The Patriarch agreed. Pomgol issued a directive: all gifts must be strictly voluntary! On Febraury 19, 1922, the Patriarch issued a pastoral letter permitting the parish councils to make gifts of objects that did not have liturgical and ritual significance.

And in this way matters could again have simply degenerated into a compromise that would have frustrated the will of the proletariat, just as it once had been by the Constituent Assembly, and still was in all the chatterbox European parliaments.

The thought came in a stroke of lightning! The thought came--and a decree followed! A decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on February 26: all valuables were to be requisitioned from the churches--for the starving!

The Patriarch wrote to Kalinin, who did not reply. Then on February 28 the Patriarch issued a new, fateful pastoral letter: from the church's point of view such a measure is sacrilege, and we cannot approve the requisition.

From the distance of a half-century, it is easy to reproach the Patriarch. Of course, the leaders of the Christian church ought not to have been distracted by wondering whether other resources might not be available to the Soviet government, and who it was who had driven the Volga to famine. They ought not to have clung to those treasures, since the possibility of a new fortress of faith arising--if it existed at all--did not depend on them. But one has also to picture the situation of that unfortunate Patriarch, not elected to his post until after the October Revolution, who had for a few short years led a church that was always persecuted, restricted, under fire, and whose preservation had been entrusted to him.

But right then and there a sure-fire campaign of persecution began in the papers, directed against the Patriarch and high church authorities who were strangling the Volga region with the bony hand of famine. And the more firmly the Patriarch clung to his position, the weaker it became. In March a movement to relinquish the valuables, to come to an agreement with the government, began even among the clergy, Their still undispelled qualms were expressed to Kalinin by Bishop Antonin Grunovsky, a member of the Central Committee of Pomgol: "The believers fear that the church valuables may be used for other purposes, more limited and alien to their hearts." (Knowing the general principles of our Progressive Doctrine, the experienced reader will agree that this was indeed very probable. After all, the Comintern's needs
and those of the East in the course of being liberated were no less acute than those of the Volga.)

The Petrograd Metropolitan, Veniamin, was similarly impelled by a mood of trust: "This belongs to God and we will give all of it by ourselves." But forced requisitions were wrong. Let the sacrifice be of our own free will. He, too, wanted verification by the clergy and the believers: to watch over the church valuables up to the very moment when they were transformed into bread for the starving. And in all this be was tormented lest he violate the censuring will of the Patriarch.

In Petrograd things seemed to be working out peacefully. The atmosphere at the session of the Petrograd Pomgol on March 5, 1922, was even joyful, according to the testimony of an eyewitness. Veniamin announced: "The Orthodox Church is prepared to give everything to help the starving." It saw sacrilege only in forced requisition. But in that case requisition was unnecessary! Kanatchikov, Chairman of the Petrograd Pomgol, gave his assurances that this would produce a favorable attitude toward the church on the part of the Soviet government. (Not [346] very likely, that!) In a burst of good feeling, everyone stood up. The Metropolitan said: "The heaviest burden is division and enmity. But the time will come when the Russian people will unite. I myself, at the head of the worshipers, will remove the cover [of precious metals and precious stones] from the ikon of the Holy Virgin of Kazan. I will shed sweet tears on it and give it away." He gave his blessing to the Bolshevik members of Pomgol and they saw him to the door with bared heads. The newspaper Petrogradskaya Pravda, in its issues of March 8, 9, and 10, confirmed the peaceful, successful outcome of the talks, and spoke favorably of the Metropolitan. "In Smolny they agreed that the church vessels and ikon coverings would be melted down into ingots in the presence of the believers."

Again things were getting fouled up with some kind of compromise! The noxious fumes of Christianity were poisoning the revolutionary will. That kind of unity and that way of handing over the valuables were not what the starving people of the Volga needed! The spineless membership of the Petrograd Pomgol was changed. The newspapers began to howl about the "evil pastors" and "princes of the church," and the representatives of the church were told: "We don't need your donations! And there won't be any negotiations with you! Everything belongs to the government--and the government will take whatever it considers necessary."

And so forcible requisitions, accompanied by strife, began in Petrograd, as they did everywhere else.

And this provided the legal basis for initiating trials of the clergy.

H. The Moscow Church Trial--April 26-May 7, 1922

This took place in the Polytechnic Museum. The court was the Moscow Revtribunal, under Presiding Judge Bek; the prosecutors were Lunin and Longinov. There were seventeen defendants, including archpriests and laymen, accused of disseminating the Patriarch's proclamation. This charge was more important than [347] the question of surrendering, or not surrendering, church valuables. Archpriest A. N. Zaozersky had surrendered all the valuables in his own church, but he defended in principle the Patriarch's appeal regarding forced requisition as sacrilege, and he became the central personage in the trial--and would shortly be shot. (All of which went to prove that what was important was not to feed the starving but to make use of a convenient opportunity to break the back of the church.)

On May 5 Patriarch Tikhon was summoned to the tribunal as a witness. Even though the public was represented only by a carefully selected audience (1922, in this respect, differing little from 1937 and 1968), nonetheless the stamp of Old Russia was still so deep, and the Soviet stamp was still so superficial, that on the Patriarch's entrance more than half of those present rose to receive his blessing.

Tikhon took on himself the entire blame for writing and disseminating his appeal. The presiding judge of the tribunal tried to elicit a difTerent line of testimony from him: "But it isn't possible! Did you really write it in your own hand? All the lines? You probably just signed it. And who actually wrote it? And who were your advisers?" and then: "Why did you mention in the appeal the persecution to which the newspapers are subjecting you?' [After all, they are persecuting you and why should we hear about it?] What did you want to express?"

The Patriarch: "That is something you will have to ask the people who started the persecution: What objectives were they pursuing?"

The Presiding Judge: "But that after all has nothing to do with religion!"

The Patriarch: "It has historical significance."

The Presiding Judge: "Referring to the fact that the decree was published while you were in the midst of talks with Pomgol, you used the expression, behind your back?"

The Patriarch: "Yes."

Presiding Judge: "You therefore consider that the Soviet government acted incorrectly?"

A crushing argument! It will be repeated a million times more in the nighttime oflices of interrogators! And we will never answer as simply and straightforwardly as:

The Patriarch: "Yes."

[348] The Presiding Judge: "Do you consider the state's laws obligatory or not?"

The Patriarch: "Yes, I recognize them, to the extent that they do not contradict the rules of piety."

(Oh, if only everyone had answered just that way! Our whole history would have been different.)

A debate about church law followed. The Patriarch explained that if the church itself surrendered its valuables, it was not sacrilege. But if they were taken away against the church's will, it was. His appeal had not prohibited giving the valuables at all, but had only declared that seizing them against the will of the church was to be condemned.

(But that's what we wanted--expropriation against the will of the church!)

Comrade Bek, the presiding judge, was astounded: "Which in the last analysis is more important to you--the laws of the church or the point of view of the Soviet government?"

(The expected reply: "The Soviet government.")

"Very well; so it was sacrilege according to the laws of the church," exclaimed the accuser, "but what was it from the point of view of mercy?"

(For the first and last time--for another fifty years--that banal word mercy was spoken before a tribunal.)

Then there was a philological analysis of the word "svyatotatstvo," meaning "sacrilege," derived from "svyato," meaning "holy," and "tat," meaning "thief."

The Accuser: "So that means that we, the representatives of the Soviet government, are thieves of holy things?"

(A prolonged uproar in the hall. A recess. The bailiffs at work.)

The Accuser: "So you call the representatives of the Soviet government, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, thieves?"

The Patriarch: "I am citing only church law."

Then there is a discussion of the term "blasphemy." While they were requisitioning the valuables from the church of St. Basil the Great of Caesarea, the ikon cover would not fit into a box, and at that point they trampled it with their feet. But the Patriarch himself had not been present.

[349] The Accuser: "How do you know that? Give us the name of the priest who told you that. [And we will arrest him immediately!]"

The Patriarch does not give the name.

That means it was a lie!

The Accuser presses on triumphantly: "No, who spread that repulsive slander?"

The Presiding Judge: "Give us the names of those who trampled the ikon cover! [One can assume that after doing it they left their visiting cards!] Otherwise the tribunal cannot believe you!"

The Patriarch cannot name them.

The Presiding Judge: "That means you have made an unsubstantiated assertion."

It still remained to be proved that the Patriarch wanted to overthrow the Soviet government. And here is how it was proved: "Propaganda is an attempt to prepare a mood preliminary to preparing a revolt in the future."

The tribunal ordered criminal charges to be brought against the Patriarch.

On May 7 sentence was pronounced: of the seventeen defendants, eleven were to be shot. (They actually shot five.)

As Krylenko said: "We didn't come here just to crack jokes."

One week later the Patriarch was removed from office and arrested. (But this was not the very end. For the time being he was taken to the Donskoi Monastery and kept there in strict incarceration, so that the believers would grow accustomed to his absence. Remember how just a short while before Krylenko had been astonished: what danger could possibly threaten the Patriarch? Truly, when the danger really does come, there's no help for it, either in alarm bells or in telephone calls.)

Two weeks after that, the Metropolitan Veniamin was arrested in Petrograd. He had not been a high official of the church before the Revolution. Nor had he even been appointed, like almost all Metropolitans. In the spring of 1917, for the first time since the days of ancient Novgorod the Great, they had elected a Metropolitan in Moscow and in Petrograd. A gentle, simple, easily accessible man, a frequent visitor in factories and mills, popular with the people and with the lower clergy, Veniamin had been [350] elected by their votes. Not understanding the times, he had seen as his task the liberation of the church from politics "because it had suffered much from politics in the past." This was the Metropolitan who was tried in:

I. The Petrograd Church Trial--June 9-July 5, 1922

The defendants, charged with resisting the requisition of church valuables, numbered several dozen in all, including a professor of theology and church law, archimandrites, priests, and laymen. Semyonov, the presiding judge of the tribunal, was twenty-five years old and, according to rumor, had formerly been a baker. The chief accuser was a member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat of Justice, P. A. Krasikov--a man of Lenin's age and a friend of Lenin when he was in exile in the Krasnoyarsk region and, later on, in emigration as well. Vladimir I1yich used to enjoy hearing him play the violin.

Out on Nevsky Prospekt, and at the Nevsky turn-off, a dense crowd waited every day of the trial, and when the Metropolitan was driven past, many of them knelt down and sang: "Save, O Lord, thy people!" (It goes without saying that they arrested overzealous believers right on the street and in the court building also.) Most of the spectators in the court were Red Army men, but even they rose every time the Metropolitan entered in his white ecclesiastical hood. Yet the accuser and the tribunal called him an enemy of the people. Let us note that this term already existed.

From trial to trial, things closed in on the defense lawyers, and their humiliating predicament was already very apparent. Krylenko tells us nothing about this, but the gap is closed by an eye-witness. The tribunal roared out a threat to arrest Bobrishchev-Pushkin himself--the principal defense lawyer--and this was already so in accord with the spirit of the times, and the threat was so real that Bobrishchev-Pushkin made haste to hand over his gold watch and his billfold to lawyer Gurovich. And right then and there the tribunal actually ordered the imprisonment of a witness, Professor Yegorov, because of his testimony on behalf of the Metropolitan. As it turned out, Yegorov was quite prepared for this. He had a thick briefcase with him in which he had packed food, underwear, and even a small blanket.

[351] The reader can observe that the court was gradually assuming forms familiar to us.

Metropolitan Veniamin was accused of entering, with evil intent, into an agreement with . . . the Soviet government, no less, and thereby obtaining a relaxation of the decree on the requisition of valuables. It was charged that his appeal to Pomgol had been maliciously disseminated among the people, (Samizdat!--self-publication!) And he had also acted in concert with the world bourgeoisie.

Priest Krasnitsky, one of the principal "Living Church" schismatics, and GPU collaborator, testified that the priests had conspired to provoke a revolt against the Soviet government on the grounds of famine.

The only witnesses heard were those of the prosecution. Defense witnesses were not permitted to testify. (Oh, how familiar it all is! More and more!)

Accuser Smirnov demanded "sixteen heads." Accuser Krasikov cried out: "The whole Orthodox Church is a subversive organization. Properly speaking, the entire church ought to be put in prison."

(This was a very realistic program. Soon it was almost realized. And it was a good basis for a dialogue.)

Let us make use of a rather rare opportunity to cite several sentences that have been preserved from the speech of S. Y. Gurovich, who was the Metropolitan's defense attorney.

"There are no proofs of guilt. There are no facts. There is not even an indictment. . . . What will history say? [Oh, he certainly had discovered how to frighten them! History will forget and say nothing!] The requisition of church valuables in Petrograd took place in a complete calm, but here the Petrograd clergy is on the defendants' bench, and somebody's hands keep pushing them toward death. The basic princip:e which you stress is the good of the Soviet government. But do not forget that the church will be nourished by the blood of martyrs. [Not in the Soviet Union, though!] There is nothing more to be said, but it is hard to stop talking. While the debate lasts, the defendants are alive. When the debate comes to an end, life will end too."

The tribunal condemned ten of them to death. They waited more than a month for their execution, until the trial of the SR's [352] had ended. (It was as though they had processed them in order to shoot them at the same time as the SR's.) And after that, VTsIK, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, pardoned six of them. And four of them--the Metropolitan Veniamin; the Archimandrite Sergius, a former member of the State Duma; Professor of Law Y. P. Novitsky; and the barrister Kovsharov--were
shot on the night of August 12-13.

We insistently urge our readers not to forget the principle of provincial multiplicity. Where two church trials were held in Moscow and Petrograd, there were twenty-two in the provinces.