Does Eastern Orthodoxy have a "Protestant Problem"?

[reconman]

I think you misunderstood the question. The OP wasn’t asking if Orthodoxy has become a Protestant faith. The question is about Protestant faiths gaining ground in lands that traditionally are Orthodox, which is most of Eastern Europe.

Hmm. Indeed true. My mistake. I will read more carefully next time.

 

[dzheremi]

The Eastern Orthodox (any kind of Orthodox, really) never went through a Reformation. And no, this is not because God loves the Latin rite the most and Satan attacks it extra hard- that’s absurd. It was a screw up. You screwed up. It happened because your people screwed up in a historically bad and completely unique kind of way that there is no going back from. It’s a series of screwups that will continue to bite you for all eternity, and everyone else is looking over at you thinking “I really hope we never screw up that badly.”

I am far from an RC defender, but I always wonder when I hear explanations like this why the blame cannot be shared equally. I mean, I know why you personally are not likely to view the reformation in such a way (if you thought it was in error, you probably wouldn’t a Protestant), but for whatever the RC church did in precipitating the Protestant movement, a disinterested view would have to find fault in not only RC excesses, but also in Protestant responses to them. The answer to perceived ostentatious displays of material finery is not iconoclasm; the answer to doctrinal overreaching is not pietism; the answer to an overemphasis on clerical roles is not the dispensing of the clerical role in the church, etc. All of these things are wrong. If you are honest with yourself, it must be said that the RC ‘screw up’ was the mother of many screw ups in turn by those who thought themselves to be purifying the church.

Orthodox churches had no Reformations because they did not screw up- or, more precisely, they were set up in such a way that screwups could be contained to one country and brought into line by other countries working collectively.

Hmm. Certainly problems were confronted by acting in council, but it strikes me that neither the heresy of Nestorius (once Patriarch of Constantinople) nor that of Arius (once a presbyter of the Church of Alexandria) were in any sense confined to one country. Both spread around the world, unfortunately, without really stopping just because a council had condemned them (the Nestorians, of course, still exist to this day). I suppose it’s true what they say, that a lie will travel half way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

Protestantism gains a bit more of an Eastern identity

Does it?

Basically, in a country where the Orthodox are doing a pretty good job, you don’t have to worry too much about people choosing to leave and we will focus a lot more on non-Christian religions.

What do you mean by “doing a pretty good job”? And if this is true, then why is it that Protestants evangelize the Orthodox even in places with hardly any non-Christians to speak of, like Armenia (95% Orthodox, 4% other Christians [mostly Catholics], and tiny slivers of everything else)? I’m sorry, but I just don’t see this in history. In Egypt, the Presbyterians and Catholics both went after Copts specifically, after finding Muslims too hard to convert. Most Copts didn’t fall for it, either. The places in the East where Protestantism isn’t an abysmal failure are those where the institutionalized religion is (Islam and institutional Orthodoxy in certain parts of Ethiopia, or Shi’a Islam in Iran). I’d say that says more about institutionalized religion as a thing than about the failure of any specific church, but then…well, you can see my religious affiliation, of course I’d say that.

There are some exceptions where a particular Orthodox church has been chronically mismanaged for quite a long time (like the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) and it comes as no surprise that so many of its laity leave it for something better.

What? I’d like to know what you think is so terrible about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Ethiopians are extremely committed to their Orthodox Christianity…really, in many ways they put the rest of us to shame. This is precisely why there is so much growth in the Protestant churches from the Muslim and animist ethnic groups, and comparatively quite little from the Orthodox. When Orthodox have been converted, they have generally been members of tiny ethnolinguistic minorities in far-flung locations, e.g., the Kambata, who were only Christianized in the 17th century, as their territory was not even under the stable rule of the Ethiopian government until that time. They fell under the sway of Protestant missionaries working in the South in the 1930s during the reign of the Italians, who were not at all kind to the indigenous Orthodox or their church, so you can hardly blame the EOTC for that one! The majority of their Region (the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region) is Protestant, actually (55.5%), which is something of an oddity. It is due to very recent growth in Protestant churches, such as the Mekane Yesus Church I mentioned earlier. In the 1994 census, the SNNP Region was only 34.8% Protestant (most of the conversion was from animism).

And yes, we are better at doing certain things. Not because of who we are- it’s not an identity thing. We just happen to be better at certain things, and it’s just because we are. That’s how it is.

Okay. That’s a pretty vague and silly way to end your post, but we hope that more Muslims should become Christian, and if you see this as a particular strength of your church, and your church as preaching the true faith, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try. We do nothing else ourselves, after all.

 

[Sixpence]

To be fair to both sides, many of the heresies did arise from the East in the First Millennium. While Orthodoxy prevailed, it is not as if it was attacked.

But you’re right about the screw-up though. Reformation happened because of clergy abuses. And until today there are many clergy abuses of many kinds. From sex scandals to liturgical abuses.

It wasn’t just abuses, though. Half of Europe became Protestant in about a quarter-century. It didn’t happen through individual conversions. Entire countries became Protestant on the say-so of, for example, a series of three monarchs in England starting with Henry VIII and ending with Elizabeth I who finalized the process. Who put the English monarch in charge of what religion everyone in the country would practice? Where was the archbishop of Canterbury in all of this, and why is that particular archbishop so non-famous? When and how did the monarchs of western Europe essentially become the bosses of their bishops and archbishops? And what did the Eastern European bishops do when their monarchs tried to do similar things- and at times, succeeded for awhile, at least in some sense? This is what I mean about a unique screwup- I’m talking about the setup phase that made archbishops irrelevant, the state monarch was their boss, and it made the 25 years half of Europe thing possible. Yes, church abuses helped make significant portions of the laity be ok with what their leaders were doing, but these are just the onlookers that are watching the real players make big things happen. And it’s not like bad leadership is unique to the Latin rite. What is unique is Protestantism.

There was an unstable and ultimately unworkable relationship between church and state, and it’s not like it was always that way. How it got that way is long and complicated, but the short story is that the Latin rite set itself up for exactly what happened while other ancient rites did different things that didn’t set them up for that.

From the Catholic side, it’s easy to think “Why couldn’t those contumacious people just decide to do something different?” But at all times and in all places and for all time, there have always been people who disagree with who or what some authority should be. When one outcome in particular is this unique, you have to start looking at the really big picture and ask what was unique about the entire geopolitical landscape and the way it was enmeshed with ecclesial leadership.

 

[ConstantineTG]

It wasn’t just abuses, though. Half of Europe became Protestant in about a quarter-century. It didn’t happen through individual conversions. Entire countries became Protestant on the say-so of, for example, a series of three monarchs in England starting with Henry VIII and ending with Elizabeth I who finalized the process. Who put the English monarch in charge of what religion everyone in the country would practice? Where was the archbishop of Canterbury in all of this, and why is that particular archbishop so non-famous? When and how did the monarchs of western Europe essentially become the bosses of their bishops and archbishops? And what did the Eastern European bishops do when their monarchs tried to do similar things- and at times, succeeded for awhile, at least in some sense? This is what I mean about a unique screwup- I’m talking about the setup phase that made archbishops irrelevant, the state monarch was their boss, and it made the 25 years half of Europe thing possible. Yes, church abuses helped make significant portions of the laity be ok with what their leaders were doing, but these are just the onlookers that are watching the real players make big things happen. And it’s not like bad leadership is unique to the Latin rite. What is unique is Protestantism.

There was an unstable and ultimately unworkable relationship between church and state, and it’s not like it was always that way. How it got that way is long and complicated, but the short story is that the Latin rite set itself up for exactly what happened while other ancient rites did different things that didn’t set them up for that.

From the Catholic side, it’s easy to think “Why couldn’t those contumacious people just decide to do something different?” But at all times and in all places and for all time, there have always been people who disagree with who or what some authority should be. When one outcome in particular is this unique, you have to start looking at the really big picture and ask what was unique about the entire geopolitical landscape and the way it was enmeshed with ecclesial leadership.

So are you saying having the centralized leadership in Rome contributed to the problem? Or possible the root of it?

 

[Trebor135]

I am unaware of any material specifically devoted to that topic, though many Ethiopian history books talk about the effect of Ahmed Gragn and the Sultanate of Adal on Ethiopia’s Christian identity. I am away from my books right now but I seem to recall that before the attacks of Gragn (16th century), nine out of ten Oromo (who are the largest single ethnic group in the country; ~40% of Ethiopia’s total population) were Tewahedo Orthodox; after Gragn, the ratio had flipped, with nine out of ten professing Islam.

I’ve seen that figure before too, actually.

My source on this is Teffera Haile-Selassie’s “The Ethiopian Revolution” (Routledge, 1997), though my Ethiopian friends have disputed this, claiming that the Christian:Muslim ratio among the Oromo today is closer to 40:60 or 50:50, so I guess Christianity has regained some ground lost in the 16th century, though unfortunately not all of it is Orthodox.

The Wikipedia article on the Oromia region of Ethiopia gives us this data:

Ethnic
group 1994 Census 2007 Census
Oromo 85% 87.8%
Amhara 9.1% 7.22%
Gurage (some of Sebat Bet Gurage, Soddo Gurage, and Silt’e) 0.98% 0.93%
other ethnic groups 4.6% 4%

Religion 1994 Census 2007 Census[13]
Muslim 44.3% 47.6%
Orthodox Christians 41.3% 30.4%
Protestants 8.6% 17.7%
traditional religions 4.2% 3.3%
other religious groups 1.6% 1%

As it turns out, a relatively significant number of Oromo are indeed Christian, but many of them were Ethiopian Orthodox only twenty years ago but have become Protestant since then.

Probably the biggest name in Ethiopian Protestantism is the [Mekane Yesus Evangelical Church](Mekane Yesus Evangelical Church), which has it roots in the Lutheran missions of the late 19th century that specifically concentrated their efforts in the south and East of the country because the Orthodox influence was less strong there. They were the first ones to translate the entire Bible into Oromo (a Protestant translation, no doubt), which helped bring many Oromo to Christianity because it was not as closely tied to the Semitic/Amharic culture as the Orthodox Church is in Ethiopia, which many find alienating or unacceptable for personal, historical, and/or political reasons

Thanks, that’s all very interesting information. (The link doesn’t work, though. )

(Oromo is Cushitic, related to Somali, Afar, Agaw, etc, and there is an “Oromo liberation” movement active in the country, though I don’t know how popular it is).

Interesting. The census data given by Wikipedia on the other regions of Ethiopia indicates that very little, if any, evangelization is being conducted by Orthodox or Protestants among, e.g., Somalis or Afars. I wonder why this is the case?

As for outreach to Russian Muslims, I do not think there is much overt missionary work going on from the Orthodox there, but Muslims are still converting to Eastern Orthodoxy in much greater numbers than the other way around.

Wow, if the two-million figure is accurate… God is surely working to bring good out of evil (the Beslan-style atrocities) here. I’m curious whether their grandchildren will stick with Orthodoxy though…

Probably a larger than negligible amount, given the areas that Protestants have historically targeted (and the fact that many of these churches are really started or spread by natives who had been converted by outsiders). It has only been somewhat more recently that they’ve gone toe to toe with the Amhara, Tigray, and other highland peoples, and the vast majority of those historically Orthodox groups remain so today, thanks be to God.

I just looked at the Wikipedia article on religion in Ethiopia, and the following census data was provided there:

Year Christians Ethiopian Orthodox Protestants Catholics Muslims Animists Other
1994 61.6% 50.6% 10.1% 0.9% 32.8% 4.6% 1.0%
2007 62.8% 43.5% 18.6% 0.7% 33.9% 2.6% 0.7%
Growth 1.2% -7.1%’ 8.5% -0.2% 1.1% -2.0% -0.3%

As it happens, Protestants aren’t actually making a lot of converts among Muslims but rather Orthodox () and animists )).

According to wiki (I had to look it up, as I don’t know much about Christianity in India outside of the Syriacs in Kerala), the first Protestants to evangelize in India were Lutherans in Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu in the early 16th century. I think most Christians in India are Roman Catholics, though.

Interesting–I’d never heard of those Lutheran efforts before. To the best of my knowledge, though, most Indian Christians are indeed Catholic–Latin and Syro-Malabar.

 

[dzheremi]

I’ve seen that figure before too, actually.
As it turns out, a relatively significant number of Oromo are indeed Christian, but many of them were Ethiopian Orthodox only twenty years ago but have become Protestant since then.

Yes, and numbers are similar across the country, e.g., the numbers in my post on the SNNP Region.

Thanks, that’s all very interesting information. (The link doesn’t work, though. )

Link?

Interesting. The census data given by Wikipedia on the other regions of Ethiopia indicates that very little, if any, evangelization is being conducted by Orthodox or Protestants among, e.g., Somalis or Afars. I wonder why this is the case?

The Afar and Somali regions are extremely dangerous, especially for Christians (they’ve probably got the lowest percentage of Christians of any regions). In the Somali Region, there is no love lost between the Orthodox and their historical enemies the overwhelmingly Muslim Somali (there ARE Somali Christians, though Somalis around the world will deny that vociferously; they primarily exist in Kenya and the diaspora in the West, as Somali Christians in Somalia proper and even nearby refugee camps are regularly martyred; See interview with Somali Christian Hassan, operator of “Nolosha Cusub” from Jimma Times for more on that), while in the Afar region a lot of violence comes from the ongoing border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

As it happens, Protestants aren’t actually making a lot of converts among Muslims but rather Orthodox () and animists )).

Yes. There are great pastoral problems among the Ethiopians, particularly as education as a whole is so low over there. Lord have mercy. My friends in the diaspora have told me some interesting stories of some of the tactics that the Protestants use in Ethiopia, and they’re really sickening. But also in the diaspora people seem to be better educated and there is more “Orthodox identity” if you will, because in the West Christianity is big enough and not isolated, so there is room to make the clear distinction between Orthodox and others, as the primary religious difference is actually between Protestants and others, rather than Muslims vs. everybody else.

 

[exnihilo]

Perhaps. Maybe a drawback of the centralized nature of the Church. If something is broken, you’d think it is rotten to the core, fair or not. A decentralization in Orthodoxy would mean if one bishop would become heterodox, it would be easy to single him out from other bishops. Perhaps this is why today many think they can blame the Pope for the sex scandals, because they see the Pope as a strong leader of the Catholic organization (this is the secular view) and thus he has control and command of everyone underneath him. People tend to see the Catholic Church as a corporation and the Pope as a CEO. The Orthodox Church is more like McDonald’s, where they are independently owned franchises running the same brand.

I would like to say I have some sympathy for this idea even for modern times. Catholics are quick to point out the benefits of the power of the papacy for uniting Catholics. This is certainly true. But like all imperfect good things there is a downside. And this is that the disease, inevitable in any church, can more easily be linked in the mind all the way to the top. Even for me, a person with great sympathies for Catholicism, I struggle with the extent and duration of scandal and bad teaching in the historic and current Catholic Church. When one of the chief features of Catholicism is that the Bishop of Rome gets to appoint all other bishops then I think it easy to understand how people can hold the papacy highly accountable for that which occurs under his appointed bishops.

 

[Trebor135]

And if this is true, then why is it that Protestants evangelize the Orthodox even in places with hardly any non-Christians to speak of, like Armenia (95% Orthodox, 4% other Christians [mostly Catholics], and tiny slivers of everything else)?

Unfortunately, this article from 2005 suggests otherwise: “In a poll recently held by the Centre for Strategic and National Studies in Yerevan, 34 per cent of Armenians said they consider themselves Christian, 24 per cent said they were atheists, and 32 per cent declared themselves to be pagans. ‘The slight differences in percentages of believers proves that 1,700 years of Christianity have failed to eradicate the old faith in Armenia,’ said political commentator Eduard Enfiajian, also a member of the pagan community.”

Ethiopians are extremely committed to their Orthodox Christianity…really, in many ways they put the rest of us to shame.

How so?

 

[Trebor135]

Also…

Link?

In post #22, you put link tags around the words “Mekane Yesus Evangelical Church”…

The Afar and Somali regions are extremely dangerous, especially for Christians (they’ve probably got the lowest percentage of Christians of any regions). In the Somali Region, there is no love lost between the Orthodox and their historical enemies the overwhelmingly Muslim Somali (there ARE Somali Christians, though Somalis around the world will deny that vociferously; they primarily exist in Kenya and the diaspora in the West, as Somali Christians in Somalia proper and even nearby refugee camps are regularly martyred; See interview with Somali Christian Hassan, operator of “Nolosha Cusub” from Jimma Times for more on that), while in the Afar region a lot of violence comes from the ongoing border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Interesting. Thanks for this information.

Yes. There are great pastoral problems among the Ethiopians, particularly as education as a whole is so low over there. Lord have mercy. My friends in the diaspora have told me some interesting stories of some of the tactics that the Protestants use in Ethiopia, and they’re really sickening.

What are some of these “pastoral problems”? What “interesting stories” have your Ethiopian acquaintances recounted?

But also in the diaspora people seem to be better educated and there is more “Orthodox identity” if you will, because in the West Christianity is big enough and not isolated, so there is room to make the clear distinction between Orthodox and others, as the primary religious difference is actually between Protestants and others, rather than Muslims vs. everybody else.

Yes, that makes sense.

Also, what do you know about the religious situation in Eritrea?

 

[Hesychios]

Unfortunately, this article from 2005 suggests otherwise: “In a poll recently held by the Centre for Strategic and National Studies in Yerevan, 34 per cent of Armenians said they consider themselves Christian, 24 per cent said they were atheists, and 32 per cent declared themselves to be pagans. ‘The slight differences in percentages of believers proves that 1,700 years of Christianity have failed to eradicate the old faith in Armenia,’ said political commentator Eduard Enfiajian, also a member of the pagan community.”

One could say all the centuries failed to eradicate the old faith anywhere, but for most it is not a continuation of old religion but a re-enactment.

Since the article does not actually reference the poll, we have no way to know how it was taken or where it was published (or by whom). A poll is not a survey nor a census so there is no attempt to ask the majority of the population, just a sampling, sometimes from a self-selected group, like festival attendees and that sort of thing.

Armenia today (the part that exists as a free nation) has less than 3 million people (about the same population as Chicago), so 32 percent would suggest a whopping 1 million pagans in this little country, something hard to miss.

In history the nation fell under the control of Islam twice. The Muslims had a policy of forced conversion of pagans, while tolerating People of the Book. Interestingly then, if there had been a significant pagan population of native Armenians at that time one should see a significant minority of Armenian Muslims today. It would be something like Bosnia or Albania with a mixed religious population.

Marco Polo begins his famous travelogue (I recently bought the book and have been reading it) with the first chapter and third chapter on the two Armenias (greater and lessor), in the period under Tatar (Mongol) control, and as observant as he was he never mentions pagans in their population, his only mention of religion in Armenia is to point out the See of the Archbishop. Marco Polo took a keen interest in the religious affiliation and practices of distant people, and from him we learn of Christian communities across Asia that have long since disappeared. He mentions the Kurds of those days, for example, as a population of mixed religion with many Christians (which they are still mixed to some extent today, but mostly Muslim now).

The CIA World Factbook today describes the religion of Armenia as follows:
Armenian Apostolic 94.7%, other Christian 4%, Yezidi (monotheist with elements of nature worship) 1.3%

 

[dzheremi]

Unfortunately, this article from 2005 suggests otherwise: “In a poll recently held by the Centre for Strategic and National Studies in Yerevan, 34 per cent of Armenians said they consider themselves Christian, 24 per cent said they were atheists, and 32 per cent declared themselves to be pagans. ‘The slight differences in percentages of believers proves that 1,700 years of Christianity have failed to eradicate the old faith in Armenia,’ said political commentator Eduard Enfiajian, also a member of the pagan community.”

In addition to all the things Hesychios posted in response to this, I do feel the need to point out that even if the article was numerically sound, it’s still really, really bad reporting. Tseghakron, for instance, is not “the Armenian pre-Christian religion” (before Christianity, Armenia shared in common with the Persians Mithraism, as well as various local gods). It is actually a racist kind of nationalism initiated in America among the Armenian diaspora in 1933. See the Wikipedia and Armeniapedia articles on that for more of what it actually is. It’s not terribly surprising that those self-identifying as “pagans” would identify also with these right-wing nationalist parties espousing racist ideas. The same is true of the Slavic neo-Pagans in places like Russia, Ukraine, etc. In both places, the relative sizes of the community are massively overstated, and ignorant media organs perpetuate this idea of massive resurgences of “ancient religion”, when in reality most people are at least (or maybe at most?) nominally Christian, and have no interest in LARP-ing. Don’t believe everything you read. Armenia is majority Christian, no matter how much the magic fairies and trolls or whatever don’t like it.

How so?

In many ways. Not only in keeping the fasts (if you’ve ever been to an Ethiopian restaurant, you’ve probably noticed how they have a lot of vegan items; that’s because they actually do keep all of the fasts of their church, which add up to quite a large chunk of the year), but in the relative integration of their religion into their daily lives. It is very much an everyday, not just Sunday (or Saturday and Sunday, since they’re Ethiopians…) religion. Even here in northern California, where I originally come from and am vacationing at the moment, it is fairly common to see Ethiopian women in their netela while out and about. They often get confused for Muslims because of that, but I have not seen any Muslims with the cross tattooed on their faces – I have seen that among some older women here! (Thousands of miles from their homeland, mind you.) They just really, really take being Christians seriously. If we all had the faith of the Ethiopians, there wouldn’t be any resurgence of neo-paganism anywhere.

 

[dzheremi]

In post #22, you put link tags around the words “Mekane Yesus Evangelical Church”…

Apologies. I didn’t remember doing that. Here is some information about that group, if you’re interested: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Evangelical_Church_Mekane_Yesus

What are some of these “pastoral problems”? What “interesting stories” have your Ethiopian acquaintances recounted?

In common with all third-world countries, there is massive poverty, illiteracy, lack of access to proper medical care, etc. So when Protestant-connected NGOs come in and offer services which help alleviate these problems, you can bet that there are some problems. Also, my Ethiopian friends have told me that some of the more extreme Protestant groups have even gone to the lengths of kidnapping people who were once members of their group but had gone back to Orthodoxy. This often happens because the Protestant groups use unscrupulous methods to gain converts in the first place, such as dressing up as Orthodox monks or priests, and then going out and preaching publicly about various alleged “errors” in Orthodox Christianity, so as to give their way-out allegations some gravitas they wouldn’t otherwise have.
Yes, that makes sense.

Also, what do you know about the religious situation in Eritrea?

It’s very bad, as are human rights conditions in all respects in Eritrea. The government forcibly deposed Abune Antonios, the Eritrean Orthodox Patriarch, back in 2007. He has been under house arrest ever since, and it is hard to get reliable updates on his condition (he is an old man, and his health is quite poor). We in the Coptic Church, as in all Oriental Orthodox Churches, still recognize him as the legitimate patriarch of Eritrea, and do not commune with any church that recognizes his illegitimate, government-picked replacement, Dioskoros. Here is a website dedicated to the cause of restoring Abune Atonios to his throne.

Pray for the Church in Eritrea.

 

[katherine2001]

There is a gentelman in my Antiochian parisn who was sent by the “churchofChrist” to convert the Romainians to campbellism.

It backfired and he and his family became Orthodox, and now he is training to be a subdeacon, already he is a reader.

There is also an Antiochian priest, Fr. James Early, who was a Baptist missionary in Eastern Europe who ended up becoming Orthodox and is now serving as a priest at an Antiochian parish in Texas as an associate priest. His story is here (it is in 7 parts–called “From Baptist to Byzantium”)

journeytoorthodoxy.com/index.php?s=Fr.+James+Early#axzz1y5oktDML

 

[Celticnovice]

Wasn’t the Nestorian Church the biggest church in the world at one point in history?

 

[Nine_Two]

Wasn’t the Nestorian Church the biggest church in the world at one point in history?

I believe so. Quite early on.

 

[dzheremi]

I’m not sure if it was after the period during which they would have been called “Nestorian”, but I do remember that in Dr. Suha Rassam’s “Christianity in Iraq”, she does mention that at one point some 25% of Christians in the world were under the Bishop of Baghdad, not Rome, and that the presence of such Christians in the region (certainly long after their numbers had decreased from 25% of all Christians) astounded the likes of Marco Polo.

But the majority? Certainly in particular regions (the Arabian Peninsula, where they had churches in Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, etc.), but I doubt if it was ever the case in the whole world. If you meant “biggest” in the sense of “largest geographical spread”, that seems much more likely. The CoE missions in China, India, and Central Asia are very well known and documented.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

Pardon my ignorance.

Are the Orthodox interested in evangelizing other cultures?

My uninformed thought process being that if there is not much exposure then the opportunity for a run in with other Christian groups is minimal.

But my knowledge of Eastern Orthodoxy is very limited and the little I’ve seen in my area it seems to heavily favor their own ethnic background over a more, for lack of a better word, universal background. Again, my apologies for my lack of knowledge.

I am always looking for good reading so please, those Orthodox posters here feel free to PM material .

Thanks,

Jose

 

[Celticnovice]

I’m not sure if it was after the period during which they would have been called “Nestorian”, but I do remember that in Dr. Suha Rassam’s “Christianity in Iraq”, she does mention that at one point some 25% of Christians in the world were under the Bishop of Baghdad, not Rome, and that the presence of such Christians in the region (certainly long after their numbers had decreased from 25% of all Christians) astounded the likes of Marco Polo.

But the majority? Certainly in particular regions (the Arabian Peninsula, where they had churches in Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, etc.), but I doubt if it was ever the case in the whole world. If you meant “biggest” in the sense of “largest geographical spread”, that seems much more likely. The CoE missions in China, India, and Central Asia are very well known and documented.

Yes, the largest geographical reach is what I should have said. From what I have read, it was a combination of wars, plagues and Islamic expansion that reduced these churches.

 

[CMatt25]

What’s a Protestant Problem? To the many Lutherans, Anglicans (well ok I know you don’t consider yourselves Protestants necesarily), Methodists, and other non Catholic Christians who post here on the non Catholic segment of CAF and elsewhere, do you have a problem I’m unaware of?

 

[dzheremi]

Pardon my ignorance.

Are the Orthodox interested in evangelizing other cultures?

Yes. Orthodoxy, while in a sense being a culture unto itself, is not restricted to one nation, language, people, etc. Orthodox Christianity has always been spread throughout the world, despite many obstacles. Even those countries and peoples now considered most representative of Orthodoxy on the world stage were once themselves evangelized by others. In that way, no one is born Orthodox.

My uninformed thought process being that if there is not much exposure then the opportunity for a run in with other Christian groups is minimal.

But my knowledge of Eastern Orthodoxy is very limited and the little I’ve seen in my area it seems to heavily favor their own ethnic background over a more, for lack of a better word, universal background. Again, my apologies for my lack of knowledge.

Well that certainly is a popular image of Orthodoxy, and probably one that is not without merit on a local level like the one you refer to. But for instance there are missions going on throughout the world to many peoples (e.g., the video in my signature is from a visit to the mission church in Bolivia by the people of my church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, which is not Eastern, but is Orthodox ), and the response is generally very positive. Some examples:

Orthodox Bolivia (Oriental/Coptic; I don’t know if there are EO in Bolivia)

Eastern Orthodox Mexico (also Coptic Orthodox Mexico)

Coptic Orthodox missions in Africa (outside of the traditional territories) [see also videos like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsVK1HaKibM”]this one ]

Breaking ground on a new Eastern Orthodox Church in Tanzania, East Africa

Orthodox Christmas in Mongolia

And, probably most relevant to you if you are in the USA…

Coptic Orthodox deacons chant and evangelize on the streets of New York City

Coptic hymns in English

My diocese, the Southern US Diocese of the Coptic Orthodox Church, even offers an online evangelism course under the auspices of HG Bishop Yousef, our bishop! I have seen similar things at other churches, particularly in Canada (which seem well integrated, from all I’ve seen).

EO members no doubt have many similar resources, as the OCA pretty much exists for this purpose, and many in it and outside of it in the more obviously “ethnic” jurisdictions are committed to evangelism, as we all should be. The Orthodox Church, whether we’re talking about Constantinople or Alexandria or whatever geographical roots, has always been a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural entity, as Christ our God came for all men, and all are equal in Him.