“American Orthodoxy, for reasons too complex to enter into right now, will not last very long before it becomes its own brand of Protestant error. The “Orthodox” Study Bible will become their Bible, no doubt.”
I guess I have a bit more confidence in the future than you do, Kosta. But I will grant that the main reason the GOA is still an eparchy of Constantinople is the fear of precisely that. American Orthodoxy isn’t nearly mature enough to go it alone. Interestingly, its mostly clerics and some “cradle” Orthodox who seem to favor autocephally. Lay converts seem death on the idea as do most lay cradle Orthodox.
It's not a matter of maturity; it's a matter of culture, Kolo. remember, in Greece, people "walk" Orthodox. In Orthodox countries, Orthodoxy is a way of life (i.e. culture). is Orthodox.
In America, Orthodoxy is an unnatural graft: an Orthodox vine attached to a Protestant-secular way of life and a culture that is as far removed form Orthodoxy as one can imagine. Orthodoxy is a freak looked at from a normal American point of view.
It's a matter of perception. They walk in our churches, snell and see incense, candles, unintelligible chanting, bowing, crossing, talking to and kissing these pictures of people who look like something from Hindu paintings, and they think they are in some kind of an occult wiccan worship.
I had an LDS tell me that it was "morbid." He recalls people carrying a coffin around the church (Pascha, of course), and prostrating before it.
That reminded me of someone once telling me that if martians walked into a church they would report to their bosses back home that earthlings worship some dead guy, and engage in cannibalism, because they eat and drink blood. Distorited perceptions are powerful determinants of attitude.
How can an Orthodox American go out on a Friday night and have a drink and hot wings with a bunch of guys when he is supposed to be fasting? Oh, yeah, that, fasting...Happy hours are on Wednesdays...but we are supposed to be fasting then too.
We fast half of the year all in all in a country where fasting is unheard of. We fast either at Christmas (old calendar churches) or Thanksgiving (new calendar churches), two biggest food feast holidays; take your pick. And if you are Irish and Orthodox (and I know you are half and half) do you go out on St. Patrick's and have a tall glass of ale in the middle of Great Lent (you don't have to answer that of course)?
Being an American and being Orthodox is a clash of cultures and civilizations. American Orthodox are trying hard to be both Orthodox and American. The two concepts are incompatible. Something's got to give. And it won't be the culture. Only about 1% of Americans are Orthodox and that includes ethnics and Americans. Do you really believe one can live Orthodoxy in a Protestant-secular world we live in unless he or she is ethnically immunized?
American Orthodoxy will seek that which will feel less "freakish" and in doing so will mutate from Orthodoxy and turn into something unrecognizable. The "Orthodox" Study Bible is only a symptom of that trend.