But first, it is incumbent on us to get these folks to abandon their skepticism, and that means getting to them in ways that they have some chance of understanding based on what they already know. Our time is unique in the number and kind of secular enticements, readily available via mass media, that the Church must contend against. Moreover, what is perceived as "rationality" is itslf often embraced as an enticement in its own right, at least in the self-congratulatory style we often see around us (Christopher Hitchens comes immediately to mind). We already made the mistake of simply being "relevant" in teaching through the culture, where ew quickly watered down theology to feel-goodism and a rationalization of all sorts of irrational behavior (witness the SPI fiasco in San Franciso, for example). We're too far removed (due to our own fault) from traditional catechetics to simply return to them instantaneously and without recourse to ancillary methods). Two generations of potential catechists do not know the faith well themselves, and cannot teach that way alone. Integrating a more "flow-chart," diagrammatic approach may be a good way to get the ball rolling in the West, at least until something resembling Christendom has been restored here.
Ethereal spirituality (even when authentic) is largely lost on the hard-edged, hyper-pragmatic, skeptical agnostics who pervade our western culture. St. Paul advised a diet of spiritual milk before the neophytes take to spiritual meat. Well, the milk of diagramming spiritual truths may be quite useful to this generation while they are spiritual infants, when they start teething in a spiritual way, we can introduce the chopped meat, and beyond that: the great day will dawn when we can introduce icons and other artistic expressions to coexist with the mystical writings of the saints! But, for many, for us to simply launch at them with a perceived tenuous tone is to simply lose them immediately. Hook 'em any way you can, so long as it can be integrated with a higher understanding of orthodoxy when the time is appropriate. I fail to see how employing such aids as the "steering wheel" with the likes of our contemporary unchurched cannot be integrated with traditional methods of teaching the Faith to achieve that end.
“I fail to see how employing such aids as the “steering wheel” with the likes of our contemporary unchurched cannot be integrated with traditional methods of teaching the Faith to achieve that end.”
Perhaps such methods can be used. In the GOA right now there is something of a debate raging about what methods to use for catechesis. Interestingly, it is the modernists and “liberals” (sort if a meaningless term when applied to Orthodox, I know!)who seem positive about those methods. The conservatives are not at all enamored of them. Here’s the thing, its the traditional, very conservative (but English speaking) Orthodox parishes which are growing with converts arriving and secularized Orthodox returning to the fold while the liberal places (and the hyper ethnic parishes outside of Greek “ghettos”) are dying on the vine.
In my parish the Yankee converts seem to take to icons from the first day they walk into the temple. I suppose many of them had read about icons before they ever come to church, but a number have told me that it was the experience of icons “in real life” in a parish church which brought them out of protestantism or whatever and into The Church.