Your comments speak to what all of us "cradle" types feel. But at least from this Greek Orthodox's point of view, I fear that you may be reading more into some of the things you've seen in GOA Churches than is STILL there. Let me dispose of one change very quickly; the use of paraffin candles. It is, for most of us a matter of ready availability, cost and smoke, frankly. There's nothing more to it than that. The other things, like organs, pews and choir robes are the remnants of a time in the GOA when the highest goal of the immigrant church, made up mostly of particularly brave and hard working immigrants seeking freedom in a new country, was to become Americans. It was a desire to "pass for white". I don't scorn this at all. Our old people and some of the new people to this day, left pretty bad places and came to a pretty good place where they faced some heavy duty discrimination. We were usually never the big ethnic group in an area so we couldn't get away with completely preserving the old ways and we wanted to look like Americans as far as we thought we could without actually becoming Protestants. Remember, Kosta, it was only a few years ago that a trip to the old country took weeks by ship and frankly, very few people ever made the trip. They were here for the duration. So they did things that they thought were "American". The desire to become accepted as part of the mainstream was so powerful!
Today, that's changing. We did succeed socially and discovered that we can be both totally Orthodox and fully American at the same time (though there's nothing easy about it!); that we can be Americans and still preserve our ancient forms of worship and belief and praxis. This is because we have come to understand America and because America today is a different place than it was in 1930. The mindset which made us install organs, wear choir robes, electrify the candelia, priests shave their beards, take off the rasso and don the dog collar of the Episcopal vicar is dying very fast my friend.
I've seen this issue "discussed" on the Yahoo Orthodox lists (yikes!!!) numerous times, the usual result being all heat and no light. Thanks to all here for your interesting, informative, constructive and civil comments on this issue of great importance to the future of Holy Orthodoxy in America.
I believe everything you say. That being so, I disagree with it. I disagree with it, because Greeks are not the only people who came from some pretty bad places to find their home in America. They were certainly not the only Orthodox people. So, if what you say is true, then all the Orthodox minorities, especially those less influential than Greeks, should follow in the same steps and perhaps try even harder to "pass for white."
That is simply not so. I have seen Serbian Orthodox Churches with pews in America (NY, Pittsburgh, etc.) because they were previously non-Orthodox churches and were acquired with pews. But in most of them people still stood as if the pews were not there. I have never seen an electric organ or uniformed choir and some other "Protestant" acceptance ticket you write about. Yet I believe the Serbs, the Russians, the Bulgarians, etc. were under the same pressure to be accepted as true-blue Americans while trying to be Orthodox without dog-collars and clean shaven priests.
Yet, they didn't do it. Not to the extent that I STILL see in Greek and Romanian churches (and I am not picking on Greeks, or Romanians, of course, because I have not seen Antiochan ones, etc.). So there is another element that does not seem to hold your formula.
It is irrelevant at this point what was the cause and the motivation for some to try to blend in and become American at the expense of external symbols of Orthodoxy. Never mind that such changes suggest that somehow the Protestant image is more "civilized." What is relevant is that today the Greeks are not being scrutinized as alien beings and subjected to heavy duty discirmination and prejudice than any other group in America. There is no reason to hold on to those "traditions" from the 1930's while dispensing of the traditions that go back almost two millennia. We can't use "my dad used to beat me, so I beat my children" excuse any more.
You say Greeks became Americans and remained Orthodox. And I say they became Greek-Americans and American-Orthodox. Greeks marry Greeks. Unlike many other minorities, Greeks didn't cease being Greeks. Generations of Greeks born in America speak Greek, live among other Greeks, and consider themselves both ethnically Greek and American by nationality. Most Serbian kids don't speak a lick of English by the third generation born in the U.S. Yet they don't sit in their churches unless they are old, very young or sick. My point is not to paint the Serbs as better Americans or better Orthodox, but to show that your arguments are expressly the will and the choice of American Greeks, and not something that was imposed on them by the prejudiced and unaccepting society they chose to live in.
You say, it's changing and I believe you. But when I read something like the GOA giving Phillip a chance to "infect" everyone with freedom and intoxicate American Orthodox with "diversity" that is driven by ego and cultural prejudice of superiority over the rest of the world, I have my doubts.