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{"id":1196,"date":"2002-09-18T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tmatt\/2002\/09\/18\/my-big-fat-greek-mystery\/"},"modified":"2013-01-30T15:59:23","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T20:59:23","slug":"my-big-fat-greek-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2002\/09\/my-big-fat-greek-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"My Big, Fat, Greek Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

To the faithful, there was nothing new about hearing an ancient litany in Greek.<\/p>\n\n

But it wasn\u2019t business as usual for Gregory Waynick, who was planning to be a Southern Baptist pastor until his studies in history and theology led him into Eastern Orthodoxy. As a young deacon in Nashville, he was terrified the first time he tried to sing a few lines of Greek chant.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure my pronunciation was pretty sad,\u201d he said. \u201cBut when I looked up, I saw that all of the little old Greek ladies had tears in their eyes. They were so moved that I was even trying to speak a little bit of their language. They responded so warmly to all of my attempts to understand their language and lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

As a convert, Waynick flashed back to that scene in his life and many others after seeing the movie \u201cMy, Big, Fat Greek Wedding.\u201d Most of the memories were good, but not all. An older Greek priest bluntly once told him that Bible-Belt Americans didn\u2019t belong in the Orthodox faith.<\/p>\n\n

It was faith, not marriage that brought Waynick into the Eastern church. Still, he said the hit romantic comedy is surprisingly accurate in its portrayal of a proud, protective community in which the lines between culture and faith are constantly blurred.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cTheir faith is something they don\u2019t think about. It\u2019s at the subconscious level,\u201d said Waynick, who is now a priest in the thriving St. Mark\u2019s Greek Orthodox Church in Boca Raton, Fla. \u201cThe problem is that when that culture begins to fade in their children \u2014 the language, the traditions \u2014 they may have little to hang on to in terms of their faith.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\u201cMy Big, Fat, Greek Wedding\u201d is about a young Greek woman named Toula Portokalos who falls for a white-bread vegetarian Anglo man. The movie cost only $5 million and debuted April 21 on 108 screens. Now it\u2019s on 1,764 screens and BoxOfficeGuru.com<\/a> is asking if Nia Vardalos and her wacky family movie will gross $175 million in American ticket sales.<\/p>\n\n

Studio executives tried to convince the actress to go with the demographic flow and turn her screenplay into a big, fat Italian or big, fat Hispanic wedding.<\/p>\n\n

But Vardalos had a secret weapon named Margarita Ibrahimoff, the daughter of a Greek-born father and a mother who grew up in a Greek village on the Albanian border. This particular Greek girl turned Hollywood player is best known by another name \u2014 Rita Wilson. It helps that Wilson married a non-Greek man named Tom Hanks.<\/p>\n\n

Obviously, the team that produced \u201cMy Big, Fat, Greek Wedding\u201d understood this emotional terrain, said Dean Popps, a national leader in networks of Greek Orthodox laypeople. The clich?were dead-on target and most Greeks will laugh and be thankful that mainstream America has acknowledged their existence. But the movie treats the church as a mere visual prop.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good that someone is saying, \u2018It\u2019s OK to be Greek. It\u2019s OK to be Orthodox,\u2019 \u201d said Popps. \u201cBut at the same time, it\u2019s a bit awkward. I mean, take Hanks. He\u2019s a great actor, but does he know anything about Orthodoxy? When it comes to issues like abortion and sexuality, he opposes everything the church has taught for centuries. \u2026<\/p>\n\n

\u201cI mean it\u2019s one thing to like our culture. But this faith is something you\u2019re supposed to live out in your daily life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

This tension is symbolized in one of the movie\u2019s few serious moments, when Toula\u2019s fiance is baptized in a rite that is a complete mystery to him. Afterwards, he shows her his new cross and says, \u201cI\u2019m Greek now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The crucial question, said Waynick, is whether those whose lives are rooted in Greek culture and traditions will be able to pass on a living faith to their children. It will not be enough to simply go through the motions.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cTimes have changed and their children will not remain Orthodox just because their parents are Greek,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not enough to sing a few Greek hymns, when your kids are sticking Eminem into the CD players in their sports cars and moving in with their American girlfriends. \u2026<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThey will have to claim the faith as their own and their churches will have to help them do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"