Orthodox Shmorthodox

I am fascinated by Orthodoxy. I'll admit it. It draws me. Until I fully understand, from several sources, the split between Rome and the East, I'll be restless. Yet, yesterday, after thought-provoking interactions with Fr. John Heckers in the Narthax at Epiphany, I listened to a CD teaser called Hymned on the way up to see Aspen gold with my wife above Georgetown. The first song was a paen to the singer's grandmother, whose rendition of "In the Sweet By and By" he fondly remembered and to whom he credited his personal faith in Christ. Isn't the faith of his Grandmother, lover of Christ, a part of the "true" church in some deep way? Yes, I think it is.


Although there were Treaty of Tordesillas Catholic incursions of the faith into America, Christianity came to North America through Protestant roots and spread West. Over the centuries, its development into its currently realized secular expression has created the vacuum which the Orthodox now come to fill.

Everything in our deeply intelligent creation seems tied to everything else. In plant communities, there is a complexity that is simple. Plants are never found alone, but in community. Each member of the community somehow intermingled and dependent on the others. From no plants in an area, communities migrate in in sequence. Vegetation geographers call this vegetation succession. Open soil (let's not think about how open soil happens right here, please) is first invaded by plants who tolerate direct sun and dry, even poor soil. They break the bare soil and cover it rapidly. Many call them weeds, much like we look at dandelions. In breaking the soil, they begin to create micro-climates that allow other plants to come in. Eventually, the entire first community of "weeds" is moved out, replaced by plants more suited to the soil and climate, in denser, more complex community. Tall and short, acid resistant and alkaline resistant, drought resistant and water tolerant. Life flourishes this way, but it also has a redundancy built into it with variations that can come to the fore when drought comes, when rain is excessive, when winters are severe, when warming is dominant.

The plant community is the expression of life. Each plant had its place and importance in the evolution of the biome. Even the animals, presumably disruptive, have a place, tightly woven into the intricate symbiosis.

As I listened to this man sing of his grandmother's faith, I began to look at the presence of the Orthodox and the Christianity of America as an incidence of development of God's world and the achievement of His purpose after the pattern of plants. There is no mistake here. There is no imperfection. The frontier needed Evangelism, and the traditional, locally focussed Orthodox were not adapted for that purpose. They got to America as an exceptionally sheltered and exotic species. To grow, the Orthodox needed an environment that gave a higher value to tradition and structure than has been available in America until now. What kind of soil do the Orthodox need to survive and thrive? The Orthodox need a time of apostasy, doctrinal confusion, humanist philosophy which denies God, and openness to mysterium tremendum due to disaffection with mundane life. This social soil is now prepared for their ascent. So, Orthodoxy is replacing earlier simpler extensions of the kingdom. But does this make Orthodoxy "true" and Methodism "false" in Christ. I don't think so, anymore than it would make sense to say that dandelions are "true" and creosote bushes are "false". The full expression of every place on earth will include a mature Christian form, suited to the place and time and people and history and climate (physical and intellectual). God knows what this will look like, in His plan. I know that a community with many varieties seems to be part of everything else in creation. Why should our religious expression be any different.

One of my professors was A. W. Kuchler. He taught me about plant communities and succession. His vegetation maps were of "natural potential vegetation". He wanted to show what the planet would look like when succession reached stasis. I think that the stasis he sought was a wild goose, personally. The flaw in his concept was that fact that "change" is part of the system, so communities evolve and change in response. Most faculty and grad students in the geography department thought his "natural potential vegetation" was a mystical concept. In order for it to have any plausability, it seemed that man needed to be removed from the planet. But, unlike current environmentalists, we didn't all believe that man was unnatural. He was just the most disruptive species on our planet. All the other species had their disruptive effects, too. And, since God made us all, I think He knows what is "natural", and would certainly include man in His equation. Like Kuchler, I think that Fr. John Heckers, is viewing Orthodoxy as a potential natural state of fully developed Christianity. I think in doing so, he is forgetting the role of the dandelion, and its beauty. It fulfills a purpose in God's plan, like the Methodists and Baptists, whose purpose was to bring the word of God to America. The dandelion brings plant life. The "offspring of the whore of Babylon" brought Christ to America. They weren't the only species, but they dominated their phytogeocenase for awhile. But succession in religious expression continues. According to Kuchler, all microclimates and megaclimates have a potential natural succession stasis they are moving toward. Fr. Heckers thinks that Orthodoxy is that stasis in Christianity. He might be right, for this place and time. But he should not deride the species that prepared the soil and which created the social microclimate that Orthodoxy now enjoys and in which it thrives. This too was God's action, not the mistake he thinks he sees, but the preparation for the ground he exists on.