DL: Tell me about Eastern Christianity

*ethereal quality

I was raised Orthodox Christian and only have fond memories of church, our traditions, etc. I find myself drifting back to it after years of agnosticism.

And yes, there is a next-to esoteric or mystical nature to the Eastern Orthodox Church that's very different from Western Christianity.

I've always wanted to visit Mount Athos, I own a few icons from there:

Another beautiful Russian Orthodox chant for you OP

OP, I also find Coptic (Egytian), Ethiopian and Assyrian Christians very interesting too.

It's exactly the same as all christian sects...without all the fun and whimsy of the Inquisition and catholic/protestant hoopla.

[quote]“The Roman Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone – for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.” - Oscar Wilde

I don't really believe this, but it always makes me chuckle!

The only time I attended a service, it seemed like incense overload---this was in Jordan.

Thank you r4!

Sadly, Eastern Orthodox is even more homophobic than Catholicism. The Russian Orthodox church has been at the forefront of the laws in Russia used as an excuse to jail gay people (for promulgating homosexuality, even though, ostensibly, it's not against the law to be homosexual). And the other Orthodox groups (Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Greek) are almost all equally homophobic.

There are theological aspects to Orthodoxy that appeal to me - for instance, they don't believe in the concept of original sin as it is taught in both Catholicism and in Protestant sects. In other words, in the west, Christians have traditionally been taught that all human beings are born with original sin and inherently sinful, and thus need Christ's intercession to forgive that sin before we can be saved. This was a concept of Augustine, (400 AD), whose theology had much more influence on the western branch of Christianity than on the eastern. The orthodox believe that there was an original sin (Adam and Eve's sin), which they call "ancestral sin" , but that the result of that was that we all die. Otherwise, they teach that we don't share in the guilt of that sin. I'm not religious, but was raised Catholic, and the concept of original sin always bothered me.

The music is beautiful, but the services are long (some might call them interminable) - as in approaching 3 hours long. Also, in Orthodoxy, well over half of the year is made of up of fast days. (Every Wednesday and Friday, Lent, Advent, (both 40+ days), Apostles' fast, Dormition fast, ), so the meat lovers on DL might have some trouble with that aspect. (Might be good for those ever expanding waistlines). That's why so much food of Eastern and southern Europe uses mushrooms, eggplant, hummus, falafel (chick peas), fava beans, cheese fish etc, They are meat substitutes for all of those fast days.

R10, good points. Augustine sucked. He couldn't keep it in his pants and--as is typical of these "abstinence only" freaks--moralized others, basically telling them sex is bad, especially (gasp!) homosexuality. Thanks Augustine!

This is pretty interesting:

I'm lying in bed with the lights out, looking at the almost-full moon, and listening to this.

It's sublime.

r10 I assume you mean days of abstinence? THOSE are the meatless days. Fast days are when much less food is to be eaten.

I was raised Orthodox. Homosexuality is viewed as a sin, if practiced. However I remember a young gay priest and his “helper” who were tolerated by the hierarchy. I don’t think the issue is as cut and dried as r10 suggests.

Most services are 2 hours (the liturgical service), but most churches have a service before the liturgy.

In Ukraine and Russia, churches don’t have benches, you stand during the service. There’s also a lot more running around, lighting candles and praying for the dead or various saints.

Which ones are the ones where the brides and grooms wear crowns?

Orthodoxy, r16.

R14 No, during Great Lent, Wednesdays, and Fridays, daily fasting is at its most strict, abstaining from: meat (anything with a backbone), dairy products, eggs, olive oil and wine. Additionally, during Great Lent, the size and number of meals, as well as the selection, are smaller. On many other feast or fast days, particular foods are avoided or permitted, in lesser degrees of fasting.

Orthodox Christians are borderline vegan for about half the calendar year because of all the fasting.

R16

r18 Yet, there ARE separate fast days and abstinence days. No?

R20 Fast days [italic]are[/italic] abstinence days. Catholics, however, distinguish between fasting and abstinence; the former referring to the discipline of taking one full meal a day, and the latter signifying the discipline of eating no meat.

Romanian Orthodox wedding:

R17, R19, thanks -- I do think that adds a nice aesthetic touch to the otherwise boring and formulaic affairs of hetero weddings.

If two Orthodox grooms get married, do they wear the same crowns? ;)

r21 Thank you for explaining what I originally explained to you. Enjoy your evening.

I love the older churches. They have better costumes. Protestantism is prissy and too admonitory for my taste.

Nice music post OP. You might also like Arvo Part.

R24 They are called [italic]fast days[/italic], though. Not "days of abstinence" like you told R10:

[quote][R10] I assume you mean days of abstinence? THOSE are the meatless days. Fast days are when much less food is to be eaten.

No separate fast days and abstinence days for Orthodox Christians, they're not Catholics.

There is a strong current of ethnocentrism among the Orthodox. The Orthodox Churches are essentially national churches. If you don’t have a connection to the country of origin, you may feel like an interloper.

The Orthodox allow priests to marry, but it must occur before ordination. Bishops must be celibate. They do not ordain women. There’s little interest in ecumenism. Divorce is permitted under certain circumstances. The saying goes that the Orthodox Church “blesses the first marriage, performs the second, tolerates the third, and forbids the fourth".

My roommate was baptized Orthodox Christian by her Romanian side of the family and would like to ask you guys what on earth is so mystical about having all those ridiculous saints (about 3 per day, each with a more science fiction story of sainthood than the other) and why God would give a damn when you eat meat, dairy or oils. Homophobic and corrupt, the church all over sucks. It may not be as hypocritical as the Catholic one in that it recognizes that sex is part of life for almost everyone, so priests can marry and a married man can give marriage advice while a celibate just seems creepy doing so, but it is only heterosexual marriage. In the city I live in, the Church has vehemently tried to oppose Pride each year and convince the city not to allow it. They counter it with a "Parada Normalității" which I think needs no translation.

Divine Liturgy

R3 The late gay travel writer and tour guide Hanns Ebensten's book "Volleyball with the Cuna Indians" includes a hilarious piece about his time on male-only Mt. Athos with a gay tour group and frenzied monks who were "more than friendly". As with most religions, Eastern Orthodoxy does not practice what it preaches with regard to homosexuality.

The chanting, the flickering tapers, the incense. The endless repetition of the liturgy. All while standing for hours.. Designed to induce a hypnotic trance state. Has been working very effectively for 2000 years. No need to thank me.

My mother's side of the family is Greek Orthodox so I've been to plenty of weddings, etc. in that church. They have interesting Easter traditions -- first of all, Easter is usually on a different day that "regular" Easter (or as one of my aunt's called it "white people's Easter.") They dye their eggs a very deep red to represent Christ's blood, then they have a contest to crack the egg with against another's at the the dinner table. They used to celebrate "name days" (from the saint after whom you were named) instead of birthdays, but once they've been Americanized, that all changes. My mother and her many siblings all had Greek names, but all of them Americanized them (they were all born in the US.)

[quote]There is a strong current of ethnocentrism among the Orthodox.

Very interesting, r27. I'd say this is a main difference, then, between Orthodox and Catholic

Some sublime Rachmaninov vespers performed by the USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir:

r34 Rachmaninov's Vespers are what led me to Russian Orthodox music more generally. Beautiful.

This is a current favorite -- Chesnokov's Do Not Cast Me Off in Old Age. Amazing basso profondo. Lyrics (from Psalm 71):

Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone.

For my enemies speak against me; those who wait to kill me conspire together.

They say, “God has forsaken him; pursue him and seize him, for no one will rescue him.”

Do not be far from me, my God; come quickly, God, to help me.

May my accusers perish in shame; may those who want to harm me be covered with scorn and disgrace.

As for me, I will always have hope; will praise you more and more.

For Easter, eggs are traditionally dyed naturally with onion skins and flowers. My mother would save onion skins in a big container throughout the year for this. And yes at that egg cracking thing, R32! I always found it was easier to 'win' if you were on the bottom lol.

This is more or less the process:

The egg thing between males is about establishing dominance isn't it? It started with the Greeks and everything is a competition for them.

I visited Mt Athos a few years ago: imagine waking up to the creepy sound of semantron in the middle of the night, and then attending a mass at 3:30 AM in a medieval church lit only by candlelight, surrounded with nothing but chanting monks wearing great schemas. That was definitely one of my most unforgettable travelling experiences, even if I'm an atheist.

The local monks are super friendly but when you start chatting with them the first thing they ask you is "Are you Orthodox?" and when they hear you're not they're not even trying to hide the look of disappointment on their faces.

R38 That sounds wonderful. I hope to visit one day.

60 Minutes did a great program on Mt Athos:

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are Greek Orthodox, Rita was born into the religion and Tom converted. They have now become Greek citizens.

There's no underwear beneath those robes!

Sacrilege r41!

Of course not underwear was not invented in the 5th century Byzantium and we've changed absolutely nothing since then.

I have a small collection of Pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs). They're also a tradition in a number of other Eastern European cultures. Some of the symbols are pre-Christian, but the eggshells themselves are too fragile to document their history, although there are examples in pottery that date prior to the Christian era. Apparently, Christian symbolism was introduced when the religion itself became established. I'm Catholic and find something reassuring in the way pagan symbols and beliefs survive in contemporary Christian religions.

I am not certain I agree that Orthodoxy is ethnocentric. I believe it’s largely because services are conducted in local languages and because there is no one hierarchy governing the entire Orthodox Church.

I am Ukrainian Orthodox, and when Ethiopians first arrived here, they attended our church, despite the fact services are conducted in Ukrainian. They were welcomed warmly. The Ethiopians, with help from Ukrainian church members, raised funds to buy land for their own church, closer to where most if them live, and where services would be conducted in their own language. A local Ethiopian woman won the lottery, and donated all the cash to build the church. The Ethiopians still use the Ukrainian church’s attached hall for social functions.

There is an Orthodox church in my city that has services in English, and its membership is comprised primarily of people who have come to the faith as adults, almost exclusively with no Orthodoxy in their family backgrounds.

R36 - that is EXACTLY how my half Romanian roommate made them this year. I was like WTF when she came home with purple onions and a pair of ladies stockings and flower petals and shamrocks (they grow here in April). She peeled the onion, placed the petal or shamrock on the egg, wrapped it in the stocking and boiled it. I have also been collecting some hand-painted wooden eggs EXACTLY like R44 and some hand embroidered pieces of the national costumes (like the sash and hand engraved belts) of the men as in R22's picture. Of course they do two weddings, a traditional one and a modern one. The bride and groom are given coronets and walk around the pulpit 3 times like in "The Deer Hunter".

Mount Athos doc:

I knew a number of guys growing up who were Uniates...mainly of Syrian and Ukrainian backgrounds. They're catholic in that they recognize the pope as the head of the church, but their liturgies are Orthodox. Their is a Ukrainian Catholic Church in downtown Manhattan.

John Tavener composed "Song For Athene," using the Russian Orthodox musical tradition as inspiration. My fellow Gays of a certain age will remember it, as the Recessional hymn at the funeral of the Princess of Wales. Far better than "Good-Bye England's Rose."

Completely off topic: I can remember lusting after the second Guardsman in on the left side of the casket. Whoa! He was good-looking!

Yes! A DL thread with Chesnokov! Pre-Eternal Council has such lovely, lush chord changes. I think there’s a ii-V-I in there somewhere.

Agni Parthene is still one of my favorite Christian chants (and I'm not even Christian myself).

Another favorite

I once went to a conference about Byzantine religion and one scholar gave a paper about the Russian Orthodox inheritance from Byzantine culture and demonstrated soundly enough, I thought, that this amounted to, in his words, the 'contents of a second-tier, provincial monastery', i.e. very little sophisticated Byzantine theology and scholarship, let alone any of the Byzantine secular tradition at all. The conference was full of Orthodox monks who went ballistic, going on about mysticism and holiness. It was hilarious. The decline and end of Byzantium had a clear negative impact on the Orthodox tradition, leaving it focused on monasticism and mysticism and very wary of intellectual activity. While I would never defend western Christianity in the medieval period, it clearly kept an active respect for scholarship and intellectual enquiry that inarguably created the university tradition.

Greek Byzantine chant

[quote] Tell me about Eastern Christianity

It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now

The music is just so damn beautiful. Another recent find:

“SHE’S NOT A CHRISTIAN!!!!!!!” 🤡

In Constantinople men were supposed to learn to write Greek so they understood Orthodoxy and read the Bible. The clergy was responsible to make sure boys were taught to read. There was never a division between the spoken language and the scriptures, like there was in the west with Latin. Latin cut the common people off from the church in the West. They were also supposed to learn parts of the Bible by heart. The cathedral clergy of Hagia Sophia had branch schools they ran throughout Constantinople. They also set the standards for art and music throughout the empire. The clergy of Hagia Sophia had a reputation for being gay. In the12th century there were 1000 clergy attached to Hagia Sophia. Parish priests were married, while monks and higher clergy were not.

[quote]They have interesting Easter traditions -- first of all, Easter is usually on a different day that "regular" Easter (or as one of my aunt's called it "white people's Easter.")

this happens because Western Christianity adopted the Gregorian calendar during the Middle Age while Eastern Christianity stayed with Julian Calendar. Julius Caesar who was Pontifex Maximus held the powers to reform the calendar of the Roman Republic: this calendar before him was very complicated due to repeated attempts at reform. Caesar adapted the Egyptian calendar, wich had 365 days, and established the rule for the leap year every 4 years. This was by far the most accurate calendar to date, nevertheless the winter solstice, which he had aligned with December 25th, continued to drift about one day every century. In 325 AD the council of Nicaea established the rules for calculating Easter which assume that the seasons remain aligned with the calendar. European scholars had been aware that it wasn't the case since the early medieval period. The Gregorian reform introduce a 10-day correction to revert the drift since the Council of Nicaea and fixed the leap year rule by skipping some. Eventually the Protestant countries also complied while in Orthodox countries only the civil calendar was adjusted, churches continue to use the Julian calendar and Eastern day is different and continues to move towards the summer.

“Mystical” = belief in magic

[quote]There was never a division between the spoken language and the scriptures, like there was in the west with Latin

How easy is it for Greek speakers to understand the ancient language? I've studied both and they seemed like different languages with a shared alphabet and base vocabulary. The noun and verb endings are the same in many cases, but differently applied. I would think it's a similar case to Latin vs. Italian.

There’s also an eastern Catholic Church

Orthodox priests can marry.

Nah I’m not clicking on those websites.

It's like Catholicism but swarthier.

Nobody is *that* crazy that they know nothing about orthodoxy (witness they had to post on Datalounge “Tell Me About Orthodoxy”) yet post so many multiple links to orthodox singing.