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To: Kolokotronis; FormerLib; sionnsar
"In our parish, the choirs have had robes for at least 75 years and have used organs that long too, though only on a very infrequent basis and not at all the past few years. I know that choirs in the big churches in Greece wear robes."

While we certainly have our things we aren't proud of (a certain Greek parish in Hollywood is particularly notorious), both the consistency of the tradtional witness and the general trends are quite remarkable by comparison to the general ecclesiastical environment we are swimming in here in the US.

What I have observed in most Orthodox churches in the US is a trend back toward the traditional. I have seen a couple of Greek churches and one Serbian church remove their old "westernized" sentimental icons, and have incredible traditional icons painted to replace them. I've seen several OCA parishes rid themselves of pews (we have very few left), and several Greek and Antiochian parishes either remove or simply never use their old electric organs. My in-laws' Greek parish has long since rid the choir of robes, and the only ones who wear robes there now are the psalti with their riassa...

The trend in Russian tradition churches is to eradicate the old 19th century romantic-era musical settings and replace them with more traditional chant, and I've seen Greek parishes move away from the turn-of-the century polyphonic settings toward traditional Byzantine chant (although not fast enough for me!) Etc...

The big advantage that we have over western churches in these regards are that the liturgical traditions of the "ancient and undivided church" (to use the term of the most traditional Anglicans) are not nearly as distant for us, and that the traditional has a built-in weight of authority for us that simply trumps or at least can counter-balance any innovating trends -- even those driven or winked at by hierarchs.

28 posted on 01/19/2005 10:32:47 PM PST by Agrarian
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To: Agrarian; Kolokotronis
What I have observed in most Orthodox churches in the US is a trend back toward the traditional.

Yes, I've seen the same thing as well.

IMHO, I believe that much of this that occurred in the United States was a direct result of the immigrants wanting to better fit into their new country and not wanting to be seen as being socially "backward."

Now people are beginning to realize that some very important things are sacrificed by making these changes and that we really don't want to follow where some of the western churches are leading.

31 posted on 01/20/2005 7:07:05 AM PST by FormerLib (Kosova: "land stolen from Serbs and given to terrorist killers in a futile attempt to appease them.")
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