ANCIENT FAITH
Culture
[S]ometimes careful philosophers... have said that Athens and Jerusalem are the two main sources of the Western tradition. This is only because of an unwillingness to recognize the presence in the Western psyche, not only of what it has borrowed from China and India, from Akkadia and Sumeria, from Babylon and Persia, from Syria and Egypt [as well as from Celtic and Germanic cultures], but also of the “Primal Vision” [of paganism] that the West shares with all cultures, and which the modern West... regarded as “primitive” in a perjorative sense. The environmental crisis has reawakened that [primal] vision in the Western consciousness; its central element is the awareness that humanity and the universe are not two distinct entities, but two related elements in an integral whole, that the human being is not such an autonomous, independent, self-sufficient individual as some people thought and taught, and that the skin of the individual is not the boundary of his or her existence. The Native Americans [including the Inuit evangelized by St. Herman of Alaska] as well as others in Europe still hold on to aspects of this Primal Vision.
Paulos Mar Gregorios ,“Gregory of India” 1922-†1996
A Light Too Bright: The Enlightenment Today
In Search of Visionary Community
Cultural crisis comes from 'facing west' instead of ‘facing east’, traditional Church orientation. In Alaska is found Christian American Orthodoxy that faces east, as introduced from the west. (See - The Alaskan Orthodox Mission and Cosmic Christianity and Listen to the Other Guy's Story ) But in the eastern US is found ‘expatriate’ Orthodoxy which has spread to the lower 48, and which came from the east ‘facing west’, looking for the proverbial Realms of Gold.
Real Ancient Faith of true American Orthodoxy fears God but is ‘fearless’ of the world, and consists of ‘christianized’ American ‘pagan’ spirituality where such spirituality has points of commonality with Christianity. On the other hand, expatriate Orthodoxy is ‘traditionalist’ rather than ‘traditional’, clinging fearfully out of insecurity to a ‘culture’ which is of another place, and thereby ‘dead’, not living. Such clinging is ludicrous, because until it is Christianized, all human culture springs from and is rooted in the earth, not in externals of language, dress, cuisine, 'religion', etc.
Further cultural delusion is created by modern ‘culture’, which is actually anti-cultural (sub)urban ‘consumerism’ that regards ‘happiness-seeking’ as the meaning and purpose of life, instead of as ‘spiritual sickness’. Blind to real meaning and purpose of life as spiritual journey toward communion with God, modernity indulges ‘happiness seeking sickness’ as ‘cultural’, as a way of human living, and in doing so brainwashes humanity into ‘thinking’ it can live ‘above’ the earth like a spaceman in a spacesuit, as if humanity can exist in a vacuum, capable of ‘creating’ its life support system from thin air of the ‘universe’, from ‘matter’ apart from God and human interconnection with Creation (Cosmos), by way of ‘technology’ whether from the earth or from some lifeless rock of a planet (should the earth be exhausted by human parasitism). See Quatsi Trilogy by Godfrey Reggio.
In modernity, any ‘culture’ can be ‘multinational’ and ‘global’, transported ‘internationally’ wherever one wants to ‘live’. Such is possible because actual way of life of modernism is consumerism, while what once was ‘real’ culture is relegated to mere aesthetic ‘thing’ within modern culture, and is no longer a living traditional way of life. In being ignorant and blind to Cosmos (the interconnectedness of God, humanity and all Creation), modernism encourages definition of ‘culture’ quantitatively instead of qualitatively, superficially as some ‘thing’ sentimental and nostalgic instead of as real, living way of human being, wherein humanity shapes the earth as the earth shapes humanity. That ‘shaping’ (‘earning bread’ from sweat of brow by tilling the earth that no longer cooperates with humanity, instead yielding up thorns and thistles) is different in different places due to the earth being diverse in the unity of its human cultural ‘habitats’.
Modern ‘culture’ is about standardization for ‘maximization’ of industrial consumerism; hence ‘chain’ store ‘franchises’, banal ‘big box’ ‘marts’, etc. It doesn't matter where in the world Carmen San Diego goes in modernity, she can always be at ‘home’ with a Mickey D’s on any corner, be it Beijing or Baltimore. There is no Christian ‘unity in diversity’ of culture with such globalism, but rather ‘unity’ in ‘conformity’, in ‘sameness’, the antithesis of Christianity.
Authentic Christian cultural tradition is one where dogma and ritual are not only “Orthodox” but where these are integral to living traditional human way of life interconnected with Cosmos, Divnity and the whole of Creation, itself an icon of God in which something of Him can be seen in All that He has made. Where such integrity exists, human life has real meaning and purpose, and humanity and way of life can be shaped spiritually, just as the earth physically shapes human cultural language, dress, cuisine, etc.
Life Giving Spring proposes creation of culture that positively strives for 'Sacred Materialism' of Orthodox Cosmic Christianity as evident in Alaskan American Orthodoxy, culture that supports praxis and koinonia, Ancient Faith culture and community, as alternative to the common experience today of Western modernism and its eccentricities, of industrial, technological, urban, consumerist definitions of “family” and “community”. The goal of Ancient Faith alternative way of ‘living’ is the transfiguration of the world, especially Western modernity into which much of contemporary humanity is now born, through enabling followers of Ancient Faith more prominently toward prayer and praxis in their life than possible when distracted by the overwhelming influence of modernist urban consumerism.
Objectives toward the goal of reconciling the world to Christ include enabling followers of Ancient Faith to live:
- more proximal to one another to better know each other and bear one another's burdens,
- more simply for lessening overwhelming demand of modernity for cares of the world, for experiencing death to the world,
- more directly in contact with Creation to be its stewards and be reminded of the Creator by the Liturgy of the Cosmos, and
- more productive of most needs so as not to be driven by consumerism (food, shelter, clothing, furnishings, art, education, recreation, entertainment)
Means toward these objectives include intentional community, voluntary simplicity, cohousing, homeschooling, homesteading, permaculture, CSA, self-employment, renewable energy, and fair trade.
Ideally, formation of a monastery would be included in conjunction with an intentional community for laity, for greater support of praxis and for inclusion of single members in koinonia by creating a place for them in the community.
With the modern world becoming increasingly multi-cultural, kononia could address multi-cultures, initially the ancestry of its immediate members and for social outreach, that of members of the surrounding culture. One way in which this might be done is through inclusion of cultural linguistic terms when celebrating liturgically, and ethnic foods when breaking bread together. Public festivals may also be hosted, as is done successfully with the various Greek festivals held in urban locations and with Glendi, sponsored by St. Seraphim Sarov in Santa Rosa, CA, through which many have been introduced to Ancient Faith.
See also Case Study
Ancient Faith Radio – Tradition and Culture
Faith of Our Fathers Anglican Colloquium
The Very Rev. Patrick Henry Reardon
Community nowadays, has been replaced by what has been called mass individualism, which refers at most to conformity to contemporary biases. These contemporary biases change with the frequency of the weather because they are rootless. ...driven, as I've suggested, by market forces and popular entertainment.
University of Athens
Christ and Culture
Constantine Scouteris
[I]n the long course of Christian history the attitude towards culture was not of one direction. Parallel to the positive concern for culture, ...one finds also a rejection of culture.... The same... can be found in several Christian circles, even today. To give just one example, the Mennonites represent... a purely anti-cultural attitude. ...One can find similar examples, ...among the Old Believers in Russia or the Old Calendarists in Greece. In these circles, Christian life is often understood as a life apart from civilization. The negative so to speak attitude towards culture is based on the argument that civilization is not the final goal of human destiny.... One can even argue that it can be perhaps easier to be saved, given that he is free from the yoke of civilization and consequently has the possibility for a clear and direct vision of the Christian truth. The accumulations [of civilization] are often obstacles, not allowing the human person to reach the [goal] of the Gospel.... (1 Cor 3: 19-20)
Greek is the higher life of man
Gilbert Murray
The power of seeing things straight and knowing what is beautiful or noble, quite undisturbed by momentary boredoms or changes of taste, is a very rare gift and never perhaps possessed in full by any one. But there is a profound rule of art, bidding a man in the midst of all his study of various styles or his pursuit of his own peculiar imaginations, from time to time _se retremper dans la nature_--'to steep himself again in nature'. And in something the same way it seems as if the world ought from time to time to steep itself again in Hellenism: that is, it ought, amid all the varying [Western] affectations and extravagances and changes of convention in art and letters, to have some careful regard for those which arose when man first awoke to the meaning of truth and beauty and saw the world freely as a new thing....
Greece realized soon after the Persian war that she had a mission to the world, that Hellenism stood for the higher life of man as against barbarism, for Aretê, or Excellence, as against the mere effortless average. First came the crude patriotism which regarded every Greek as superior to every barbarian; then came reflection, showing that not all Greeks were true bearers of the light, nor all barbarians its enemies; that Hellenism was a thing of the spirit and not dependent on the race to which a man belonged or the place where he was born: then came the new word and conception ανθρωποτης {anthrôpotês}, humanitas, which to the Stoics made the world as one brotherhood. No people known to history clearly formulated these ideals before the Greeks, and those who have spoken the words afterwards seem for the most part to be merely echoing the thoughts of old Greek men.
[Ed. Note: It is by this dedication to Spirit of Excellence and Truth, and aesthetic of Truth as Beauty rather than beauty as “fashion”, that Hellenism was Divinely prepared to receive the Christian Gospel, and made the medium of communication of Christianity to the world. New Hellenism (transfigured Hellenism) of Ancient Faith is ultimately what makes Greek the “higher life of man”.]
For A Culture of Co-Suffering Love:
The Theology of
Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
by Andrew Sopko
- Review by Ron Dart
Archbishop Lazar, as an Orthodox theologian, has engaged the culture he has lived in rather than retreating into an idealized past, an ethnic subculture or a reactionary and right of centre political theology.... Archbishop Lazar has faced and confronted many of the tough and troubling economic and political questions. He has dared to address... many of the large issues of injustice rather than either slip into an insulated pietism or genuflect to American republican politics and new forms of Caesar worship.
Albert Schweitzer
He [The Lord Jesus Christ] comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: 'Follow thou me!' and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
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