Many people love orthodoxhistory.org; new posts elicit blog and forum posts all over the Internet and I hear discussions of things posted at parish coffee hours and the like. Below is a snippet of a critique of the efforts of SOCHA from the website "of Information and Belief." To read the entire article, go here.
The Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas (SOCHA) has a new web-log which frequently visit. Similarly, there is now an entire site dedicated to historical studies of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Additionally, one can find a growing body of literature discussing the history of Orthodoxy in America. Perhaps this new literature will bypass the polemical bent of older works and provide Orthodox (and non-Orthodox) with a clearer picture of the Church's life in these lands since the 18th C. Or, perhaps, their content will become a new excuse to "rethink" the Church as it exists today; to turn exceptions into the rule; and set Orthodoxy on a new axis--one which agrees with the proclivities of the historians themselves.
This is one of the problems with history or, more specifically, modern critical/scientific history. There is an assumption that this discipline can "set the record straight" and, in doing so, contribute something to the life, society, culture, religion, etc. it purports to study. What that "something" is remains open to question. Consider the matter of liturgical theology. With its strong historicist bent, this sub-discipline within the Church became--and still remains--the basis upon which many have tried (and, ocassionally, succeeded) in "correcting" the Divine Liturgy, Typikon, public piety, etc. For a time, it seemed that every new variant in a manuscript discovered or monograph cataloging obscure, localized rites fueled the fire of renovationism. The "logic": If the Church did X, Y, or Z at some point in the past, we ought to consider jettisoning today's ABCs for those. Thankfully, in Orthodoxy (for the time being), the more radical the proposal, the less assent it commands. Still, the Church is plagued with new ideas which claim a veritable antiquity on the basis of what historical studies have revealed.
ome may say that what held true in the arena of liturgical theology won't hold true for the study of Orthodoxy in America. Yet, if one glances over at the aforementioned SOCHA blog, they'll already see it sliding into self-congratulatory silliness--as if the "myth of unity" had any practical potency to begin with. What will likely entice some is the idea that there may have been a nascent "American Orthodoxy" which wasn't Moscow-bound and, thus, had the potentiality for something more than mere enslavement to ethnarchs in the old country. Of course, there are still those who speak of what "should have been," i.e., that all Orthodox in America should have been under the Moscow Patriarchate and SOCHA recognizes this. The response? This "analysis"...
This is one of the problems with history or, more specifically, modern critical/scientific history. There is an assumption that this discipline can "set the record straight" and, in doing so, contribute something to the life, society, culture, religion, etc. it purports to study. What that "something" is remains open to question. Consider the matter of liturgical theology. With its strong historicist bent, this sub-discipline within the Church became--and still remains--the basis upon which many have tried (and, ocassionally, succeeded) in "correcting" the Divine Liturgy, Typikon, public piety, etc. For a time, it seemed that every new variant in a manuscript discovered or monograph cataloging obscure, localized rites fueled the fire of renovationism. The "logic": If the Church did X, Y, or Z at some point in the past, we ought to consider jettisoning today's ABCs for those. Thankfully, in Orthodoxy (for the time being), the more radical the proposal, the less assent it commands. Still, the Church is plagued with new ideas which claim a veritable antiquity on the basis of what historical studies have revealed.
ome may say that what held true in the arena of liturgical theology won't hold true for the study of Orthodoxy in America. Yet, if one glances over at the aforementioned SOCHA blog, they'll already see it sliding into self-congratulatory silliness--as if the "myth of unity" had any practical potency to begin with. What will likely entice some is the idea that there may have been a nascent "American Orthodoxy" which wasn't Moscow-bound and, thus, had the potentiality for something more than mere enslavement to ethnarchs in the old country. Of course, there are still those who speak of what "should have been," i.e., that all Orthodox in America should have been under the Moscow Patriarchate and SOCHA recognizes this. The response? This "analysis"...
Complete article here.
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