My Orthodox wife and American racism

My wife is Orthodox Christian.  She started attending Orthodox services a couple years ago.  It didn’t surprise me.  She became Catholic along with me and the boys in 2006, but she never lost the glint in her eye from when we looked at Orthodoxy on our way to Rome.  It was a necessary stop along the way, since her evangelical roots made going straight toward Catholicism a tough sell.  Orthodoxy, something I was less than knowledgeable about, is outside the experience of most Western Christians, and thus outside of preconceived notions.  Whether Catholic or Protestant, I’ve discovered many are quite wrong in how we ‘get’ Orthodoxy.

Nonetheless, my wife began going some time ago and, along with three of our sons, joined the church through a local mission earlier this year.  I don’t begrudge it really.  She has blossomed since then.  So have the boys.  There are many reasons, and someday I’ll get to them.  But as a family, we prefer to stick together.  Right now, the deal is to split going to the churches in proportion to those who are Orthodox and Catholic, with the Catholic contingency reserving the right to appeal to St. Mary on special days and Holy Days; likewise we will attend St. Barnabas on the special and Holy days for the Orthodox when we can.

Anyway, more on that down the road.  One of the parts I enjoy is learning about a branch of Christianity that I was ignorant of for most of my life.  I still don’t get it.  While it has a beautiful, ‘Eastern’ feel, I admit that the liturgy is an acquired taste.  I’m still just a down home, Irish Western Christian at heart, and some of that Eastern chant is quite foreign to me.  But then again, it is foreign.  It isn’t based on Western Civilization or, more to the point, Western Civilization isn’t based on it.  It sees Western Civilization as the outcropping of Catholicism and Protestantism – which apparently it considers to be two sides of the same coin.

One of the best parts of attending the services with my wife and boys is their ‘coffee hour’.  That’s the fellowship meal they have after every service.  Besides learning the benefits of an eastern diet, it’s given me a chance to meet people from a host of areas that we Americans talk about, often without consulting those who live there.  I got to know many people from overseas during my ministry days.  Back then, I worked with people in our local jurisdictions to help them minister overseas, and likewise help people from overseas missions come here.  I always loved meeting and talking with people from different cultures, and this little Orthodox mission has plenty to choose.

Despite having scarcely over 100 people, over half of them are from around the world; mostly from the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Sweden.  Don’t get that last one.  It’s an Antiochian Orthodox Church, so there is a strong Arabic flavor.  And there are several from various regions of the Arabic world.  That is the part I want to touch on (ah, we finally come to the point).

I asked the priest after the coffee hour this week where the Orthodox church stands on the events of the last couple weeks in the US.  Not surprisingly, he said the Orthodox Church doesn’t have a ‘position’ about events here in the US.  Only those bishops who are here would likely comment.  From the Orthodox viewpoint, however, the perspective is clear.  Racism is wrong.  Period.  It is a sin.  An affront to God.  There is only one race, the human race.  And he emphasized the fact that Christ died for all lives – no doubt a little editorial.   There can be many ethnic groups and nationalities, and that is fine.  But one race.  Those who violate that idea violate the goodness and sanctity that is the human family.  I liked that.

He went further to say that, in dealing with so many from the Arabic world, racism in the US is impossible to deny.  Many of the parishioners (and here he named a fellow I’ve talked to) know first hand the racism that is here, and back home.  That’s an important point.  Racism is, from their experiences, hardly an America-only phenomenon.  Also – and this is important – it is hardly unique to one ethnic group.   In fact he explained to me that the racism they encounter in America is not confined to ‘whites only.’  The fellow he referenced had lived in S. Florida when he first came to America.  But they moved north.  Why?  Because in the largely Hispanic (and quite Catholic) neighborhood in which they lived, they encountered frequent discrimination and exclusion by the Latino Americans who lived there.  Likewise he informed me that backlashes from the African American neighborhoods were not uncommon.

So of course racism is sin.  But to attempt to pigeonhole it into one category or another, or worse, to modify culpability or moderate wrongdoing based on the idea that one group is less or more responsible than another because of race, is nothing other than sin.  And stupid in his opinion.  It was an eye opener for me.  I’m friends with African Americans, enough to know it isn’t just whites in Red States who are the mischief when it comes to Middle Eastern immigration.  But a systemic discrimination on the part of Hispanic Americans?  Didn’t see that one coming.  If you get your knowledge of the world from our media, you probably wouldn’t see it coming either.

The point is, as Christians we have an obligation to rise above the political discourse that sees events like Baton Rouge or Dallas as either tragedies to exploit, or unfortunate obstacles to overcome in order to advance the all important narrative.  From a Christian view, our approach should be to step back and see the heart and soul of those involved, and the principalities and powers that are the problem.  To assume that one ethnic group or nationality is somehow more or less wicked than others is to not only willful ignorance of the reality, but also ignores one of the fundamental teachings of the historic Christian faith: That all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.