COULD A DISUNITED CHURCH WITH A SECTARIAN 
MENTALITY AND INSUFFICIENT OBEDIENCE TO 
OUR LORD'S INJUNCTION TO BRING ITS
UNASSIMILATED FAITH TO THOSE
NOT EMBRACING IT BE 
PLEASING TO GOD?

©  2004 by Orchid Land Publications

[20040511]

      It is evident that a divided Church with divided priorities--whether on behalf of some ethnic group in Europe or Asia or in a misguided endeavor to assimilate truths embraced for two millenniums along with long-held ways of worshiping to those of other religions in our land--is in danger of having lost its way.  Smaller religious groups than the Orthodox in our land receive a lot more media attention.  While Eastern Orthodoxy is growing faster than some of the radical groups on the antitraditionalist Christian left, schisms continue apace.  

     What is to be done when an attempt is made to constitute a new parish in a historically non-Orthodox locale?  Should it heed those who want an ingrown group heedless of Christ's words quoted above and alien to the practice of SS. Kyrill and Methodios and those who subsequently founded missions in half of the time-zones of the world and Christianized Alaska on the North American continent?  
     For that matter, will we defend the needy, the sick, the elderly; or will we be silent about making war, wasting our country's treasury and environment, and the other ills that beset the secular domain?

     Which GOSPEL will be TAUGHT?  

• Will the Patristic Faith along with ways for applying it to today's situation be taught; or will assimilation to and syncretism with local religions be promoted? 

• Will love prevail?

• Will the all-holy Trinity be worshiped in accord with our traditions; or will we install chairs, an organ, stained-glass windows, etc.?  

• Will Bible studies (using the Greek Bible) be held and visitors invited to attend; or will mistranslations and misinterpretations (heresies) and latter-day deviations be presented to parishioners and to outside inquirers as truth?  

• Will parishioners be educated enough to do what St. Peter enjoined with any non-Orthodox who may be curious about holy Orthodoxy; or will ignorance prevail among the laity?

• Will the services and prayers be properly explained; or will obscurity and unnecessary compromises prevail?  Will beliefs and practices get explain, or learned by rote in a catechetical fashion?

• Will our options toward our community and our nation and the world be clearly laid out; or will the parish look inward?  

• Will going back to our roots mean the Fathers; or will it have ethnic connotations?

• Will the parish look outward to gain new members; or will it retreat from Christ's Great Commission?  

• Will the priest working for a living and his family be shielded from want and isolation in a new culture; or will they be left on their own?   

• Will the Church at large provide the necessary funding till the parish finds its feet so that local giving can continue to help missions, teaching, and good causes elsewhere as well as locally; or will the great picture have to suffer for the sake of an ingrown local sect? 

• Will ethnic and sectarian concerns prevail over Christ's mission; or will ignorance and legalisms dominate?

• Will coöperation and outgoingness prevail; or will parish politics and domination by the unbiblical agendas of a few take over?

• Conversely, will truth and goodness be sacrificed simply for the sake of harmony; or will the integrity of belief and worship and doing good be defended the way the holy Martyrs felt compelled to act on their behalf?  Will the divine plan be discerned and receive the parish's loyalty?

• Will we counter among our parishioners false premises about our holy religion?

• Will we be afraid or ashamed or unable to state the Biblical truths (e.g. John 6:53-54; Phlp. 2:13) held by the Orthodox; or will we seem to submit to non-Patristic and Western absurdities:  Infants born guilty of Adam's sin; icons of the all-high Father or of the Trinity; the pagan teaching of the Greek philosophers that the human soul is immortal by nature rather than by the uncreated Energies of ontological (non-juridical) Grace; the idea that the LOGOS is not the Reason and Wisdom of God as well as the Creator of all that has been made; or that the LOGOS Himself would commit a counternatural act by end the existence through death of the creatures He made according to His Icon and according to the Assimilation (Gen. 1:26); a non-energetic Western concept of Grace and an irresoluble conflict between Grace and good works because of assimilations to either of the Western deviations from the original truth concerning Grace; . . .  

      We cannot play God.  We must let the Holy Spirit prevail over the ills that can so easily dominate souls that refuse to see the whole picture.  The bread and butter issues cannot be ignored, to be sure; but legalisms and ingrowness can be withstood with whatever means happen to be at our disposal.  The history of Orthodoxy in America allows us to predict these very dangers.  We can rise to the ontological phronema ("mentality, outlook, world view") of the Greek Fathers, or we can sink to the juridical mediævalisms that contradict what St. Paul, the other Apostles, the early apologetes, and the Orthodox Fathers said in denouncing and warning against errors general and specific--not least the legalistic (juridical, canonical) view of doctrine and dogma.   Will the energetic view of the authors of the Greek Scriptures and the Fathers prevail; or will a Hebraic and Westernized juridicalism prevail?  

      THIS PAGE IS A WORK STILL IN PROGRESS