Western Rite Orthodoxy and Learning My Own American Culture

We had an all-hands meeting for my company on Roman Catholic Ash Wednesday. Multiple Catholics showed up with their foreheads decorated with ash crosses. During our breaks, I gently teased my friends and co-workers that they were a week early. We all had a chuckle over that. A week later, as a Western Rite Orthodox Christian, I would be wearing my own ash cross.  The timing may have been different, but we were all participating in the same ritual to mark the beginning of Lent. The same ritual our ancestors had participated in. They understood me, and I understood them. It was just one more way that becoming Western Rite, after 20 years of Orthodoxy, had grounded me in my own culture.

I grew up Evangelical. Even as a child, I realized that I was disconnected from the historic Christian faith. For a child who read history for fun, that was pretty easy to figure out. For a kid in a small town, however, there really was nothing to be done about it. Every church available to me was one flavor of Protestant or another. I drifted way from any faith during college. After graduation, I taught for a few years in Eastern Europe. It was there that I truly fell in love with historic Christianity. I talked about that in this post. My second year in country, I started regularly attending mass and learning more about liturgical Christian worship. The Roman Church there was very traditional. The spiritual life of the people was amazing. They’d stop off at the cathedral to pray on their way to work. Their faith was profound.

Coming home to the United States, I first tried to convert to Roman Catholicism. That did not work out as I discussed in this post. Almost everything that had impressed me about the Catholic Church in Eastern Europe was missing at the parishes I visited. The worship reminded me of Evangelical sing-alongs. Many of the people seemed indifferent to their faith. The clergy abuse scandal had not yet broken as a story, but it was clear that not all was good with the Roman Church in this country. As much as I tried, I simply could not overlook all the issues.

Rainbow Mass

By the grace of God, I found a local Greek Orthodox parish. Between the Greek Archdiocese and the OCA, I spent 20 years in Eastern Rite parishes. I was married in the Eastern Rite. Five children and two godchildren were baptized in the Eastern Rite. I am very grateful for the blessings I received.

In fact, had COVID not intervened, I may never have left my Greek parish. Like most Greek parishes in the U.S., my local parish went full-blown COVIDian. Closing for far too long, then re-opening with massive restrictions, including masks on 2 year-olds. It was quite disheartening. It was then that my family and I reached out to the Western Rite parish in a nearby, heavily Republican, county. They were fully open and operating perfectly normally. I wrote about that in this post.

It was tough at first to attend liturgy in the Western Rite. My only liturgical experience for the past 20 years had been the Eastern Rite. For my cradle Orthodox children, everything was different and confusing. Our oldest son eventually went back to the Greek Church, even though as we discussed in this post, it was still full-blown COVIDian well into 2021. The Western Rite was just too different for him to handle.

The rest of us persevered. Despite the disorientation we felt each Sunday, we really wanted to go to church as normally as possible – kissing icons, lighting candles, open attendance, no masks, no social distancing. So we stuck with the Western Rite. Then something amazing happened. I came to realize that I was understanding the roots of my own American culture much better than ever before.

The Orthodox Church is the foundation of Western Civilization. Christendom, East and West, for 1,000 years was together in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. The map below shows Christendom at the beginning of the 11th Century.

Christendom in 1000 A.D.

All these Christians had a common chalice. A common Faith. Even so, liturgical practices differed geographically. That was perfectly okay in 1000 A.D. It should still be perfectly okay. Unity in Faith does not necessitate complete uniformity in practice. Never has. Never will.

Unfortunately, over a long period of time, the Orthodox Faith was largely lost in Western Europe. The replacement was what we now know as Roman Catholicism. Despite the accumulation of errors introduced by Rome, much of the patrimony of the Orthodox Faith was still there. In the 16th Century, the Roman Church had strayed so far from Orthodoxy that it provoked the Protestant Reformation. That “reform” movement led to the birth of many “churches” who dispensed entirely with what remained of Orthodox Faith and liturgical practices. Not everyone followed that course.

Given the way history is taught in the United States, many of us have simply missed how important Anglo-Catholicism was to the founding of our nation. A high percentage of English colonists were Anglican prior to 1776. In multiple colonies, the Anglican Church was officially established by law. This state of affairs continued, by the way, in some American states all the way to the mid-19th Century. (The Federal Constitution did not prohibit states from having officially established churches.)

The Anglican Church at that time was very “Catholic” in practice and Theology, which was greatly distressing to the Puritans – a group that gets entirely too much focus in our history books. The Anglo-Catholic tradition was so strong in America that 57% of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were Anglican. Our national cathedral in Washington, The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, is an American cathedral of the Episcopal Church. The cathedral is a Neo-Gothic design closely modeled on English Gothic style of the late fourteenth century.

The Roman Catholic Church was also important in the development of the United States. Its cultural influence has been vast. The Roman Church is the largest Christian body in this country and has been for decades.

Anglo-Catholicism is the cultural blueprint of America, even for those of us that grew up Evangelical. It is in the background at all times, even affecting our use of words. After all, why call it “Christmas” when you don’t have a mass? That is just how our language, English, works because of the Western Orthodoxy that shaped it. Many more examples could be given.

Had I never become Western Rite, I would never have understood how deeply embedded Anglo-Catholicism is in our culture. History is my passion. Very early in my first year of attending a Western Rite parish, I realized that I was participating in feasts and liturgical practices I had previously only read about in history books. I found myself exploring, for the first time, the rich history of Saints from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and France. These are the nations from which my ancestors had come to America.

For me, it was like having a cultural blindfold removed. The Greek and OCA parishes had taught me how to be an Orthodox Christian. Thanks be to God for that. But they had done so within a foreign cultural context. At those parishes, Orthodoxy went hand-in-hand with cultural practices that were totally alien to me as an American. The traditional feasts unique to the Western Church were neither celebrated,  nor even mentioned. The Western Saints simply did not exist. The “West” and its religious tradition were often denigrated as being lesser than the “East”.

Several Russian and Greek friends have, mostly out of curiosity, visited our Western Rite parish. They did not care for it. In the slightest. I took no offense. I understood completely. While it may be their Faith, it is not their culture. It is alien to them and always will be. Whether it remains alien to their children and grand-children growing up in a Western cultural context is an entirely different question. 

Becoming Western Rite allowed me to keep the pure Orthodox Faith within the context of my own cultural heritage. Instead of constantly learning about someone else’s culture, I now get to learn about and experience my own. 

ugly-catholic-altarWestern Civilization is a wreckage. Largely so because the Churches that should have guarded its cultural patrimony have given up on it. They have become the churches of “what’s happening now”. Even the once mighty Roman Church has fled the field of cultural battle. After Vatican II, Roman liturgy, art, architecture, faith, and morals are mere shadows of their former selves.

Eastern Churches cannot save Western Civilization. You can’t save that which you don’t love. Many of the Orthodox jurisdictions in America do not love Western Civilization. They seek to shelter their flock from it by keeping alive what are, for this country, foreign traditions. At the same time, progressive, “Orthodox” academics seek to surrender the true Orthodox Faith to a modern, debased version of Western Civilization in the name of “democracy” or “LGBTQ rights” or “feminism” or whatever.

Both approaches are wrong. Surely, the Eastern Rite Orthodox parishes should continue their work for Christ and His Kingdom. The academics should be ignored. But, at the same time, perhaps we should consider how best to rescue Western Civilization from its current malaise?

I have often read that the Western Rite should be kept around for former Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc. That is an important reason for the Western Rite’s existence, but far too limited in scope. The Western Rite is the reclamation and purification of Western Civilization by the Orthodox Church. It is a mission of ultimate importance given to us by God.

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

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