by Thomas Goodhue
Executive Director
Long Island Council of Churches

Nearly every year, the Orthodox priest reported, at least one teacher accuses his child of lying when he says that he not be in school that week on Good Friday, saying something such as, "Don't give me that! Good Friday was weeks ago!" Others are accused of fibbing when they say that their father is a priest – which also happens to Preachers Kids (a.k.a. Theological Offspring) among Episcopalians and Lutherans who claim that their mother is a priest. In one particularly memorable exchange, a flustered teacher insisted, "If your father is a priest, then you can't have a mother!"

The problem is not limited to educators. One of the barriers to achieving greater unity among Christians is that we are often woefully ignorant of those who practice different varieties of our faith. Tell some folks that you are an Orthodox Christian and they will ask if you are still Jewish. During the Cold War, the Rev. Alex Garklavs, told our Board of Governors a few weeks ago, he was often called "a Commie" by other boys who discovered that his father was a Russian Orthodox cleric and had no idea how adamantly anti-Communist most members of the Orthodox Church in America were. Other Orthodox Christians suffer the indignity of their neighbors assuming that they are Fresh Off the Boat, even though Orthodox missionaries from Russia arrived in Alaska in 1794. By the time their neighbors' ancestors landed on Ellis Island, Orthodox Christians had been living in communities across North America for a century.

Sadder still is the case of two boys who approached Fr. Jack Moore and me three years ago at the Long Island Multi-Faith Forum's festival at Hauppauge High School. Each quietly asked if we considered them to be Christians, even though one was a Copt and the other Greek Orthodox. The joy they radiated when we answered, "Of course!" made the whole day worth the trip-and also demonstrated to both of us that Christian youth may need religious tolerance as much as Muslims and Sikhs do.

So, listen up. Your Christian neighbors on Long Island might belong to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the OCA, the American Carpatho-Russian Diocese, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, the Ukranian Orthodox Church of the USA, "Eastern" Orthodox jurisdictions that are in full communion with one another and have congregations in Nassau or Suffolk. Your neighbors could also belong to Syrian (Syriac), Coptic (Egyptian), or Malankara (from India) "Oriental" Orthodox bodies-which are not in communion with Eastern Orthodox Christians but have much in common with them. Some of their local congregations date back to the 19th century, and all come from churches and traditions far older than most of the rest of ours.

In some Orthodox congregations, visitors immediately know that they have entered into the style and customs of another time and another land; others preserve their ancient faith in thoroughly modern forms. Some Orthodox Christians cling to the mother tongue of their ancestors'homeland, while others embrace English worship or a broad range of languages. At the Carpatho-Russian church in Seaford, worship is in English and most or the congregation was not raised Orthodox. At St. John the Theologian OCA in Shirley, worship blends diverse traditions and languages: English, Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, Slavonic, and Romanian may be used in the same service.

Orthodox Christians, like all denominations, sometime have internal disagreements – which will hardly come as a surprise to any Methodist – but they are working together in a variety of ways, particularly the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas, the Standing Conference of Oriental Orthodox Churches, and organizations that promote pan-Orthodox cooperation in the areas of humanitarian aid and charity, religious education, campus ministry, and foreign missions. Orthodox communions were among the first members of the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. There have been some recent strains in these national and international ties, but on Long Island and in many other regions, local ecumenical groups are working more closely with their Orthodox neighbors than ever before. Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky of Our Lady of Kazan (OCA) in Sea Cliff, past president of the NCC, and a moving force in the new organization Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A., will be the speaker at our Annual meeting on May 5 at Temple Beth David in Commack.

And about that school exam this month: most Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas, Epiphany (January 6), and the Feast of the Assumption (August 15) on the same days that Catholics and Protestants do, following the Revised Julian (Gregorian) Calendar, while some stick to the Julian Calendar, which places these "fixed" feast days 13 days later, with Christmas falling on January 7, for example. But nearly all Orthodox Christians follow the Julian calendar for the calculation of Easter (and therefore for the first day of Lent, Holy Week, Pentecost, etc.) This year Orthodox Easter is May 1, which is also the Eighth Day of Passover. Orthodox Holy Thursday and Good Friday will be April 28 and 29. If the kids say they'll be in worship those days, they may be telling the truth.

Shalom/Salaam/Shanti/Pax/Mir,

Tom

Long Island Council of Churches
With thanks to Fr. Robert Kondratick and Arlene Kallaur from the OCA for help with these explanations