Cultural Orthodoxy

Culture (Wikipedia) is a somewhat vaguely defined term that describes an integrated system of behavior between people that share a similar experience. For a sense of culture to be personal it cannot, as a rule, be someone else's culture. For example, parents often try to tell kids what their culture is, but it is impossible for people separated by a generation to truly share the same exact culture. Times change and, even if they share the same place of birth, genes, and social structure, two people will have a different cultural experience that is unique to the time they live in. A father who grew up in the 60's would be quite different from his (even if otherwise identical) son who grows up in the 90's. 

I think it is safe to say that while culture is shared by a group, the perception of that culture is both individualized and multifactorial. Each person is affected by many different cultural factors, some of which they share with some people but not others. To me the best description of culture is this Venn diagram of all the different cultural influences on a given individual:

In this very simplified example, this individual is influenced significantly by his race, somewhat by his family values, and to a certain extent by his religion. There is even some room left for entirely idiosyncratic individualism, whose perceived extent is in and of itself quite cultural; a Western minded person with a more independent spirit would be much more likely to make this space in the Venn diagram much larger than someone from an Eastern culture that is more collectivist by nature. It might be a beneficial exercise for all of us to sit down and think about what cultural influences we have and to what extent we are influenced by them. If we did so, each of our Venn diagrams may not be completely different, but they also will never be identical. Like a snowflake, our Venn diagram will be as unique as we are.

Now the next layer of complexity comes when these unique Venn diagrams start interacting with each other - except we don't exactly wear buttons that identify our biases and cultural influences. It would be nice if we did, but we don't; we leave each other to figure it out for ourselves, and quite frankly we may not even understand the true nature of our own inner selves. What you find is that these complex beings with varying degrees of self-awareness end up having to interact with each other and needing to find a way to sort out their differences. We may see two people with a nearly identical Venn diagram in that they grow up in the same geographic region, with a similar cultural environment, family structure, etc. that are unable to coexist peacefully simply because of a difference in religion (the Middle East presents us ample examples). In contrast, you may see two people who may otherwise seem completely different from each other that are able to manage to get along very well, simply because they go to the same undergraduate university and have learned to tolerate and maybe even celebrate cultural differences.

So why have I not yet mentioned Christ in a spiritual blog? Because this, unfortunately, is what may happen in a culturally oriented church. There is a clarity that the parishioners are Christian, but nobody in life wants to be "just another ..." anything really. Would you want to be just another "lawyer" or would you rather tell people you are a "corporate attorney, specializing in tax law, with a subspecialty in executive compensation?" It may not sound exciting, but it sure does sound more impressive. Christians acknowledge other Christian sects by their profession of the creed, but we have a tendency to say or at least think "yes, I am a Christian, but our sect is special because we have [fill in the blank]." Rather than do what CS Lewis does in Mere Christianity and focus on the core foundation that we all agree on, we have a tendency to rather focus on the window dressing that, forgive me, to a great extent doesn't matter.

When does this become a problem? Well, first, we know that in the medical field there is such a thing as an asymptomatic problem. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are two well known examples of medical conditions that people have without knowing. In time these problems may result in symptoms, but at that point the treatment is more difficult and potentially irrelevant in the face of larger problems created by these previously treatable issues. Similarly, the cultural undertones of an Orthodox Church are not necessarily bad - my father of confession calls them the "salt and pepper" that add flavor to the Church. However, when these cultural undertones begin to take a primacy in the identity of the Church, it becomes difficult to figure out what elements of the perceived dogma are Christian and which are cultural. Once again, these may not even be noticed and may remain asymptomatic as long as the group is homogenous and everyone involved accepts and even embraces these cultural elements of the Church. The problem comes when there is a culture shift that challenges the status quo - this can be a change in the cultural mileu that the Church resides in, such as the so called Arab Spring; this can be a change in the location of the parishioners who bring their religion to their respective land of immigration; and this can be challenge for an individual who does not personally identify himself as the same culture as the majority of the people with whom he shares Communion.

The question I am (finally) building up to asking is: what matters more? The Church or the church? Is it the Bride of Christ that is our vehicle to heaven, or is it the physical building where the people go to pray? You may say they are equally important but to me that is like saying that an engineering firm's building is as important as the engineers. What about the rules of the church, are they important? Again I need to question whether these rules are related to our relationship with God or our relationship to our cultural heritage. For example, the use of a certain language may have a cultural significance but is of no intrinsic theological or spiritual value. Does that mean we should get rid of everything that is cultural in favor of focusing only on the spiritual? No, I don't think so. There is no reason to say "I love chicken so much that every time someone cooks chicken it needs to be made the same way." Yes, there are certain tenets that most chefs follow when making chicken, like the temperature of doneness, but these general rules allow for a great deal of flexibility that allows for us to appreciate the genius of each individual chef. The Christian Church has many churches, each of which has a special flavor and nuance that adds to the complexity and character of the Church as a whole. Trying to sweep away and remove all the cultural elements is not progress but rather oversimplification; in the other extreme, when we dwell on the cultural and miss the spiritual we have then turned the church into a country club or special interest group.

For those of us that are in a cultural Church I pray that we understand the difference between our Church and our church. I pray that we try to focus on the Church and our relationship with Christ, and try not to fall into the trap of letting the cultural cart lead the spiritual horse.  For the people visiting or joining a cultural Orthodox church I ask for your forgiveness - we really do want to welcome you, we really do want to share in an Ecumenical Spirit of Christianity, and we really want to focus ourselves on Christ - but we are also humans with very complex Venn diagrams and multiple influences that we do not always understand about ourselves. May God help us all to increase our self awareness and even more importantly help us to lose ourselves in Him so that we may find each other.