I have met many people, and seen several answers on here saying "Oh the Orthodox Church, they're Greek" and things similar to this. Why do people believe this? What about the Russian Orthodox Church, The Bulgarian, The Syriac Church, and the many, many others?
Tags: Religion and Spirituality, orthodox church, eastern orthodox churcheritrean orthodox church in atlanta feb 19 2012, i hate greek orthodox, misconceptions about russian orthodox religion
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
You just accidented this question, didn’t you.
The Orthodox Church is a bit more “hidden” in the West. Not many people know about it because it is never in the News or Media. As a result, there are many misconceptions of it and one is that the Orthodox Church is Greek.
They came to come to be associated with Greek, simply because they followed closer to the Greek translation of the text in their interpretation, while the Catholic Church favored the Latin vulgate.
Ignorance, mostly. Most followers of the Orthodox branch of Christianity live in Eastern Europe, Russia, Greece, and former areas of the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor. “Orthodox Christianity” is generally an umbrella term referring to the churches you just mentioned, and to other denominations of the Orthodox branch that split from the Roman Catholic branch during the Great Schism.
In the West, it is the Roman Catholic Church that has a visible presence. The media almost never touches on Greek Orthodox religion (except when Archbishop Makarios was up to his neck in Greek politics decades ago), and Russian, Syrian and Bulgarian Orthodox groups only get a public profile in their respective countries. As most people on this R&S site are almost totally governed by media information, and most of them are in the West, that’s why they don’t know about them, or the distinctives.
A lot of people don’t know either that when orthodox Christian religion is written with a small ‘o’, that refers to authentic faith as laid down in all the ancient Christian denominations’ creeds – it is not speaking of the Greek, Russian, Bulgarian or Syriac Orthodox groups.
The Orthodox churches are organized nationally. The misconception comes from the split (the great scism) was between the church in the east and the church in the west( Greek and Roman) The same reason when someone says they are Catholic people assume Roman Catholic when in fact they could mean Greek Orthodox.
The misconception occurs because the ancient church had a Latin-speaking west and a Greek-speaking east. This church split into 2, and the eastern half came to be known as Orthodox. As time went on, it spread beyond the traditional Greek-speaking areas, particularly into Slavic countries. Eventually, many of its member churches became nationalized, so that you have Russian, Serbian, etc. But these are all still part of the Orthodox Church, whose earliest history is associated with Greek culture. So people confuse things.
I hate this too, it annoys me that to many folks pay more attention to the ____ some times placed in front of the Orthodox and for get to put Christian behind it.
I am a convert and have been to liturgy at the differing Orthodox churches in my town.
You must log in to post a comment.