Sometimes, the need to respond to the calls of authentic Orthodoxy (especially in ecclesiology and evangelism) need to occur whether membership and finances demand it or not. Even if an Orthodox parish is numbered in the hundreds instead of the tens, and the balance sheet is seven or eight figures instead of three or four. God gives the increase, but in the fallen world, decrease is the norm.

For the moment, I'll say that evangelism and outreach, if motivated by survival (from watching falling statistics), will probably not work, and will certainly be morally wrong.

When I mentioned "Balkanization" in the last post, I was referring specifically to the alienation between American Orthodox jurisdictions/communities that has happened as a consequence of disagreements between our mother churches in the old country.

I think that language and ethnic custom are secondary concerns. I certainly do not subscribe to the notion that there is anything particularly holy about two or three or four old languages. That sort of thinking is suspiciously like the agenda of Cyril and Methodius' Franko-Roman persecutors, who insisted that church speech should only be done in Latin, Greek or Hebrew (the 3 languages inscribed above Jesus on the Cross). Cyril and Methodius were committed to the evangel, which demands the vernacular. Their commitment, by the way, did not extinguish their own language: they frequently used Greek words to fill in the gaps where the Slavic language had no meaningful term (e.g., "axios," "epitrachelion).

I am not proposing any sort of accommodation to hyper-modernity (which was suggested by other commenters, sometimes in creepy oracular diction). My main point was that I am asking for a "hierarchy" of affiliation, that we American Orthodox people would see ourselves as 1) first, the Body of Christ; then 2) as the Orthodox Church; then 3) as the American community of the Orthodox Church; and then, and only then, 4) an ethnic sub-category of the American Orthodox community.

I understand that this makes various hierarchical commitments complicated. I will say this in black and white: it is melancholic and deeply disturbing when hierarchical directions are handed down that restrain ordained clergy from praying with each other or canonical Orthodox communities from worshiping with each other. When American clergy are seen and heard launching into invective about who is persecuting who in Eastern Europe and which Patriarchate is at fault, then that dread warning comes into play — the one about making children stumble. and the blind leading the blind.

Rest assured (I say this particularly to my ACROD friends), I will continue to sing "O kto kto" on December 6 (now that I'm new calendar). I will sing "Christos Voskrese" joyfully, and sing "Plotiju" in tears, every year. I long for a better unity in our Orthodox community— but a unity that cherishes difference in heritage, in location, in each community. The demand for uniformity is not Orthodox, not spiritual, not humane or even human.

Every sermon, every Scripture reading, every "I believe" will be in definitively modern English, completely accessible to the person on the street, as understandable as I, the celebrant, can possibly make it.

After all, did not the Apostle Paul say this? "If you in a tongue utter speech that is not intelligible,, how will any one know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning; but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. So with yourselves; since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church" (1 Corinthians 14.9-12).

You cannot be a foreigner. Just as the Apostolic Church had to, in synergy with the Holy Spirit, come to a point where Christians did not have to become Jewish first, so we must get to a similar point where we never demand that to become Orthodox, Americans should first become Russian or Greek.

The only true meaning of American Orthodoxy is theosis, the divine-humanity in this country, for the people who live here now in whatever tongue they speak.

Theosis, here in America. In a unified though variegated society coast-to-coast that cares for the poor and desperate and enters every day into the Eighth.