Posted by Leo
on 10/28/2008, 2:36 pm, in reply to "The passing of the U.S. Orthodox Church as an 'ethnic club' is under way"
I wonder if it would change anything to look at it like other denominations do, as "immigrant ministry." Other churches HAVE immigrant ministry; so far (except in Alaska) we here ARE immigrant ministry. (Even among the descendants of the converts from Ruthenian Catholicism it seems to function like that.) Thinking of it in "immigrant ministry" terms maybe lets us think of the possibility of there being a "rest of the Church" here, ie, the Church that HAS this immigrant ministry. Certainly as long as we're still mostly immigrants or their descendants, that will color The Church here. But ISTM sometimes things are presented as Converts vs. Immigrants, when they need not be understood that way.
The label immigrant ministry also reminds us that this has been done before, and maybe we could pick up a few pointers from other denominations if we feel the need to, rather than feeling like this is totally unique, if that helps.
The term Diaspora is homeland-centric (like Emigres / Emigrants); Immigrant Ministry is here-centric. Although for Orthodoxy here the Immigrant Ministry is being performed mostly by the immigrants / descendants, or their homeland Churches.
How did it happen with the Latin Church, the one I'm most familiar with?: They were officially "mission territory" until 1908 IIRC. By then they were supplying most of their own clergy, bishops, religious, money, institutions. Their bishops and some monastic / religious leaders had held a total of 13 'national' councils of one kind or another here between 1829 and 1884, mostly every 3 years or so. (The last commissioned the famous Baltimore Catechism, which formed the backbone of Latin religious instruction here until the new universal "Catechism of the Catholic Church" came out ca. 1990 [although at the high school and college levels it began to be eclipsed by the documents of, and stemming from, the council Vatican II from the 1960s on]. The BC was a real monument of Latinism for a century, and a unifying factor for all its ethnicities here [though they never had overlapping Latin ethnic jurisdictions, just Eastern / Uniate].) (In 1917 they organized what would eventually become today's US Conference of Catholic Bishops, instead of the traditional periodic council format.) They gradually took up ministry to newer waves of Latin immigrants, both from their own ancestral lands (continuing from Ireland and Germany) and from new sending countries in Southern and Eastern Europe (especially Italians and Poles). While immigrants certainly preferred to be ministered to in their own languages by clergy "from back home," with time their descendants accepted that from other clergy and bishops, while retaining to a significant degree their ethnic identities and cultures (as Andrew Greeley's research makes clear: There remain scientifically quantifiable and significant differences between Irish-American and German-American and Italian-American and Polish-American, etc., Catholics.).
Well, we're starting to have other Ministries here in U.S. Orthodoxy that aren't explicitly Orthodox-ethnic- or -immigrant-specific: the "official agencies" and the "endorsed organizations" under SCOBA, evangelizing mission parishes especially in the AOA, publishing in English, English-language internet sites and services, etc. Then again, Dr. Krindatch now says more than half of OCA adherents were raised Catholic or Protestant, more than a quarter in the GOA, and as we all know, lots in the AOA too (though does it make a difference if they're "secondary converts," who came in on account of marriage, or "primary converts," who didn't?). Maybe these simple facts, increased and better-known, will also increase our other "Ministries" here.
Just some random thoughts,
Leo
Responses:
