Leaves of the artichoke

...The purity is, and always was, mythical, and dangerous...

...the parishes are simply Orthodox Christian churches...

...The Nicene Creed is itself the product of the confluence of several things: Christian revelation, the Judaic heritage of Christianity, and Greek philosophy...

...I have gone to Ireland at every available opportunity, love Irish music, and wish Gaelic were an easier language to master...

...There were disputes between early Christians concerning the extent to which gentile Christians should be expected to observe Jewish law...

...However, Polish anti-Semitism (not entirely a thing of the past, as the controversy over the convent at Auschwitz revealed) and Russian anti-Semitism (alive and as sick as ever in Pamyat) have too often been justified by appeals to Christianity-not only to the ugly picture of the Jew as Christ-killer, but also the Jew as outsider, non-Russian, non-Polish, "cosmopolitan," the importer of outside influences that corrupt the purity of the native Polish, or Russian, soul...

...The assumption that God's ways can be almost equated with the free market is a part of Pat Robertson's message...

...To paraphrase a metaphor Wittgenstein used in another context: we may peel away the leaves to try to get at the essence of the artichoke, and find that the leaves were what the artichoke was about...

...It could well be that if we peeled away everything added to Judaism over the course of its history we would find, at base, a polytheistic religion which practiced human sacrifice...

...The social reasons which should lead us to be wary are obvious...

...Anyone who sees Ethiopian Christian icons knows that they are not Egyptian or Greek or Serbian...

...Certainly Christianity in Africa should not be an imitation of Western Christianity, and Africa has contributed, and is contributing, to the fullness of Christianity, just as the other cultures which met Christianity have made their contributions...

...This may be one gift pluralism has given to religion: it enables us to make distinctions that are more difficult in homogeneous cultures, where separating religion from ethnicity and nationhood might be more difficult...

...The idea of a general judgment comes from Zoroastrianism, as do angels and demons...

...When I read the sentence above it set off a train of thought that took me far from any consideration of the book under review...

...But then I wondered whether the sentence was quite right...

...Up to a point this is not only a good thing, but the culture is hallowed by its association with the church...

...This would require the strange belief that we can know things without culture or language, or that we have the ability to see clearly what is a cultural encrustation, and what is "essential"-but this latter is likely to be what seems important to us because of our own cultural assumptions...

...When this quite appropriate love becomes mixed with an inappropriate notion of purity-of the pure Russian soul, or uncon-taminated African Christianity-it misses an obvious historical truth...

...Can a culture which did not accept this, accept it, and still be "fully itself...

...We have seen, for example, what some forms of American religion have been like when left free to be fully themselves, unmoored in any larger or deeper tradition...

...There is no doubt that we lose something wonderful when ethnic and cultural heritage is forgotten...

...they are uniquely themselves, and can't be mistaken for anything other than Ethiopian art...

...My first reaction was sympathy: Christianity has too long been associated with Western culture, in a limited and limiting way...

...The theological implications are profound...

...This, however, is not presently as dangerous as what may be stirring itself awake in Eastern Europe, where Catholic Christianity has been identified with being Polish and Croatian, and Orthodox Christianity with being Russian and Serbian...

...Is it an unfair imposition of an alien culture on another culture to insist that the Creed is important to any definition of Christianity...

...Many of Judaism's central stories and theological concepts came from other cultures and religions...

...The alternative and, on the surface, more traditional approach-keep the teachings as they are-raises the possibility, uncomfortable to some traditionalists, that the Holy Spirit has been at work in other religious traditions, since in believing in angels, demons, and a general judgment we have accepted something from those traditions, however much our manner of accepting has made what we have accepted our own...

...That thought-the unavoidable influence of outside cultures-raised some questions, important ones...

...The belief that when we peel away cultural encrustations we will arrive at the essence of a tradition or a culture assumes that whatever was there at the beginning was pure, and all later additions or amendments are corrupting, or are sidetracks...

...Finally, I have some discomfort with any claim made for cultural singularity or purity...

...I want to make it clear that this is not a disagreement with the reviewer whose work set off a series of questions...

...In the second, ethnic traditions are a presence, one in which the people take pride, but they are clearly distinguished from the religious dimension, hi the third, the ethnic dimension is absent...

...OF SEVERAL MINDS lohn Garvey LEAVES OF THE ARTICHOKE THE MARRIAGE OF RELIGION & CULTURE "The African churches were never allowed to be themselves, neither in the early church in Numidia, Ethiopia, and Nubia, nor in our own day...

...Important theological and pastoral issues rise from these questions...

...For example, to what extent can it be argued that the Ten Commandments are "universal," beyond any cultural boundaries, unless we first accept a God who is not (as one version of Hinduism would have it) beyond good and evil, but makes demands of us-in other words, unless we accept a very Judaic God...

...The story of Noah is Babylonian in its origin...

...That they have been influenced by non-Ethiopian iconography is also undeniable, and probably unavoidable...

...This could be seen in part as the desire to see Polish and Russian Christianity be "fully themselves"-that is to say, uncorrupted by outside influences...

...and to those liberals who believe that we can determine, from within our own culturally limited set of assumptions, what really matters in our tradition, and what does not.radition, and what does not...

...I have attended liturgies in three kinds of Orthodox parish...

...In the first kind, Orthodoxy is so intertwined with (for example) being Greek that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other, and passionate defenses of Greek language and culture are equated with the survival of Orthodoxy itself...

...We have special reason to fear it now...

...Joseph G. Donders, review of African Catholicism, by Adrian Hastings, in Commonweal, February 9, 1990...

...Is it possible to keep only the Jewish "spin" here, the basic point, and do away with angels, demons, judgment, the story of Noah...

...Several Greek churches I have attended have hosted celebrations, after weddings and baptisms, that would be so much less if they were less Greek...

...to those traditionalists who believe that the influence of other cultures was acceptable, just as long as it stopped years before they were born...

...Can a message be extracted from one culture, leaving the inessential cultural accretions behind, and offered to another culture in its purity...

...What interests me is the number of people, especially younger people, who tend to move from the first sort of parish to the second or the third...

...To what extent has any culture or belief been purely and simply itself...

...Surely the Hellenized gentiles who first embraced Christianity, whatever their nations of origin, were Judaized to some extent...

...If a culture and a people-Judaism and the Jews-were chosen to be God's way of communicating with the human race, to what extent can we speak of allowing another culture to receive that message, and at the same time be "fully itself...

...We have seen what Europe did to colonial countries when it considered itself to be the bearer of Christianity in its pure form, and what evils have been done when America saw itself as the new Israel and the enlightener of other nations...

...The identification of the interests of America with the divine will-America as the new Israel-has long been a feature of popular American religion...

...and at one level the story of Abraham is a warning against human sacrifice, a warning that would not have to be delivered if the people being addressed weren't tempted to it...

...They are a challenge to those fundamentalists who believe that the early church was the purest church...

...Doesn't a Hindu have to leave behind something uniquely Hindu and take on something Jewish to embrace a belief in such a God...

...The notion of national or cultural purity, however, is insidious, and inaccurate as well...

...but inclu-siveness, and the changes that accompany it, are undeniable...

...I think they are often answered too glibly because they are potentially divisive and uncomfortable...

...The idea that a culture or religion is ever purely itself contains an obvious danger...

...There are limits to how inclusive a tradition can be as it grows...

...It's just that the "we alone can understand this" mentality has covered a multitude of sins and sloppy sentiments...

...If it is to appropriate the message, won't it take on at least a part of the other culture...

...Elohim, one word for Lord, is a plural form in Hebrew...

...The claim to purity doesn't need to reach Nazi proportions or be about anything threatening...

...I am not sure that the extraction of the essence of a teaching is so simple...

...but an element of Judaism survived in even the most stripped-down vision of Christianity...