I understood Bnonn's comment to mean one has to cease being Western culturally and become Eastern. I see a lot of online traditionalist Catholics whose main cultural problem with Orthodoxy is a fear of it not fitting in here. When I was considering becoming Orthodox, my Episcopalian grandmother didn't want me to do it because we're Weste…
I understood Bnonn's comment to mean one has to cease being Western culturally and become Eastern. I see a lot of online traditionalist Catholics whose main cultural problem with Orthodoxy is a fear of it not fitting in here. When I was considering becoming Orthodox, my Episcopalian grandmother didn't want me to do it because we're Western. She had no problem with me becoming Roman Catholic - because it's Western. There seems to be this idea that one's culture must match their religion, or vice versa. Why does it have to?
Perhaps it was easier for me to make the jump because I wasn't really raised with anything. But I've never felt like I had to abandon my cultural Westerness in order to become an Eastern Christian. Nor have I felt like anyone was asking me to.
I also don't think it's accurate to say one must reject their culture and worldview wholesale. Christianity is adaptable to all cultures. The ethnic nature of Orthodoxy in the West is due to it's relatively recent immigration here. Give it another generation or two. It probably still won't be a huge force in American culture. But it will be fully Americanized, or Anglicized, or whichever Western culture it has made home. Also keep in mind, Orthodoxy's Easternness is relative - it is still a Western religion. It was formed in the same Greco-Roman milieu that Roman Catholicism was.
I don't know of any Orthodox that would say Protestants were never really Christian before becoming Orthodox. They would say you aren't fully Christian until you're Orthodox, sure. But they recognize other Christian groups as having varying degrees of the Truth.
I understood Bnonn's comment to mean one has to cease being Western culturally and become Eastern. I see a lot of online traditionalist Catholics whose main cultural problem with Orthodoxy is a fear of it not fitting in here. When I was considering becoming Orthodox, my Episcopalian grandmother didn't want me to do it because we're Western. She had no problem with me becoming Roman Catholic - because it's Western. There seems to be this idea that one's culture must match their religion, or vice versa. Why does it have to?
Perhaps it was easier for me to make the jump because I wasn't really raised with anything. But I've never felt like I had to abandon my cultural Westerness in order to become an Eastern Christian. Nor have I felt like anyone was asking me to.
I also don't think it's accurate to say one must reject their culture and worldview wholesale. Christianity is adaptable to all cultures. The ethnic nature of Orthodoxy in the West is due to it's relatively recent immigration here. Give it another generation or two. It probably still won't be a huge force in American culture. But it will be fully Americanized, or Anglicized, or whichever Western culture it has made home. Also keep in mind, Orthodoxy's Easternness is relative - it is still a Western religion. It was formed in the same Greco-Roman milieu that Roman Catholicism was.
I don't know of any Orthodox that would say Protestants were never really Christian before becoming Orthodox. They would say you aren't fully Christian until you're Orthodox, sure. But they recognize other Christian groups as having varying degrees of the Truth.