Speaking up for old immigrant congregations

Here is a thoughtful post on the state of congregations in Eastern Orthodoxy in America today. The author points out the tension between the new mission, convert based parishes and the older ethnic congregations.

Obscured by the dust of the collapsing cultural country club communities and the smoke and mirrors associated with the convert parishes is the silent majority of American Orthodoxy's mainstream churches.

He speaks up for the mainstream ethnic congregations and does a good job. Some of what he says can be applied to Lutherans of German background though we are further along in acclimating to America.

Here is another bit :

It's easy to second guess the genesis of the communities founded by our grandparents: their ethnocentricity; the lack of jurisdictional unity; their adoption of a quasi-congregational ecclesiology. But these criticisms are ahistorical and intellectually dishonest. They were people of their time, doing the best that they could ... But here's the reality. The overwhelming majority of American parishes are the spiritual benefactors of the unsung heroes who crossed the pond in the early twentieth century.

"Ethnic ghettos" -- the favorite epithet used at almost every opportunity to describe Orthodox parishes with Old World roots -- needs to be put in perspective. The parishes of the early twentieth century were cultural enclaves. They had to be. Come to my neck of the woods if you need a refresher course in religious bigotry.

There remain some parishes that are ethnically exclusive. In some locales this is a natural consequence of the congregation's cultural homogeneity. What else could we expect? In other places, an anachronistic cultural chauvinism finds some parishes dying slowly. Without a shift in mindset, these churches might one day have to close their doors -- maybe they deserve their fate.