Should America get its own troparion?

  • flagcross-blend_sm.jpgI con­sid­ered try­ing to wear red, white and blue to church yes­ter­day. Would it have been inap­pro­pri­ate? I couldn’t quite decide.
    There’s no doubt I would’ve got­ten brownie points for patri­o­tism. But is Amer­i­can inde­pen­dence worth cel­e­brat­ing in an Ortho­dox place of wor­ship? I’ve heard some Ortho­dox speak as though it’s not, but I’m not sure why not. I’ve also heard many patri­otic peo­ple sing the praises of the Amer­i­can ideals of free­dom as if it was a virtue in itself … but I’m not sure why.

    To con­sider the lat­ter point first, I could give many exam­ples, but then so could every­one. Amer­i­cans have stepped into an age of patri­o­tism in the last few decades that I gen­er­ally approve of. But when it approaches reli­gious fer­vor (as in the case of the email I received that pro­claimed “The Fourth of July is a SACRED day!!”) it seems just as weird as any other extrem­ist rhetoric.

    If patri­ots would stick to prais­ing the country’s unique spirit of indus­try, inge­nu­ity, tenac­ity and even com­pet­i­tive­ness (though many peo­ple are uncom­fort­able with that aspect of our national per­son­al­ity), I could cheer with the rest. If they would throw in some men­tion of our inter­est in ques­tions of moral­ity, I would be even hap­pier. Not because we should pre­tend that we’re uniquely godly in the world, but unfor­tu­nately, we seem to be the only West­ern nation right now that even frames things in those terms. And though the mod­ern ethos has dis­cred­ited the very idea of hav­ing a moral com­pass, the fact is that all the free­dom in the world, in the hands of peo­ple who don’t con­sider any wants or needs above their own, is just a nightmare.

    As I see it I’ve got two prob­lems with (cap­i­tal f) Free­dom from an Ortho­dox perspective:

    1. The the­o­log­i­cal one is also, strangely, the philo­soph­i­cal one. ARE we free? We hear the supe­ri­or­ity of the Amer­i­can sys­tem of gov­ern­ment where the peo­ple are not con­strained either by an inher­ited iden­tity or the stric­tures of a despotic state, but it’s so easy to over­state that until we seem to be say­ing that if we, the peo­ple, are not pre­vented from doing the right things and the best things, we will always do the right things and the best things. From the Ortho­dox point of view, we are all enslaved to sin. If we imag­ine our­selves free with­out know­ing the need to work out our sal­va­tion, we’re delu­sional. Maybe that seems like a per­sonal issue rather than one for an entire nation needs to con­sider, but there are many instances of free and uncon­strained pop­u­la­tions mak­ing some really bad deci­sions. The free­dom to screw up may be nec­es­sary for a demo­c­ra­tic repub­lic, but it doesn’t seem worth writ­ing songs about and giv­ing three cheers for.
    2. It ignores the human cost of being told that you’re ‘your own man/woman’ and make your own des­tiny. In his jour­nal, Fr. Alexan­der Schme­mann mused that Amer­ica was “spir­i­tu­ally a more dif­fi­cult coun­try” (**):

      For years, peo­ple have rushed to Amer­ica for an eas­ier life, not real­iz­ing that deep down, life is much more dif­fi­cult there. First of all, Amer­ica is a coun­try of great lone­li­ness. Each one is alone with his own fate, under a huge sky, in the mid­dle of a colos­sal coun­try. Any cul­ture, tra­di­tion, roots seem small there, but peo­ple strongly cling to them, know­ing full well their illu­sory character.Secondly, this soli­tude in Amer­ica demands from every­one an exis­ten­tial answer to the ques­tion “to be or not to be,” and that requires effort. Hence so many per­sonal crashes. In Europe any­one who falls, falls on some ground; in Amer­ica he flies into an abyss. So much fear, such angst.

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    So that’s why I can’t quite line up behind the Freedom-lovers on the 4th of July. But I also can’t fall in with the Ortho­dox that refuse to cel­e­brate Amer­i­can unique­ness. I’ll have to pick up that thread in another install­ment, though. As always, I’ve waxed too elo­quent(?), and I’m in dan­ger of miss­ing my July 5 nap if I don’t get off the com­puter. Pri­or­i­ties, priorities!

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    Related posts:

    1. Fr. Schme­mann: the lone­li­ness of Amer­ica, the bank­ruptcy of Europe
    2. Why Amer­ica must stay
    3. “Yes, we can” what? Ruin the country?
    4. Tread­ing on thin, climate-controlled ice
    5. Cra­dle and con­vert Orthodox

    July 5th, 2010 | Grace | No Comments |

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