Failed Handoff
But there is one line in this Akathist that brings to mind a tragedy of a different kind. The final prayer begins: "O God of spirits and of all flesh, Who hast trampled down death and overthrown the devil and given life to Thy world! Do Thou Thyself, O Lord, give rest to the souls of Thy departed servants...." And then it runs through a long list of categories of the departed that are being prayed for, and among them, we pray "for all who enjoined and asked us to pray for them, for whom there is none among the believing to pray for them..."
When I pray these words I cannot but think of many elderly Russians I have known over the years who have no descendants who are still active members of the Orthodox Church. Though they came from families that maintained the faith for many centuries, that long line of faithful Christians came to a tragic end when they failed to successfully pass on the faith to their own children and grandchildren.
How Does This Happen?
In the cases that I have observed over the years, the problem has not generally been that the parents made no attempt to pass on the Faith. They took their children to Church. They tried to teach them the Faith as they had received it from their own parents. The problem has been primarily two things. First, I think they have underestimated some of the toxic aspects of American culture, particularly as it has affected public education in the United States -- and that is a problem that is not unique to Russians, but immigrants are more prone to assume our schools are actually focused on providing a good education, and they are often unaware of how hostile they have become to anything remotely like a traditional Christian worldview. But the other problem is a failure to understand that their children will generally grow up not understanding Russian as well as their parents, and the next generation will generally grow up without understanding Russian at all -- not to mention Church Slavonic, which is difficult for even native speaking Russians to understand if they did not grow up attending the services.
When Russians went to China after the Bolshevik Revolution, they were able to establish Russian colonies that largely reproduced the best aspects of Russian culture, but this was made possible by the fact that no Chinese would think of them or their children as Chinese, even if they were born there and could speak Chinese like a native. America, on the other hand is a very welcoming culture, and people who are immigrants, but who become citizens and embrace America are already treated as being Americans, and their children consequently grow up thinking of themselves as American, and with everyone else thinking of them as Americans too. But along with this welcoming feature of American culture comes a lot of subtle pressure to assimilate. Though western European countries are more welcoming than they used to be to immigrants, they do not have anything like the same dynamic that we have here. The consequence of all of this is that it is very difficult for a family to maintain the use of a language other than English.
I am not opposed to families trying to pass on a second language. We have done that in my family. My wife is Chinese. Our children grew up speaking Chinese. My grandchildren also have been growing up speaking Chinese. However, my younger daughter doesn't speak Chinese as well as my older daughter, and my grandchildren are not likely to speak it as well as their parents. I hope they do as well or better, and I think it is worth the effort to swim upstream, so to speak, and raise children to speak a second language because it makes it a lot easier for them to learn any other language down the road. But the reality is that this takes a lot of effort, and most families are not going to put forth the effort necessary to pass on a second language at all, much less are they likely to raise children who understand that second language as well as a native speaker.
When I became Orthodox, it was in a parish that used English aside from doing an occasional litany or festal troparion in Slavonic. But when my wife and I moved back to Houston, where we met, the only ROCOR parish in the entire state of Texas, at the time, was St. Vladimir, which used mostly Slavonic in the Liturgy. Had that been the first parish I visited before I became Orthodox, I am not sure that I would have converted... simply because it would have been hard to follow the services in a language I did not know. But having embraced the Faith, we went there, and at one point I taught a Sunday School class. I had learned some Slavonic by this time, and I thought it would be helpful to teach the children some basic Slavonic phrases from the services. I began by asking them "Does anyone know what "Gospodi pomiluj [Господи, помилуй]" means? None of them knew. And if you don't know what "Gospodi pomiluj" means (which is "Lord, have mercy"), you most likely don't know anything in Slavonic.
My family attended St. Vladimir for about six years, and during that time, I began to see a pattern. Children would faithfully come with their parents, but when they hit their teens, I would begin to see them only infrequently, if at all. Evidently, they got old enough to fight going to Church, and their parents would finally be worn down and stop making them go. I know of families that were in Church without fail, and in many cases, their children likewise were faithful in their attendance, but their grandchildren were generally nowhere to be seen. There were some exceptions, but those exceptions were rare.
This was, as a matter of fact, why I pushed as hard as I did to establish an English language parish. I had my own children to be concerned with, and I refused to watch my children grow up without understanding the services, and to see them walk away from the Church when I was no longer able to make them to go to Church. As it is, thanks be to God, all of my descendants are active Orthodox Christians, and as long as I have anything to say about it, I will do what I can to keep it that way.
While it is true that the problem of the toxic antichristian culture that has come to dominate America can be blamed for some of the children who fall away from the Faith -- because you can see this happen across the religious spectrum in this country. But when you see something close to 100% of the children falling away by the third generation, that is not just the toxic culture that is the problem. I think this can only be explained by the failure of so many of our parishes to transition into using English as a primary language in the services.
What Should We Do About It?
The problem of immigrant churches and language is not unique to Orthodoxy. When I met my wife, she was attending a Chinese Baptist church. And Chinese Baptist churches have had to navigate the same issues. They exist, because there are Chinese people who do not speak English as their primary language, and so naturally want to go to churches that have services in their language. But these Churches have come to realize that the second and third generations of their members will not understand Chinese well, and if they want to survive, they have to begin transitioning into English (See "Ethnic churches add English for 2nd & 3rd generations," Baptist Press, 2019).
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which I have been a member of for more than three decades now, has made a lot of progress, when it comes to using English, during the time I have been in it -- more progress than I would have dared to hope for back in the 90's. But we still have parishes that persist in using Slavonic exclusively, and this is a problem. It is not just a problem because it is a barrier to people who might want to convert to the Faith like I did, but it is a problem if the only goal we had was to keep the children of Russians in the Faith. I don't think every parish needs to be primarily focused on reaching new converts, though I think they should all be welcoming to them, but the very first goal of every parish should be to pass the faith on to their own children. And if ROCOR had managed to keep even half of the children that were born into it since World War II, we would be a much larger jurisdiction than we are today. In fact, were it not for new immigration, many or our parishes would have closed a long time ago.
At a minimum, I think every parish should be doing half of the services in English. Another solution to this problem is having parallel services, one in English and one in Slavonic. Those parishes that do this also have combined services, and so children growing up in parishes like that would hear the services in English at least some of the time, and so would at least know that there was an option for having the services in their primary language.
Our parish was established as an English language parish, but since we have a lot of Russians and Ukrainians now, we do a Slavonic Liturgy once a month on a Saturday. Were there not another ROCOR parish within a reasonable drive, I would probably feel obligated to do at least some Slavonic in our regular services. I completely understand the desire for Russians to want to pray in the language of their hearts, and Christian love should compel us to try to be accommodating of one another, but love for our children should also compel us to approach these questions in ways that are most likely to actually work in both preserving the faith our children, and reaching out to those who are not already Orthodox around us.
I don't blame Russian immigrant laymen who come here for not understanding the need for using English in our services, but those of us who have lived here long enough to see how this has played out over the past 75 years should start doing something different than we have been doing, because we know that parishes using Slavonic exclusively is a recipe for losing our children to the Faith, and there is nothing more important than preventing that by not repeating the mistakes of the past into the future, and seeing the better part of another generation or two of our children walk away from the Church.
Update: Someone sent me the text of a sermon by St. Nikolai (Velimirovich) that is pertinent to the issues addressed above. This sermon was delivered sometime between 1946 (when he arrived in the United States) and 1956 (when he reposed), and so he said these things at least 68 years ago, but they do show that even back then, these issues were emerging, and were in need of being addressed. He says in part, speaking of the earlier immigrants who brought Orthodoxy to the United States:
"Alas, the last of these old Orthodox generations is rapidly passing away. Their sons and grandsons, and their daughters and granddaughters are now coming to the field. And this new generation is American born. They speak good English but little or no Greek, Serbian, Russian, Rumanian, Syrian or Albanian. And no wonder: They attended American schools, many of them served in the US army, they have grown in conformity with the American standard of living, their hearts are not divided between two countries. They are naturally Americans, and they intend to remain American. Accordingly, they have some demands respecting the Church of their fathers.They want English to replace national languages in church services. They desire to hear sermons in English. This is a legitimate desire. Our wise priests of every national Orthodox Church in this country are already preaching in both English and in their respective national tongue. They are in a difficult position at present, for they have on one hand to be considerate of the elderly (elderly generations of Moms and Pops) who do not understand English well, and on the other hand they are willing to respond to the desire and need of the younger generations. In this matter I think evolution is better than revolution, for the Church is the mother of both the old and the young" (St Nikolai Velimirovich on Orthodoxy in America & Its Future).
