Background
1. A Cultural Divide
2. Impact of the Cultural
Clash
3. A Vision
1. A Cultural Divide
Byzantine culture (300–1200 a.d.) manifested a harmonious system. All of its branches of knowledge and experience, including philosophy, natural sciences, humanities, aesthetics, and arts formed a unified world of perception that was rooted in religion. The intellectual disciplines and the arts found a harmonious home in the Church. The arts — in particular, iconography, hymnography, and singing — reached their highest forms of expression in and for the worship experience. They grew from within the Church and were permeated by the spirit of religion and the system of thought connected with that religion. In turn, they shaped the style and direction of artistic expression outside the Church.
Modern European culture (1400 a.d.–present), on the other hand, is typified by a greater degree of autonomy among its branches. Each discipline develops its own course separate from the other components of the culture. Thus, religion, ethics, law, science, philosophy, and art tend to function independently of each other. For instance, the laws of the land may not express or support the religious bias of its citizens. Or, a scientist's or performing artist's religious beliefs may have no impact on his professional endeavors, and the fruits of his efforts may have no connection to his worship experience. We may like or dislike the independence of the facets of our culture, but we have become so accustomed to this mode of detached existence that the idea of an alternative is hard to imagine.
American society, as a product of Western European culture, harbors a seemingly inescapable clash of cultures. Orthodox Christianity generates a homogeneous culture, as evidenced by the Byzantine model and its ethnic offshoots. Western Christianity has bred a culture of diversity and pluralism, witnessed by the multitude of present-day Christian denominations and diffusion of ethnic elements into the general fabric of American society.
Eastern Orthodoxy derives its identity from national culture, whereas Western Christianity adheres to a policy of international appeal, to the Roman concept of the inhabited world. Eastern culture tends toward conservation, whereas Western culture thrives on the notion of progress. The one is mystic and experiential; the other is rational and intellectual. The one elevates community and anonymity, the other individuality. In music, the one cultivates programmatic, word-bound forms, the other abstract forms; etc. The juxtaposition of these two cultures is a fact of life in America, and presents a conflict for the Orthodox Christian.
2. Impact of the Cultural Clash
The impact of the cultural clash on American Orthodoxy is essentially negative. On the one hand, the ethnic identity of the Arabic, Greek, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, and other ethnic Orthodox communities remains viable; as long as the flow of political and economic refugees continues to replenish the critical mass of each community, helping to maintain a sense of national pride, they will flourish and add an exotic presence to the American scene. On the other hand, they are all, in the end, faced with the looming question: To be or not to be? How will the onslaught of global trends, multiculturalism, and American popular culture affect each of these groups two or three generations into the American dream? The difficulty of preserving the mother tongue, the rise in mixed marriages, dwindling parish membership, inadequate religious education and the challenges of recruiting clergy are real, ongoing concerns aggravated by the negative effects of the cultural clash.
For all the ethnic groups and jurisdictions, what lasting cultural elements might be entered into a historical account of present-day, Orthodox life in America? No doubt, the historians will provide ample space for the local color elements of food and drink, costume and dance. But what truly noteworthy elements of high culture — religious, literary, or artistic — might provide evidence of a thriving, religiously based cultural life? Where are the poetry readings, theater groups, literary discussion groups, choral societies, and folk ensembles that, only a few generations ago, adorned our communities, and indeed, brought and kept the faithful at the steps of the Holy Temple? The answer seems grim: the contributions of today's various Orthodox communities to an Orthodox culture are minimal. One may argue that Orthodox culture is in the dying phase of a prolonged decline.
The negative impact of the cultural clash on American Orthodoxy is amplified by a general decline of culture in America. Lowered educational standards, the thinning of the core curriculum, replacement of classical studies with watered down courses fitting the new multicultural ideal, the decline of the classical arts and the rise of popular forms, and the growth of decadence and profanity in the classical idioms, are indications of a society concerned more with profits, creature comforts, and immediate gratification than with the human soul, beauty, and the arts as a moral and ethical force.
3. Vision of an Orthodox Cultural Life
What might an Orthodox cultural life look like?
First and foremost, it would consist of events conceived and scheduled in congruence with the Church Calendar: they would complement rather than distract from the fasts and feasts of the Church.
Second, the events would present the absolute best in terms of performance quality. They would offer a product that would make the ethnic community at hand unreservedly proud and, just as importantly, they would attract and enlighten a discriminating outside listener.
Third, the events would seek to move and instruct, not merely entertain, the listener; they would be, if not explicitly spiritual in content, cathartic, thought provoking, and educational. They would be constructed with thematic unity and purpose.
Finally, for the first time in history, we are performing and experiencing artistic works created primarily by artists of the past. A new cultural life guided by the Byzantine concept of unity and rootedness in the Faith would foster and motivate a creative environmentóa place for living Orthodox authors, composers, and artists to share their creative endeavors.