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I can never win a debate with a lawyer, especially an experienced one, but I can try! :-)

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.

"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."

I think the innovations inside the churches had to do with convincing themselves, not the outside world, that they were Americans. The dog-collars and clean shaven priests definitely came from the close ties the Greek Church here had with the Episcopalians into the 1950s and a desire to look American. We have pictures of priests here at the house from the WWI era up to today. The beards were gone by about 1930-1933. By then the first generation of Greeks here had established themselves well but were still not considered "real" Americans. After WWII, the Greeks were "in" with American society and, as I have said, +Iakovos wanted us to be almost a form of Greek Episcopalians. That had some very bad effects on the Greek Church here as did, frankly, the incredible economic and educational success of the Greek community in America. Now I have little or no experience with other Orthodox jurisdictions. Our four Greek parishes were pretty much the only Orthodox game in the state except for a small Russian community made up of czarist immigrants in a small village north of here (when I was a kid even their priest was clean shaven). As one 92 year old Syrian lady said a couple of years ago, "When we came in the 30s, we didn't have one of our churches here so we went to the Greek's Church." That particular feeling, as I have said before, has changed dramatically and now the members of our new and large Lebanese group talks about going to "our church" and "our parish family".

Changing the practices you've mentioned has and will meet resistance. In our church, for example, the icons on the iconostasion are real WWI era period pieces. In those days there was an itinerant icon painter who traveled all over the East Coast area painting icons for the then new Orthodox Churches. They are very Western; almost an Italian Romantic style. I have seen them in Greece and also some Russian Churches of the era here in the states. Any way, when we built our new church in the 70s, the parish wanted the old iconostasion from the church transported to the new one and set up, where it has been ever since. For the past 10 or 12 years there has been some talk about replacing those icons with Byzantine ones. Until just a few months ago that's all it was, talk. Every time the subject came up, it was "If those icons were good enough for Papou and Yiayia, they're good enough for us." or "I'm 80 years old and have looked at those all my life and I don't want them to change." or "My great grandparents paid for those icons and they are going to stay!" Believe me, I know; I tried to get them changed when I was parish council president and by the way, I've looked at them all my life and my great grandparents did give one of them!

So what did we do. Well, God is good. A new couple from Idaho showed up at the parish last summer, converts from many, many years ago. And it turns out that the wife is an iconographer. She offered to write two very large icons of the Hierarchs for behind the altar. She did and up they went. A few people complained ("They don't look right! The colors clash with the rest of the area." In fact they are perfect Byzantine icons!). But everyone else loves them. Now four more are being done. And after them, well then we do the new iconostasion and put the icons from the old one in the new church hall we plan to build. Sega, sega, as we Greeks say, slowly, slowly.

Your observations on Greek/American culture are interesting. It is sort of odd that Greeks are so American on the one hand and so tied to our "Greekiness" on the other. My boys' great, great grandparents came here and founded the parish about 100 years ago and the boys are still Orthodox and as best they can speak Greek and spend time in and are familiar with Greece. Its not, by the way, because we marry other Greeks, Actually, its quite the opposite. We almost never marry other Greeks. The Archdiocesan statistics bear this out. There is not one of us in the extended family in my generation or the boys' generation who married another Greek or even another cradle Orthodox.

Kosta, I didn't mean to give you or the rest of the gang here the impression that the innovations you've seen on the GOA were imposed on us from the outside. They weren't. Greeks did this to themselves in a misguided attempt to become Americans. It still goes on in non religious contexts. How many times have we seen our immigrant brothers and sisters work 24/7 in their little businesses to buy their spoiled brat kids a $50,000.00 BMW at 20 because "I want them to have a better life than I did." or buy into every Madison Avenue fad that comes along because that's how you become an American? Maybe its a flaw in Greek peasant character, probably its just human nature.

Finally as for +Philip, let me assure you that +Philip was being used by the GOA just as much as +Philip used that forum to promote his vision. The GOA knew exactly what Constantinople's reaction would be and truth be told, Black Bart of Istanbul overplayed his hand again, just as we figured he would. Civil society politics is bush league compared to what goes on in the Church my friends!