Orthodox Reflections

By Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America

I was quite young the year Christmas fell on a Sunday. The Pentecostal church I was raised in cancelled Sunday services so that people could spend the day with their families. It seemed strange, and not only to me. In the afternoon, when we gathered to open presents, my older sister asked if we could read the Nativity story from the Gospel of Luke. She felt we should do something Christian on Christmas.

Everyone agreed, so she read the scriptural passages. We did that for a couple of years afterwards until our Grandfather died. Then we just kind of stopped. We would say a blessing over the meal, but after that, there was no mention of Christ on Christmas. My family went to church twice on Sunday and usually once a week on Wednesday. Not to mention “revivals” when we would go every night for a week or two.

The thing is, we didn’t really have traditions to follow at home. No Advent Wreath. No special prayers or schedule of recommended Bible readings. No fasting to prepare for big holy days such as Christmas and Easter. Whatever a family did at home was whatever that family made up for themselves to do.

Over the years, the Pentecostal / Evangelical churches did get somewhat better about Christmas. Christmas plays became really popular. Not just dramatizations of the Birth of Christ, of course. No, that would be too unoriginal. I’ve seen all kinds of “holiday” productions in churches that ranged from mini-Hallmark movies to full blown musical extravaganzas.

@jaydeferraro

A fever dream

♬ Sleigh Ride (Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring tingle tingling too) – The Ronettes

The productions were normally done leading up to Christmas, as Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were still all about family and not church. Some more sober-minded Evangelical churches started providing “Candlelight Communion” and other more “traditional” services on Christmas Eve. The Christmas services were practically the same as the regular Sunday ones, except that you served yourself stale crackers and grape juice in near darkness. Evangelical Christmas was just as uninspiring, just as prosaic, as Evangelical Easter.

Evangelicalism is completely rootless. For anyone paying attention, it was clear that holiday activities were just being made up, or picked from acceptable focus-grouped options, by pastors and staff trying desperately to market their churches to a fickle American public. There are even guides recommending how to put on Christmas “programs” for those churches who need helpful suggestions:

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! With the advent season and the merriment everywhere, December is indeed the most fabulous time of every year. This is the time when friends and family would gather to celebrate the season together.

 

The Holiday Season is also a busy time for churches. Celebrating Christ’s birth is a perfect opportunity to engage the whole congregation and to reiterate the real reason for the season. Here are some Christmas program ideas your church can try out.

Evangelicalism in the 90’s was vastly different from what it had been just a few decades before. What it would be in the future was impossible to predict, as that would depend on how the surrounding American culture evolved. Evangelicalism neither preserves nor creates culture. Rather, it absorbs cultural trends and applies a light coat of “Jesus” to them. Evangelicalism is the ultimate in trying to build on sand.

TV just made the Christmas season worse for many of us. Older movies and shows, plus live Christmas services from Rome and elsewhere, introduced more than one struggling Evangelical kid to Christmas services of bells ringing on top of gorgeous cathedrals filled with the singing of beautiful, traditional choral music. The light and sound shows at the local Evangelical church just couldn’t compare. That was entertainment, not worship. Many of us saw Evangelicalism for what it was, but we chose different ways of coping. Some chose to simply embrace the “modernism” and keep on being Evangelical. Especially if all your family were Evangelical, pretending not to notice is the path of least resistance. Some left Christianity altogether. Still others, me included, went in search of the actual Church founded by Jesus Christ.

That was over 25 years ago. After looking carefully at Roman Catholicism, I ended up joining a Greek Orthodox parish and being baptized into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church close to Christmas in the Year of Our Lord 2000. Since then, I have raised multiple cradle Orthodox children whose only memories are of the Church. The Evangelical-to-Orthodox pipeline is not new, as you can see from my story, but it seems to be picking up steam. The year I joined the Church, my wife and I had been the only catechumens at a parish of almost 400 families. That was common back then. We used to refer to the Orthodox Church as “America’s best kept secret.”

Not anymore, a fact born out by an article entitled Young men leaving traditional churches for ‘masculine’ Orthodox Christianity in droves. The focus of the article, based on the title, is contrasting the “masculine” Orthodox Faith versus the “feminized” environment of the mega churches. There is truth in that perspective. However, such a focus can be an unnecessary distraction as it is limited and easily mischaracterized. The quote below, for me, really gets to the heart of the matter:

But he says he takes great comfort in the 2,000-year history of each tradition: “There is a sense of structure, of continuity … It’s the exact same. It hasn’t changed. It’s not going to change.”

 

“I think there are a lot of Protestants who want a more traditional, grounded, historical faith, and I think for young people especially, it makes sense because so much else in our life is changing all the time.”

Imagine telling people that your church represents the timeless faith of Jesus Christ, but that you don’t even know how you are going to celebrate Christmas from year to year? Worse, imagine telling people that authentic Christian worship can be described like this (from the same article):

“Christianity in North America has become extremely emotional,” Wee Sit, who was raised Evangelical, told The Post. “Going to Evangelical worship services, I found it to be like emotionally driven rock concerts, with the lifting up of the hands.”

 

“Modern Christianity … has become very watered down,” Wee Sit said. “People go to church on Sunday, they sing a few songs, they listen to an hour-long sermon that seems more like a TED talk, and then they go home, and they just go on with their lives.”

A TED talk combined with a rock concert. After which, you go home to a house devoid of Christian art and in which you practice no Christian Traditions. You don’t even pray regularly. At some point, you show back up for another concert / TED talk at a “church” that looks like a community center with a Starbucks in the lobby. Of course this paradigm is failing. To be honest, the faster it fails the better.

Now Protestants reading an article like this will sometimes accuse Orthodox converts of chasing mere aesthetics. We are just looking for the beautiful art, incense, and feeling of tradition. Sometimes converts are accused of having political motivations. They are nothing more than social conservatives looking for allies in the so-called “Culture Wars”. Some of those motivations play a part in some conversions. But that is never the whole story. Below you can see an excerpt from a testimony of one man who found Orthodoxy later in life. (Read the rest here.)

I spent 30 years as a typical American evangelical, tongue talking, roaring like lions, apostles prophesying over me, then due to eyes opening to bad doctrines, I transitioned to Calvary Chapel, Dutch Reformed, Alliance Church denominations always searching for the true Church. I was a worship leader, guitarist, and electric guitarist for some large churches/worship teams. I taught apologetics, as well. And I was dying on the vine the last 10 years as evangelical. I knew Jesus alone has the words of life, but from what I could tell, His church was an absolute mess so I stopped attending for about a year. My son, who spent a few years in full time ministry at one of the Calvary Chapels we attended served as the worship leader, suddenly quit and quit Jesus too. Heartbreaking… he went back to university in a career change move and ended up in his senior year studying abroad in Rome where he was significantly impacted by presence of 1600+ years of Church history, icons, and relics of saints he had read about. St Clement of Rome’s Byzantine-style Basilica where his icon and relics are, particularly stood out to him. From that point, while he respected the Roman Church, he ended up looking into Orthodoxy and began a search that lead him to St Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral. After attending a few times, he invited me, his Catholic hating dad to attend a service, which I emphatically rejected and then shamed him for his attending. After about a month of pestering me, I agreed to go with him, one time only. I still remember walking across the parking lot and telling him this was it as I was observing women in head coverings and men, a lot of them, also attending. As soon and the doors opened up, I stood there with mouth agape. I was overwhelmed by the presence of God in a way I have never experienced. I stopped being concerned about anything that I thought was godless idolatry, and Constantine paganism because I saw people loving one another as the very ancient Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom culminated with the Eucharist. I had preconceived notions that Orthodoxy was Roman Catholicism dressed up in eastern garb and biblical illiteracy. I was wrong and knew it immediately. I never left. Over the next several months, as I became a Catechumen, my questions and concerns were alleviated by my Priest and I embraced the greatest adventure of my life: I was becoming a real Christian in a Church that happens to be The Church….

Young men aren’t looking for a masculine church. Though by joining Orthodoxy, they will discover true masculinity. Young women are not looking for some place to tell them to cover their heads. Though by doing so, they will begin to learn how to truly be women. No one is looking for just “smells and bells” or beautiful art or political allies or nice holiday services or just tradition for its own sake.

Americans are hungry for an authentic experience of God. As it happens, an authentic experience of God involves all your senses, your entire life, along with the Traditions taught by the Apostles and preserved by the Orthodox Church.

Come and see.