On cultural integration

Cultural integration is always a difficult subject. Yesterday, I posted a soundtrack of an Appalachian-style megalynarion sung by the monks of Saint John of San Francisco and Shanghai monastery. It has an Appalachian sound, but conforms to all the tonal rules of the OCA. Today, see this video from New Zealand. It gives a great example of the integration of Maori and English community. Whatever may have happened in the past, New Zealand is a better example of cultural integration than either Australia or the United States of America. Please do not look at what happens in politics. That will give you a false idea of the level of cultural integration. Look instead at weddings, sports events, and funerals. See the video below:

In the second video, you can watch a military funeral procession led by a traditional Anglican vicar. Yet, the members of the military are waiting with a haka. In the USA, I fear that there would be multiple factions protesting and claiming that this is somehow wrong. Yet, this is a great example of cultural integration, where both cultures contribute something to legitimate funeral rites. In the case of New Zealand, the haka does not imply a theological commitment. It is an honor from the native culture. In the USA it would be much harder nowadays to have such a cultural integration because USA Native Americans have had a tendency to claim that every one of their ceremonies is religious. It is an open question as to whether pre-colonist USA Native Americans would have held the same view and would have been equally strong in claiming that all is religious.

Regardless, one of the great challenges we have among the Orthodox is that of cultural integration. There are some among the Orthodox who would claim that the Orthodox could not build a Gothic temple because that is not Byzantine. Sadly, there are many among the Orthodox who view anything that is different from 14th century Constantinople or Damascus or Jerusalem with a high degree of suspicion and with the unspoken claim that Holy Tradition stopped around the 15th century. They would deny that in a theological debate, but clearly follow that dictum whenever they speak of the Divine Liturgy or of various other practices outside of a theological debate. There are also many who say that the shortening of the Divine Liturgy and Orthros, beginning in the 19th century is a violation of Holy Tradition as is the building of Temples with steeples instead of cupulas.

In effect those who make the claims above could have easily made them against the Slavic shift in music (and do make them). They make the same claims against the Western Liturgy, and they were making them before the Council of Trullo. But, that is not how the Early Church Fathers behaved all the way up to the Great Schism. For those who oppose the changes, they almost always oppose them based on a groundless traditionalism which has nothing to do with Holy Tradition. I say groundless because if their objections were consistent, then they would object to the iconostas, which did not fully appear until after the Great Schism. But, they do not. Rather, they pick and choose traditions to find something that pleases them.

But, the Orthodox Church’s future in America is partially dependent upon the Orthodox adapting to this culture rather than trying to replicate a foreign culture. The two videos above are an example of appropriate cultural integration without losing the Christian influence. How we adapt to them is unclear at times. But, we need to reject any approach that requires that we look like a Greek parish on Mount Athos, or an Antiochian Parish in Damascus, etc. That is neither faithful to Holy Tradition nor faithful to the past history of the Church.