Thoughts

“…It would be better for you to leave no brothel in this town unentered than to refuse to venerate our Lord and God Jesus Christ together with his own mother.” – St John of Damascus[1]. The importance of venerating the image: can iconography help defeat the power of pornography?

Reflections on iconography and pornography based on interviews with Susan Cushman, an iconographer and writer in Memphis, Fr Gregory Mathewes-Green, a parish priest near Baltimore, and Fr George Morelli, a clinical psychologist, therapist and priest in San Diego.

The one-hundredth canon of the Council in Trullo in 692 states:

“Let thine eyes behold the thing which is right,” orders Wisdom, “and keep thine heart with all care.” For the bodily senses easily bring their own impressions into the soul. Therefore we order that henceforth there shall in no way be made pictures, whether they are in paintings or in what way so ever, which attract the eye and corrupt the mind, and incite it to the enkindling of base pleasures. And if any one shall attempt to do this he is to be cut off.[2]

St John of Damascus suggests that the tempter-demon would value as nothing successfully tempting a monk to fall into the sin of fornication if he could instead prevent the monk from venerating the icon of Christ and the Theotokos. The Definition of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) says that we value “iconographic representations… for being of an equal benefit to us as the gospel narrative.”[3] Every year at the beginning of Lent, the Orthodox Church celebrates the ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’, by which we mean the restoration of icons to the Church. Why does the tradition of the Church place such a high importance on the image? What does this teach us about pornographic imagery, and can iconography find a role in combating it?

Icons as sanctifying

St John of Damascus clearly saw the periods of iconoclasm in the Church as a temporary victory for the devil, saying, “Away with you, envious devil, for you are envious of us, when we see the likeness of our Master and are sanctified by him…”[4] It was clear to him that iconography was far more than decoration in the churches, more even than an aid to prayer or a reminder to us of heavenly things; in some sense the icons can actually sanctify us.

Pornography in modern experience

There can be no doubt that in particular the technological development of the Internet has led to a massive increase in the use of pornography over the last fifteen years or so. With most of the early online business successes being in the porn industry, pornography has also been a driver of technological advancement online. In 2004 there were between 23 and 60 million unique visitors to pornography websites each day. Moreover, 51 percent of all videos on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are pornographic, 73 percent of all image searches on P2P network Kazaa are for pornography, and in one survey, 37 percent of Christian Pastors in the US identified internet pornography as a current struggle. The average child nowadays is eleven years old at their first exposure to pornography, with 90 percent of eight to sixteen year-olds having viewed online porn, and 80 percent of 15-17 year-olds having had multiple exposures to hard-core (meaning violent, group or bestial) online porn. Beyond the Internet, 70 percent of in-room movie revenues in hotels are from pornographic films, as are 25-30 percent of all pay-per-view revenues. All-in-all, pornography in the US alone is estimated to be a more than $12 billion industry.[5]

Despite the prevailing wind of tolerance for pornography in western societies, notable not only in permissive attitudes towards the use of internet pornography, but also in the degree to which public space has been infiltrated by pornographic images in advertising and media, very little study has been done on the effect of pornography on us since its use became so widespread. This is partly because a 1979-80 study (before the Internet) so effectively demonstrated the ill-effects of pornography (mild pornography by today’s standards) that similar studies have not been permitted for ethical reasons.[6]

Both Fr Gregory and Fr George affirm that in their pastoral experience, pornography has become a very widespread issue. Fr Gregory expresses his continuing astonishment at how much this is so, and says that he has come almost to expect that among males of a certain age-range, it will be an issue. While Fr Gregory has never had it raised by a female person in confession, Fr George said that it is also a problem for some women. He also explained that there is a subset within society that lives deeply in a pornographic world, as in one case he knows where a ‘bi-sexual’ couple had constant hard-core pornography playing throughout their house and whose social life revolved exclusively around others in the same totally sexualised culture.

Fr Gregory particularly identified the problem of the constant temptation to pornography the Internet provides, highlighting both the ease in overcoming filters (even when he has himself helped in installing them and keeping the password) and the frequency with which teens have “free reign over the computer”. Fr George highlighted some of the negative effects of pornography on the person viewing it, that it interferes with home, work and social life, and particularly with marriage. He also notes that clergy are not exempt either from the problem or its ill effects.

Contrast between iconography and pornography

If imagery in icons can in some way sanctify us and imagery in pornography can negatively affect our lives and our relationships, what is the relationship between iconography and pornography? There was a clear sense in all three interviewees that there is an opposition between iconography and pornography. Fr Gregory suggests that it is clear to people that the two could not co-exist, so, for example, an icon attached to the computer screen could be a preventative measure for one tempted to view pornography online, or an icon on the television set to prompt the question, “is what I’m watching consonant with the faith?” He has in the past been told by a family that they felt they had to keep their icons in a different room from the television, which he thought really ought to have suggested to them that there is a problem. While “icons have to do with communion with… the divine”, Fr Gregory thinks that in its refusal or inability to invoke communion, pornography is the opposite. Fr George described iconography with the analogy of ‘windows’ (or ‘doors’[7]) into heaven and a channel of divine life, contrasting this with pornography, a “tool to manipulate, disrespect and un-sanctify God’s creation and our part in his creation”. Susan went on to describe from the artists point of view, the virtue of using the “gift of visual art, of painting, to enhance our worship of God” as opposed to using the “same gift of visual art to enhance our worship of idols – in this case the idol of the physical body and sexuality”, where it becomes a vice.

Fr John Breck, in his book The Sacred Gift of Life, describes pornography as ‘demonic iconography’, as instead of feeding the mind and soul with heavenly food as iconography does, it “infests the mind with corrupt images that produce corruption in the depths of the soul.”[8]

Image and modern western society

In relating the concept of the image in iconography and pornography, a possible avenue is to explore whether there is any link between the iconoclasm in the background of our historically Protestant countries and the rise of pornography, and whether these same societies are now developing a growing dependence on ‘image’ above ‘word’. Susan sees a connection in that “we are physical beings, and when we’re struggling with physical issues, it’s difficult to find something to hold on to when there’s no visible image before our eyes.” She compares it to the parable of the ‘empty house’ where a demon is expelled, but since there is nothing to take its place in the soul, it returns with seven more (Mt 11:24-6). A catechumen interviewed by Frederica Mathewes-Green for her article ‘Men and Church’ agreed, writing “that he was finding icons helpful in resisting unwanted thoughts. ‘If you just close your eyes to some visual temptation, there are plenty of stored images to cause problems. But if you surround yourself with icons, you have a choice of whether to look at something tempting or something holy.’”[9]

Fr George does not necessarily see this connection between traditional Protestant iconoclasm and the rise of pornography, as his experience shows him no discernible difference between the patterns of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox people in terms of the potential to become addicted to pornography. He also points out the increasing tendency of Protestant ministers he knows to make some limited use of icons in their own personal prayer, if not in church. Certainly it would be interesting to study the impact and extent of pornography across historically Protestant , Catholic and Orthodox cultures to see if the undifferentiated impact of pornography that Fr George notes on individual persons can also be extended to cultures.

Susan has seen in her lifetime the growing dependence on image above word as television and video games have taken the place of books and the spoken word in radio. She notes the significant impact images of all kinds have on our lives. For example, those with food addictions can easily fall prey to sights and sounds of food advertising. Fr George notes that while all the senses can have this kind of impact on us, their relative strengths depends on our individual personalities. However in all of us, an experience in one sense can bring up another: a smell may trigger a sound or an image. He points out a patristic tradition of confessing sins of sight, taste, smell and so on.

The false image – image without communion

Susan sees that in the image we present to the world, we all wear masks, and that part of what sanctification is about is gradually melting away our masks so that each of us can become the person God created us to be. She points out that icons are never painted in profile, which indicates an avoidance of eye-contact with the viewer, but front-on, face to face with us. Susan wondered whether there is something in the nature of erotic imagery that invites “sideways glances, clandestine looks and meetings”, that perhaps the idolatry involved in pornography addiction darkens our souls, causing us to lower our gaze, turning away from the light of Christ. She quoted her Father Confessor speaking about Confession as turning the light on our sins: “It’s like flipping on a light in a dark room and watching the roaches run for cover.” She says, “We are just like roaches, when we allow ourselves to love darkness rather than light.”

Fr Gregory saw a deep opposition between the common modern use of the word image to denote superficial presentation, with its associations with consumerism and materialism especially in the world of advertising, suggesting the surface and the reality can be very different. This is in sharp contrast to iconography, where a “presentation of the very depths of reality becomes accessible to us”. Pornography is likewise about manipulation, he says, where what is presented is for the immediate gratification of the person watching. Where there can be no depth of communion, it is a denial of true iconography.

Perhaps the heart of the opposition between pornography and iconography lies here, in the matter of communion. Fr John Breck calls pornography a ‘demonic iconography’, and it perhaps is not going too far to describe pornographic images as icons of hell. The icon is there to draw us into deeper communion; the image is there as a window that we can pass through to a deeper reality. Pornography is there as a substitute for communion, as an ‘easy way out’ to gain the pleasure without the struggle of relating to another human being. In pornography there is nothing to pass through and no deeper reality to find, quite the opposite; in pornography a human person, an icon of Christ, is stripped of that iconographic nature as the spirit is separated from the flesh, and the flesh presented as a commodity, an end in itself. In fact, while the icon brings us to a person, pornography begins to damage our very ability to relate on a personal level: there is an “absence of individuality in the figures of pornographic literature and imagery. In pornography, one human being is interchangeable with any other of the same general type… the medium which seems to represent ‘individuals’ – the photography of fashion and pornography – in fact imposes stereotypes for replication in social reality. Yet the icon, which makes no pretence at physical literalism, allows the viewer the freedom to find the individual beauty of particular human beings.”[10]

So while iconography leads us into the communion of heaven, pornography destroys the communion designed by God for the human person as an icon of Christ, separates the image from the full personal reality of the person portrayed therein, and separates the sexual impulse from the essential aspect of communion for which it was created. Unsurprisingly, the end result of this is to damage the pornography user’s ability to experience any level of communion. As one of the women interviewed by Pamela Paul put it, “I don’t know any man who is into porn who has been able to be truly intimate.”[11]

Beauty will save the world?

One of Dostoevsky’s characters famously declared that beauty would save the world. Eugene Trubetskoi said, “Our icon painters had seen the beauty that would save the world and had immortalized it in colors. The thought of the healing power of beauty has been alive for a long time in the idea of the miraculously revealed and miracle-working icon! Amid our present manifold struggle and boundless sorrow, let that power console us and give us courage.”[12] Susan says that icons are born in “the convergence of the beauty of the spiritual realm… with the beauty of the physical world.”

Susan recounted that back in the 1980s she heard a priest recommend to students the need to have an icon of the Mother of God on the wall in their dorm room particularly to aid with the struggle with lust. She also recommended that an icon of St Mary of Egypt could also be a good reminder of the importance of the struggle. Both Fr Gregory and Fr George had suggested to people involved in a struggle with pornography that they keep an icon attached to the computer monitor. Though as Fr Gregory points out, this is more a reminder than anything, and it is of course something people will be free to ignore or remove if they give into the temptation to do so. Fr Gregory also now always makes sure to explicitly include televisions and computers when he is blessing a house. He can remind a penitent of this during confession, that the computer and television are not somehow outside real life, but should be swept up into one’s whole life in Christ and the Church.

When Fr Gregory spent a few days on Athos, he says that even in just a few days, when what was before his eyes was limited to the iconography in the many hours spent in church, the beauty of the landscape when outside, and other real human faces, most of them committed to a lifelong struggle towards Christ, he felt the beginnings of a kind of retraining of where his thoughts and imagination would begin to go, teaching him to see reality on a deeper level, sanctifying his sight.

St John of Kronstadt highlighted our tendency to “… see flesh and matter in everything, and nowhere, nor at any time, is God before our eyes.”[13] Granting that icons have the power to sanctify our sight, how far can this power be exercised if we are focusing our eyes on icons for only a little time each day, and letting our eyes rest on ‘flesh and matter’, as St John says, the rest of the day. The Definition of the Seventh Ecumenical Council said, “For the more these [Christ, the Theotokos, angels, saints and holy men] are kept in view through their iconographic representation, the more those who look at them are lifted up to remember and have an earnest desire for the prototypes.”[14]

Pornography is a particular focus on flesh and matter, and a certain failure to keep ‘God before our eyes’. “Pornography, Liam says, makes an object out of everybody. ‘It takes a three-dimensional human being with feelings – someone who could be your daughter, sister, or mother – and basically says, this is a creature that is only intended to satisfy your sexual desires. It becomes your natural way of thinking… You’re no longer conscious you’re even doing it. It just happens.’”[15]

“As we gaze in our worship upon the transfigured cosmos of the icon, we actually enter within that new world, becoming one with that which we behold, filled with its grace and changed by its power. The purpose of the icon is thus not only contemplation but transforming union.”[16] If we immerse ourselves in the life of the Church, if our vision is sanctified by the constancy of our being surrounded by the iconography of the Church, if through this we can learn to look upon every human being as an icon of Christ, including those in pornographic images, then pornography must lose its power over us.

“From your icon, O Lord, we receive the grace of healing… the eyes of the beholders are sanctified by the holy icons.”[17]

Bibliography:

Audrey Barrick: ‘Porn Addiction Flooding Culture, Church’ in Christian Post (5^th January 2007)

Mario Bergner: Redeemed Lives Course Manual: Pastoral Care and Discipleship for the Cure of the Soul (Wheaton, IL 2003)

Henry Bettenson (ed.): Documents of the Christian Church (Oxford, 1963)

Sarah Jane Boss: Empress and Handmaid – On Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London, 2000)

John Breck: The Sacred Gift of Life: Orthodox Christianity and Bioethics (Crestwood, NY, 1999)

John Chryssavgis: Beyond the Shattered Image: Insights into an Orthodox Christian Ecological Worldview (Minneapolis, MN, 2007)

Susan Cushman: ‘Icons Will Save the World’ in the online archive of First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life (December, 2007)

St John of Damascus, Andrew Louth (transl.): Three Treatises On the Divine Images (Crestwood, NY, 2003)

Stephen Freeman: Glory to God for All Things: Orthodox Christianity, Culture and Religion, Making the Journey of Faith (fatherstephen.wordpress.com)

Stephen Freeman: Glory to God (Podcasts) at ancientfaith.com/podcasts/freeman

Matthew Gallatin (Podcast): ‘Lust – part 2’ from Pilgrims from Paradise at ancientfaith.com/podcasts/pilgrims (14^th September, 2007)

John of Kronstadt: My Life in Christ (Jordanville, NY, 1977)

Bobby Maddex (ed.): Salvo magazine Issue 2, Spring 2007 ‘The Way of All Flesh’

Frederica Mathewes-Green: ‘Men and Church’ at www.frederica.com/writings/men-and-church.html (30th September, 2007)

Pamela Paul: Pornified (New York, NY, 2005)

Eugene N. Trubetskoi, Gertrude Vakar (transl.): Icons: Theology in Color (Crestwood, NY, 1973)

Kallistos Ware: ‘Praying with Icons’ in Paul McPartlan (ed.), One in 2000!: Towards Catholic-Orthodoxy Unity (Slough, 1993)

Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (transl.): The Lenten Triodion (London, 1978)

‘The Canons of the Council in Trullo’ in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. XIV

“Let no one disregard you because you are young, but be an example to all the believers in the way you speak and behave, and in your love, your faith and your purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12)

1. Why a ‘Youth Ministry’?

“If we are violent, where [do] we learn it?”[1]

“‘How can we motivate our young people to embrace Orthodoxy and carry it into their adult lives?’ The question is a valid one, but I fear that those who pose it are often not being honest with themselves. Children rarely go off in odd directions without taking some clues from those around them, especially their parents. Children follow and learn from our example, whether that example happens to be good or bad. We form them into what they become by how we live our lives. Sometimes they rebel against what they have learned, but even that rebellion is shaped by the very attitudes against which they choose to rebel.”[2]

In order to understand ‘youth ministry’ theologically, we must understand why there is a need for such a thing as ‘youth ministry’, a concept which seems to have no precedent either in Scripture or in Tradition. The very concept of ‘adolescence’ really only arose a little over a century ago[3], followed by the evolution of the structure of society to a more age-based system, the emergence of an adolescent sub-culture in the 1950s, youth ministries beginning in the latter part of the last century, and finally we have arrived at a point where the youth sub-culture has become in many ways the defining culture of modern western society, even to the extent that in this society, many seem to go to great lengths to avoid adulthood, responsibility and commitment.[4]

If we need a ‘youth ministry’ then, is it perhaps a result of our own failure as adults? Is the very concept of ‘youth ministry’ an attempt, completely in tune with the zeitgeist, to create a system to do something we have failed to do relationally? Is it another attempt to pass off on to others something we as parents have the responsibility to do ourselves? If ‘we form them into what they become by how we live our lives’, then who is most in need of ‘ministry’ – youth or adults? I believe that all these tough questions need to be considered before it is possible to have any understanding of ‘youth ministry’ which has a chance of being thoroughly Christian, and many approaches to ‘youth ministry’ seem to owe far too much to the secular model.[5]

A major key to the scriptural and traditional model of ministering to youth seems to be the concept of mentorship, conjoined with a deep and sincere love of the one being mentored. Many scripture passages speak of the relationship between young and old, either within the family or within the community:

“Listen, my children, to a father’s instruction; pay attention, and learn what understanding is. What I am offering you is sound doctrine: do not forsake my teaching. I too was once a child with a father, in my mother’s eyes a tender child, unique. This was what he used to teach me, ‘Let your heart treasure what I have to say, keep my principles and you will live…’” (Proverbs 4:1-4)

“In the same way, younger people, be subject to the elders.” (1 Peter 5:5)

It is important also to note that traditionally and in the scriptures, the job of spiritual mentoring of the youth is primarily the responsibility of the parents:

“And fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4)

So what are we to do in a culture where so many children and youth are growing up without their fathers?[6] Clearly there is a tremendous need for alternative male guidance within the Church, but also to build up men and families in such a way as to turn back this tide. Fatherhood and mentorship may be the most significant forms of ‘youth ministry’.

If ‘youth ministry’ participates in the societal model of segregating by age, where it may unwittingly play a part in entrenching the so-called ‘generation gap’ and the ‘youth sub-culture’, then it may in fact be harmful. If, on the other hand, the purpose of ‘youth ministry’ is to bind together the community across generations, to encourage interaction between the generations, and to strengthen the family and the ‘home church’ within the family, then it will be able to serve as a positive force in the Church. After all, as C.S. Lewis says, faith is a sort of infection – something imparted by more than just words:

“Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them… They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.”[7]

So in order to catch the infection, we need to be heavily involved with people who already have it. One youth minister, no matter how faithful, in a crowd of youth who live most of their lives entombed in a deeply secular culture (to say nothing of the ‘sub-culture’) will not be able to achieve this alone. As Fr Cownie writes:

“‘Youth Ministers’ will not be able to communicate much about Orthodox spirituality unless the kids are actually seeing this happen in the home or at least in the homes of other church members. Somebody actually has to start living Tradition in order for it to be conveyed.”[8]

2. Faith and culture

“Pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father, is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows in their hardships, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.” (James 1:27)

A significant problem from the very earliest days of the Church was how far to interact with a surrounding non-Christian culture. If we are undertaking a mission to a youth sub-culture, how are we to go about it? Many of the most successful missionary adventures in history were undertaken by those who went to great lengths to understand and learn from the culture they were working in. St Cyril and St Methodius, Greek missionaries to the Slavs, spent much time learning the local languages, and even devising an alphabet for them so that the new Christians could worship in their own language. Later, the Russian missionaries St Nicholas of Japan and St Herman and St Innocent of Alaska all spent a considerable amount of time listening to the people they had come to serve, learning from them so that they could assess what in their respective traditions had come from God already, what would need to be transformed or ‘baptized’ into Christian use, and what would have to be rejected as incompatible with the faith.

So for those of us called to be witnesses in our own society’s youth culture, we must spend a good deal of time listening to those we wish to witness to before we are ready to begin teaching them (St Nicholas spent eight years familiarizing himself with Japanese language, culture and traditions before he felt ready to preach).

In modern western youth sub-culture, however, the problem is exacerbated, as even the sub-culture is full of sub-cultures. Some of these sub-cultures are deeply rebellious responses to what is seen as wrong with the dominant culture, and while the rebellion is understandable, the responses can be at least as bad as the culture they are critiquing – after “the optimism surrounding modernism… at the opening of the twentieth century”, the century closed with “extreme cynicism and nihilism.”[9]

For those who have followed through this “history of nihilism… we sit in ashes: an abandoned child in a wasteland of apostasy, lonely survivors of centuries of holocaust with no one to point in the direction of home, for all has been destroyed.”[10] For those who feel the meaningless of the world, who feel the hopelessness of modern culture, need to know that there is another way out but nihilism. For those that have already seen through the world, they may be close to understanding the words of Christ:

“If the world hate you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you, but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19)

3. Ascesis and theosis

“I have written to you, young people, because you are strong, and God’s word remains in you, and you have overcome the evil one. Do not love the world or what is in the world. If anyone does love the world, the love of the Father finds no place in him, because everything there is in the world – disordered bodily desires, disordered desires of the eyes, pride in possession – is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world, with all its disordered desires, is passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains for ever.” (1 John 2:14b-17)

It is important that in our attempt to seek a way in to engagement with youth and the culture or sub-culture, we do not take our lead from the world. It is too easy to seek out some more clever marketing, come up with some good slogans, try to show how God provides a service to us – why else should we choose him, when we have so many other choices? Instead we need to offer the Way[11] – the “narrow gate and… hard road” (Matthew 7:14) – a hard road that we take together, requiring commitment both to the task at hand and to the relationship – with Christ and with one another. There is no other way of winning the race but to train hard for it (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27) through continuous struggle – not struggling alone but alongside Christ and with the grace of the Holy Spirit like the wind behind us: “work out your salvation in fear and trembling. It is God who… gives you the intention and the powers to act.” (Philippians 2:12-13). The goal of all this training is nothing less than “to come near to God and dwell in union with him”[12] – in other words,

“You must realize from the outset that the goal towards which [God] is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent him from taking you to that goal… If we let him – for we can prevent him, if we choose – he will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.”[13]

4. Spiritual fathers

“Not to rely on oneself is so necessary in our struggle, my beloved brother, that without this, be assured, not only will you fail to gain the desired victory, but you will be unable to resist the smallest attack of the enemy. Engrave this deeply in your mind and heart.”[14]

It has been held since the earliest days of Christianity that it is impossible to be a Christian on one’s own, but this is only possible within the Church. Theophan the Recluse explains clearly in Chapter 2 of Unseen Warfare why this is so, and what dangers lie in attempting to ‘go it alone’. The importance of mentoring has already been noted above, and it has also been noted that one youth minister in a group is inadequate to share the fullness of the faith and Christian life with those to whom he is ministering. They need more, and he needs accountability and responsibility. This is why in Orthodox tradition, one has a ‘spiritual father’, and this relationship will be extremely helpful to those attempting to grow in the faith, and those who take seriously their spiritual struggle. It also allows personal time for reflection on one’s own story and where God is leading through it as well as the advice of someone wiser and more mature in the faith, a key aspect of the fathering and mentoring aspect of youth ministry.

5. Lives of the Saints

“Eudokia was born in Samaria of Palestine in the 1^st century. In her youth she was very beautiful, and because of her loveliness, she lived a life of deep immorality. She was concerned only for the pleasures of this life, and loved the impurity of a loose sex life.”[15]

“In the fourth century there lived a man called Moses. Moses was of African blood, an Ethiopian to be precise, large in stature and a giant in wisdom. As a youth, Moses was one of the most feared gangsters in northern Africa. He was the leader of a gang of outlaws, and was known to have cut people’s throats.”[16]

The importance of dealing with one’s own story has already been mentioned, and is widely recognised as being an essential part of ministry. All we have done and all we have been in the past is part of what constitutes the person each of us has become. Nothing is forgotten, and though some things can be left behind, they will have taught us something for the present and the future. Even Christ’s wounds from the nails did not disappear, but were glorified in the resurrection. Telling each other our own stories can help us learn from one another, and we do this not only with those still on earth, but with all members of the communion of saints. We tell many people’s stories from the story of Joseph from the Old Testament (Genesis 37-50) to all the lives of the saints. In all of these we can see how God works in so many miraculous and varied ways in the lives of those who put their trust in him, and we can find those whose stories particularly move us, or to which we especially relate, and we can become close to those saints of the Church. We can see how we ourselves can move out of sin to repentance, and how God can work great wonders even with our very small steps of repentance, as he did for Eudokia and Moses:

“After living only a few years in the monastery, Eudokia reached such a height of purity that she became a model for all the desert-dwelling monks and nuns. When the abbess and superior of the monastery died, all the nuns unanimously chose Eudokia to take her place as spiritual leader of the sisters.”[17]

“… In the desert, Moses began the spiritual battle of the heart that leads to Christ… As Moses progressed in the spiritual life, many youths wishing to dedicate their lives to God gathered around him. Many of his former gang members and other outlaws renounced their ways and followed Moses, saying, ‘If he who was the baddest of all the bad has feared God, shouldn’t we?’”[18]

6. Darkness to light

“Cries of frustrated human beings often point to the divine ideal and intent.”[19]

It has often been remarked upon that those who seem furthest from God can sometimes be more easily touched by him than those who seem less troubled. There are many reasons for this – that they have come to know best their need of him, that they have despaired of this world and have therefore drawn close to the next. In modern western culture, this should give great opportunities for Christians to come alongside troubled youth and lead them towards the light.

The importance of mentorship in this process has already been stressed, and yet:

“Most fail because they are not willing to relocate among the poor and the oppressed… because they do not have the opportunity to make themselves culturally vulnerable (as Jesus did with the woman at the well or with tax collectors)”[20]

In order to effectively mentor, the mentor needs to commit to being involved in the life of the person he is mentoring. Obviously this does not mean participating in sin, but it does mean walking through the valley of the shadow of death, if this is where the mentee is walking. At the same time, the mentor needs to be spiritually strong enough not to be sucked in: one cannot help a man drowning in a whirlpool by jumping in with him, but only by standing at the side, reaching in and giving him a hand to hold on to that is connected to somebody firmly grounded outside the whirlpool. Both mentor and mentee need to be practising together holding on to Christ’s proffered hand to pull them out of the world’s ways.

“Blessed is anyone who perseveres when trials come. Such a person is of proven worth and will win the prize of life, the crown that the Lord has promised to those who love him.” (James 1:12)

The aim of the mentor is to navigate himself and his mentee through that valley, persevering through the darkness and going on through death into the light of life.

7. Resurrection

“Just when the world thought that God is dead and is bleeding to death under our knife… He resurrects from the dead. The teaching of the crucifixion always goes hand in hand with the resurrection. Just as all paths lead to a destination, so the cross is the way to resurrection, humanity’s ultimate destination.”[21]

Modern western culture is ultimately devoid of hope. It is plentiful in (ultimately unsatisfying) pleasure, in material goods, in image and idol, but it cannot even conceive of the idea of eternal hope in anything other than the most sentimental and unreal ways. Those of us who have been brought up in that culture are tainted by it, and the closer we are to it, the more we are immersed in it, the more true this is. It tends to be those who lose out in this culture who are the most dangerous to it – both for bad and, possibly, for good. Those who have fallen furthest can make the greatest saints in this life, if they can look up in the humiliation of their fall and accept God’s hand as it is offered. As for the prodigal son, taking the smallest step in the direction of his father causes his father to leap up and run towards him, gathering him up to himself. In all our relations with the youth of our culture, we must, while hearing their stories, radiate the hope of the resurrection and the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, into whose life we are all invited to dwell for ever.

“God is the source of all good things”[1]

Based on interviews with Fr Luke Veronis, taking into account his experience in mission work in Albania, and Fr Alexios, considering his experience of Christian mission in Kenya, along with some reflections on the views of Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria and the significance given to these in Orthodox mission.

In the early Church

The question of how Christianity should engage with a dominant non-Christian culture has been an active one from the very earliest days of the faith, both in its relationship with Judaism and with the paganism of the Roman Empire, and still continues to this day.

Already in the Acts of the Apostles, a controversy over the issue of the applicability of Jewish law to new Christians arises, and is discussed at the Council of Jerusalem, where it is taken for granted that those of a Jewish background will maintain their traditions, but it is also decided that new converts to the Church from a gentile background should be freed from most of these provisions, being required only to “abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from illicit marriages” (Acts 15:29).

Meanwhile, Paul, on his missionary journey to Athens, is faced with a different culture. He finds in that culture a means of approach for the faith he is teaching in the altar to “An Unknown God” (Acts 17:23). The Apostolic Fathers of the second century are also faced with the pagan culture of the Roman Empire. While Tertullian, horrified by heretical ideas and especially by those who wish to absorb those aspects of the new Christian faith that please them into their own religious systems, exclaims “What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? What between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?”[2], others take a more cautious view and are unwilling to reject the host culture wholesale. Clement of Alexandria writes that “God is the source of all good things; of some primarily, as of the Old and New Testaments; of others by consequence, as of philosophy.”[3] Justin Martyr sees all wisdom in the world as partaking of the divine wisdom or reason, the Logos, saying that “those who live according to reason are Christians, even though they are accounted atheists. Such were Socrates and Heraclitus among the Greeks, and those like them”[4] However, even Justin, while acknowledging that “whatever has been uttered aright by any men in any place belongs to us Christians”, also says that these “were able to see the truth darkly, through the implanted seed of reason [logos] dwelling in them” while Christians now see more clearly through acquaintance with the Logos incarnate. It is clear that the Church was never in doubt that all truth seen in culture came from God himself. Clement wrote: “They may say that it is mere chance that the Greeks have expressed something of the true philosophy. But that chance is subject to divine providence… it may be said that the Greeks possessed an idea of truth implanted by nature. But we know that the Creator of nature is one only.”[5] It should be noted, though, that while Church Fathers throughout the early centuries made use of Greek philosophical terms to discuss theology, recognizing implicitly the good in the classical inheritance, they were also critical of much in the same civilization. In the fourth century, St Basil the Great urged discretion in the reading of pagan literature, using the memorable “similitude of the bees… [which] neither approach all flowers equally, nor in truth do they attempt to carry off entire those upon which they alight, but only taking so much of them as is suitable for their work, they suffer the rest to go untouched. We ourselves too, if we are wise, having appropriated from this literature what is suitable to us and akin to the truth, will pass over the remainder. And… let us guard ourselves against what is harmful.”[6]

It is important to stress the understanding of all the Fathers that the Christian message was a message for all people, in all cultures; the culture must not be allowed to get in the way of the message, but at the same time, the message was true independently of any culture and could therefore be ‘incarnated’ within the context of any culture.

The Orthodox approach to mission

In discussion with Fr Luke, comparisons were drawn between these attitudes of the Apostolic Fathers, and the activities of several later mission situations, namely the ninth-century mission to the Slavs, the nineteenth-century missions of the Russian Church to Alaska and Japan, and more recent mission work in Indonesia, Albania, Uganda and Kenya (where discussion with Fr Alexios shed further light).

All of these examples of Orthodox mission followed to some degree the tradition of Justin Martyr and Clement in their willingness to recognize the good in the host cultures and to engage critically with the cultures, rather than attempting simply to supplant the host culture with the culture of the original missionaries.

In general, Fr Luke identified three approaches to the surrounding culture:

· acceptance – those items or aspects of the culture that are already completely compatible with the Church,

· transformation – where certain cultural items or issues must be transformed, or to use the expression he and Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos prefer, ‘baptized’ into the Church,

· rejection – for those aspects of the culture that are absolutely incompatible with Christianity.

(In addition to these three approaches, it is possible to discern a fourth category, not explicitly mentioned by Fr Luke, that of concession. It may be considered necessary to make (at least temporarily) some concessions to a culture. Fr Luke suggested, for example, that the shorter form of the Liturgy in use in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in the USA may indicate a concession to both the attention span and the scheduling of the host culture. He justified this based on the historical distinction between monastic and cathedral rites. On the other hand, some of these concessions to culture may not be justifiable – for example, Fr Luke also gave the example of a practice in Nairobi in the 1970s where at communion two chalices were presented, one for Europeans and one for Africans. Later this was seen to be an improper concession to cultural mores, and the practice was stopped.)

The challenge in any culture is to work out what fits into which category: this is where St Basil’s ‘similitude of the bees’ comes in; how can we distinguish between these things? This is also where the different approaches identified in the Fathers are relevant. Fr Luke points out that Justin’s and Tertullian’s immediate contexts were not the same, and the different approaches may very well have been related to this. Indeed, it is notable that Tertullian’s oft-quoted ‘What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem?’ appears in the context of his writing not against Greek philosophy in general, but against those syncretistic groups that were attempting to absorb what they saw as the desirable aspects of Christianity into themselves. It is important to remember that the fear of another culture works both ways. Richard Niebuhr explains that “not only Jews but also Greeks and Romans, mediaevalists and moderns, Westerners and Orientals have rejected Christ because they saw in him a threat to their culture.”[7] The syncretistic technique is one attempt to ‘neutralize’ this threat by editing Christ to fit an alternative religious or cultural system.

In exercising this discernment, Fr Luke identified some dangers to be aware of and some guidelines on how to discern. The missionary should try to examine the culture with ‘indigenous eyes’ so as not to be confused by his own cultural prejudices. He needs to allow time simply to learn about the culture initially, following the example of St Nicholas of Japan who spent several years familiarizing himself with Japanese culture and traditions, learning the languages and visiting Shinto temples in order to identify the positive aspects of Japanese religious identity before feeling adequately prepared to begin his work. The discernment of how to treat elements of the culture can only follow a deep understanding of those elements and the part they play in the culture. Patience is also required in giving the people time to change: ‘baptizing’ elements of a culture may take generations, for example, in changing something like polygamy. The key starting question should always be: ‘What is God already doing with these people?’ – in what ways are they already living ‘according to reason’ as Justin says; where is God’s natural revelation (the ‘divine providence’ of Clement) already showing in the culture? Archbishop Anastasios expresses it from his own experience in Africa: “I said to myself, ‘Let us be more humble. For all these centuries, Africa was not outside the interest of God. How did he give them his witness? What are the African religion, African symbolism, the African way of relation with God?’”[8]

The key dangers that Fr Luke warned of were the extremes of too much rejection – importing a foreign culture along with the faith the missionary teaches – and the opposite extreme of too much acceptance – leading to a syncretism that would distort the teaching of the faith he is trying to bring. An example of the former error that Fr Luke gave concerned not so much a rejection of the host culture as an infatuation with the Greek culture in which new Orthodox priests from Uganda were trained. This was all the more ironic in this case, as these converts to Orthodoxy came from what they regarded as the more colonially-minded Anglican Church, and part of their attraction to Orthodoxy had arisen from their view of it as a less colonial church, more likely to be accepting of indigenous culture. Ironically they ended up with a Liturgy that even used Greek language three-quarters of the time. Fr Alexios, however, from his experience living in a culture to which missionaries were sent, suggested that the effects of missionaries bringing in their own culture along with their faith were not always negative. He highlighted the health care and education that missionaries often brought with them, which earned them respect from the indigenous people.

Discerning what to accept, what transform, and what reject

As was mentioned above, the key difficulty here is to discern what elements of a given culture are acceptable as they are, which must be transformed or ‘baptized’ into the Church, and which have to be rejected outright due to complete incompatibility with the faith.

One of the most basic issues that a missionary must grapple with is that of local language, and this is the first example that occurs to Archbishop Anastasios[9] as something from the local culture that should just be accepted. To many, this seems obvious, and it has certainly a strong tradition in Orthodox mission work, even when the missionaries had to create an alphabet for local languages to be written down, as in the case of Cyril and Methodius in their mission to Russia, and the later Russian missionaries in their mission to Alaska. However, in the Western Church even from early times this was not so clear, and there was often pressure to use one of the ‘sacred’ languages of Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

In terms of things which must be rejected, this is generally the case when local customs transgress Christian ethics or doctrine. Fr Luke gave the clear example of the old Hindu custom for a widow to commit suicide by throwing herself on to her dead husband’s funeral pyre, and the more complex and controversial examples of the role of women in society and systems of arranged marriages, where some practices are clearly incompatible with Christianity, but it is more difficult to know exactly where to draw the line.

It seems that the majority of cultural issues, however, are in some ways or forms in need of being transformed, or at least ‘baptized’ into the Church. The first example of this category which occurred both to Fr Luke and to Fr Alexios was the African example of drums. Fr Alexios stressed the great significance drums have to his Kenyan culture, and their significance both for danger signals and for communicating important events such as death, for example. (In both these cases there is some correspondence with the more established Christian use of bells.) The third use of drums is for entertainment. This can also be praising God, as Fr Alexios said, in reference to Psalm 150, “our trumpets are the drums”. This use of drums has been brought into the Church (or ‘baptized’) in Kenya, where at the end of the Liturgy it is customary to have a few hours sitting in the church with the accompaniment of drums, while Christian teaching is done, announcements are made and other cultural events take place. This has not been uncontroversial: some visitors have been shocked by this and have said, according to Fr Alexios, ‘This is not Orthodox’. Archbishop Anastasios reacts strongly to this criticism: “What is not Orthodox? Not Orthodox is to be impure, to be dishonest, to be against the will of God, this is unorthodox. The African church is a joyful church; the Africans are cheerful people. This is a blessing, I believe, for Orthodoxy.”[10] He wishes to guard against cultural prejudice, against those who confuse their culture with their faith. Yet separating these is not such an easy thing as some would have us believe. Fr Luke says that it is key not to be afraid of mistakes in relating to a new culture: trial and error, he says, is one of the key ways of finding out just what in the culture should be ‘baptized’ and how this can be achieved.

St Nicholas of Japan, as has already been mentioned, spent some time studying Japanese religious traditions, and found that one thing the Japanese loved was to go on pilgrimages to holy places. It was immediately clear how to bring this practice into the Church, as the Church too has pilgrimages. It was a point of contact which would help Japanese converts feel more at home in the Church. Fr Daniel Byantoro, the indigenous Orthodox missionary in Indonesia, had a similar understanding with regard to fasting. Recognizing that local Muslims are already used to fasting, he decided that his church should follow the Muslim style of fast rather than the more usual Orthodox one in order to help new converts feel at home. Interestingly, this is a case where we have some evidence from the early Church: “Do not let your fasting be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second day and the fifth day of the week [Monday and Thursday], but you shall fast on the fourth day and the day of preparation [Wednesday and Friday].”[11] This seems to be the opposite advice to the practice of Fr Daniel. However, it is important to contextualize: in the context of the Didache, it may have been more important for Christians to distinguish themselves from Jewish practice, but for the Orthodox in Indonesia, in a Muslim context where it is a capital offence to convert to Christianity, Fr Daniel considered it more important for their practices not to draw attention to themselves unnecessarily.

One of the more complex issues discussed by Fr Alexios was the situation in Kenya of what he called the ‘menabi’. These are charismatic healers and prophets who have been Christianized, but do not hold official position in the Church. People will go to them for prayer and healing, and the ‘menabi’ will perform a variety of rituals to effect this. For example, one ritual is the lighting of twelve white candles. It was explained by Fr Alexios that there are twelve candles for the apostles, and they must be white as this is the colour of the angels. Other rituals have a less explicitly Christian explanation, such as those involving stamping, clapping, slapping, shaking and other forms of bodily contact. The Christianization, the ‘baptizing’ of the concept of the ‘menabi’ is thorough. According to Fr Alexios, in order to be recognized as one of the ‘menabi’, a person has to be identified as having a gift, then must spend seven days alone in the wilderness (living only off what he can find to eat), followed by seven days alone in the church building (where people will bring him water, but he will fast). At the end of this time, other ‘menabi’ come to recognize and bless him, and there is a celebration. Their position is very controversial, especially with the hierarchs of the Church and with missionaries, but Fr Alexios says they should be judged by their lives and fruits: since they spend many long hours in the church praying, since their rituals involve invoking only saints of the Church and prayer to Christ, then there is no reason to doubt their full integration into Christian life. There is another interesting parallel here with the charismatic and peripatetic prophets described in the Didache, which gives advice on how to recognize a true prophet from a false, and the kind of hospitality to offer them, and also hints at an uncomfortable relationship between these prophets and the established leadership of the local church.[12]

Among other examples Fr Alexios gives of cultural traditions that have been ‘baptized’ by the Church, two particularly interesting ones are animal sacrifice and circumcision. Animal sacrifice has given way to a donation of an animal to the church, to be eaten at a subsequent feast. Circumcision, a traditional rite from boyhood to adulthood in Kenyan culture, has been brought into the church, and is now part of a ceremony blessed by the priest and followed by a celebration in the church, and where the transition has also taken on the significance of spiritual maturity – that the circumcised man is now to take on the responsibilities of a man in the church, to be responsible for his own attendance, to be ready to be called on to serve in the altar and in other ways in the community.

Conclusion

Mission churches today will agree with Tertullian’s ‘call to arms’: “Away with all projects for a ‘Stoic’, a ‘Platonic’ or a ‘dialectic’ Christianity!”[13] This is the danger of syncretism when the Church is finding her feet in a new culture. Fear of this, though, must not lead to the opposite reaction of building an artificial culture within a culture, or of importing a Greek or Russian culture where it does not belong. This has meant that missionaries need great wisdom in the approach to the local culture, being aware that some things need to be accepted and some rejected, and that many will need to be transformed, or ‘baptized’ into the Church. Archbishop Anastasios says, “Respect for cultures, respect for the dignity of others: this is the beginning, this is the Orthodox attitude. This respect was demonstrated in history, in the Byzantine period, when Cyrillus and Methodius went to the Slavic people. The Russian church also kept this tradition in approaching other peoples – and when they kept this respect for the dignity of others, they were successful. When we forgot it, the result of our own efforts was very poor.”[14]