First – (tongue in cheek) – erm . . . look at my name! Seriously its a dead give away! An anglo-boy whose family came over on the Mayflower is certainly NOT going to have a name like mine (he he he)! So I do have an organic connection to Eastern Christianity via my own personal heritage.

That however, in my mind, is not good enough – to follow a tradition merely because it is somehow linked to your ethnic or national identity and pride is I think thoughtless. That is to say, it may be authentic, but it may not necessarily be considered.

The “classic” definition raises a few curiosities, for example:

How is a Westerner defined? Strictly speaking one could argue that unless one is a Roman, Anglican, or possibly a Lutheran, or Calvinist, one cannot really tag one’s self as being a Westerner. Thus, people who are part of the “emerging Christian” community – that mostly, at least here in the UK eschews all attachment to a given denomination – are not strictly speaking (Oh My God I’m sounding like Nestorius!) “Western Christians” so what are they?

Again, I consider the churches in Africa, particularly those currently part of the “Anglican Communion”. These communities are “politically” linked to, and have their historic roots in Anglicanism. Their vision, values, and praxis, however, have developed in a completely different direction from the rest of the Anglican Church. I do not think it unfair to start calling them an/the African Church, for whilst they are “politically” linked to “Western” Christianity – their heart is certainly no longer with the “Western” Christian ethos.

On the other side of the fence we have the equally interesting questions:

Greek-Catholics – Easterners whose “political” link is not with other Eastern churches, but with Rome – the “mother” of all Western churches. Are they still Easterners?

Within this same context then, how do we understand a bi-ritual priest? Usually a Roman re-trained to also serve a Greek-Catholic parish. He has “adopted” Eastern rite and custom, is he an Easterner, or a Westerner?

Finally, let us consider another development – this time in the Antiochian church, which over the past 20 years has had a huge influx of former Evangelicals. Here, in order to accommodate “Western” attitudes, and culture they have developed a “Western Rite” is this the “praxis” of Eastern Christianity?

My purpose in posing these curiosities is not to badger, these have been part of an ongoing conversation among E. Christian communities in the US, in particular, for the past 30 years (possibly longer if one includes the battles between Greek-Catholics and the Irish Roman hierarchy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries); especially given how the original “ethnic” mix – that quality which made the classic definition work so well – is rapidly changing, and bringing other changes with it.

I am not “O”rthodox – and I would never call myself that, because it is essentially dishonest – being a hard-core indie-boy I have no live connection with the “O”rthodox churches, and no interest in creating one, real or imagined. This is an ecclesial distinction/boundary, which I believe must be respected.

The desert fathers often asked the question: what is your praxis? My praxis is, has been, and likely always will be “Eastern”. It is the way I live my life – it is the way of my faith. I am therefore, fully comfortable describing myself as an Easterner (as an interesting aside – the other Eastern Christians I have met along the way, are equally comfortable “calling” me an Easterner). Oh, and I’ll also throw in the fact that my theological education and outlook is thoroughly Eastern, and . . . Ah, what the hell, I’m a Slav, its in our blood!

Just curious… not to pry but how are you an Easterner? Were you born Orthodox or did you join an Orthodox church at some point? I’d define an Easterner as a member of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox or Assyrian communions OR somebody in a nationalist or true-believer schism from them but ‘still in the family’, like the Greek Old Calendarists, Russian Old Believers and Ukrainian nationalist sects. They are organically related to and don’t differ essentially from Orthodoxy.

I’m sorry but I don’t consider an indy who adopts Eastern things but is not directly related to the big Eastern churches (I don’t mean ‘lines of succession’ got decades ago – Eastern sacramentology doesn’t work that way and the big Eastern churches disown such successions) an Easterner.

I agree with you entirely that this particular behaviour/attitude is not exclusive to those who are “half in/half out”. It is in my experience, however, a prevalent feature of the “set”.

Likewise, I accept that within our own ranks (excluding those who are half in/half out – are not too few folk are are very much a part of the “problem” and that is equally vexing but which I think has a different motivation.

Your position that those who hope to someday return to [insert your favourite christian -ism] so long as they contribute to our community now – is I feel untenable – and this current point – re: the looking over the shoulder – is but one expression of why I believe that this is so, others are forthcoming.

BUT…that kind of behavior is not characteristic of all people who are “half in, half out”. As I mentioned in my comment, what’s important about such folks is whether they have a mature understanding of the relationship between us and Rome (or us and Canterbury, or us and 815, or us and Constantinople). People with a mature understanding of that relationship can be “half in and half out”, because with them, there is a certain hope that some wall will come down or something will be liberalized, but there is neither the expectation that it’s “just around the corner”, nor the belief that everything in this moment must be done with a view toward that eventual liberalization. If someone hopes someday to return to Rome (or TEC or whoever) but is willing to take what comes from living fully as an Indie priest in the meantime, there’s no problem.

The second point — this kind of obnoxious “but what if” attitude doesn’t always come from the half-in/half-out situation. When I was a UCC/Disciples campus minister, I encountered scads of clergy who were hypersensitive to certain stuff in the liturgy that no lay person on earth cared about. They would come up with these tortured, unpoetic liturgies “for the people” that really left the people unenthused but satisfied some little bugaboo of their own. Low church clericalism.

Which is just a roundabout way of saying, I guess, when performing ecclesiastical surgery (or contemplating it, as you do in this post), be careful not to cut out too much. I don’t think people who are half-in/half-out are the problem — the attitude about Rome as authoritative, shared by some half-in people and, frankly, some fully-in IC/OC people at times, is the real problem. We mustn’t target all people who would return to Rome if certain things were liberalized — I’m happy to have the grounded, mature ones, and they add a great deal to the movement.

And the immature ones, well, there’s probably hope for many of them. If we target the bad behavior and don’t try to squash their love of the positive things they left behind.