Culture: Local, Regional, and Universal

There's an old rag, "Never ask a man where he's from. If he's from Texas, he'll tell you. If not, you don't want to embarrass him." Everybody knows where I'm from and even this past week it was pointed out that, as a Texan, it puts me at a disadvantage to understand my parishioners because I'm two degrees removed from them: (1) I'm not from the Middle-Eastern culture, and (2) I'm not a Michigander. My assumptions and way of speaking is not immediately understood by them, and theirs is not immediately understood by me. That's a pretty fair comment I think. I have often said to any one who would listen that in assigning clergy, it is important to remember that the United States is not a homogenous culture. It is actually quite regional. We should expect that. Keep in mind that Texas is the size of France, which is known to have a distinct culture.

Why should I bring this up in relation to the Church? Because it is easily assumed that Christianity has only one culture, or that it should only have a singular culture. This is not quite the same thing as phyletism but it can certainly be one of its assumptions (phyletism is the heresy which holds that one's own ethnicity or culture is superior to all others and acts to suppress or subvert other cultures--without action it is only bigotry). I would like to suggest that Christian culture must be seen as a parallel to ecclesiological order. It is unavoidable. Remember Christ became a very specific human being, in a specific historic time, with a specific culture. If we are real human beings, we will have a real culture that is ours and this will impact the life of the Church.

So how do we begin to make heads or tails out of this, and what is the core of Christian culture? Christian culture exists on a local level, a regional level and a universal level (this should sound familiar to the Ravenna Agreement), but it works slightly differently than ecclesiological authority which operates through the Eucharist and is therefore complete locally as well as universally. In Christian culture the common general elements are found in the universal level and then become more specific as one moves down to the local level.

At the universal Christian level are such things as the Sacraments which must be held, the Scriptures, the writings of the Fathers of the Church, etc. These are not just simple and general, but there are some specific things here that cannot be cast off. For example the basic shape of the Eucharist is part of the universal culture of the Church. It begins with preparation, hymns, readings from the Scriptures one always being taken from one of the four the Gospels another usually from one of the Epistles, or in some cases from the Old Testament. There is always the offering of the gifts of wheat bread and real wine from grapes. The consecration of the gifts into the Body and Blood of Christ which include the words of Christ (except in one ancient liturgy) and often an invocation of the Holy Spirit (although not universal in the ancient liturgies). There are the communions and a dismissal.

This is the universal shape which can be recognized in all Eucharistic liturgies around the world. The exact words used and the ceremonials which attended the Eucharistic liturgies were made specific on the regional level. At one time there were a great number of various liturgies (or rites) and now there are relatively few. It is common to speak of two major ritual families: the Eastern and the Western, both of which have several variants. For example in the Western there is the Roman, Gallican (French), Mozarabic (Spanish), and Ambrosian (Milanese) Rites. By far the most common of these Latin Rites is the Roman. But it had local variations too such that, if one is aware of the details, one can tell the difference between English customs and German ones.

This is quite important really because it allows the local culture to take both the universal and regional and make them real in a profoundly personal and obedient manner. It reinforces the Gospel itself and the real personality of those around the altar. When a local culture takes the universal and regional, digests it, interiorizes it and embraces it, it gives it back in a marvelously new manner. The local temperament is expressed and understood.

This historical organic life can be challenged and upset in places like the United States which has been characterized both by immigration and migration. Regional religious culture can undone when a large group from another region immigrate. It can also upset things when local character is not understood or is undervalued. The United States is essentially an English culture with some modification. Its cultural roots and biases are English. Its laws are English, both civil and common law (except from Louisiana which has a mix of English and French law). Her religious life was also formed with an English temperament. That's unavoidable since the Church of England was the established Church in most of the early colonies.

With immigration from Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean there has been a large influx of a different regional culture. It is still Christian culture for it holds to the universal pattern as established in the early Church and the Scriptures, but it has as its base a different set of assumptions and resolutions. It's world view is different. Even here the local variations can create tension (i.e., between the Greeks and the Russians, etc.).

But what happens when the later regional mind comes into immediate contact with an established regional culture? They don't seem to mix and create something new. They tend to polarize against one another. They also insist on the conformity of any "converts" into their own regional culture. In the long run the later culture dies--unless it has an incredibly large number--because by the third generation many of its children are gone. The only hope for a long lasting second culture, is that it and not the founding culture adapt to new circumstances. This is true because all of the externals of the civilization and locality are all ready set and are not up for grabs. If this doesn't happen, then the new group becomes increasingly disconnected with the real needs and concerns of those around, becoming nothing more than ethnic enclaves and ghettos with no real formative power.

This is what I think is under the hood of the experience of Orthodoxy in this country. Its culture has been strongly established within its Byzantine history (partly because of the abuse of the Ottoman Turks and the Communists) and is so rigid as to be set in stone. Recovering a "more Orthodox" mind is done by becoming more Greek or whatever. The monasteries of Fr. Ephraim spring to mind. But in parishes there is a disconnect. Children go to the Episcopal Church, or the Roman Catholic Church or whatever and it is not seen as a problem to many families. The children cannot connect to the attendant culture of the parent's parish because the world they live in is not the old country. The local life they have cannot support the local manifestations of a village ten-thousand miles away.

I have already written about the tragedy of people giving up their own culture to adopt a new one. They don't become something new, they only really are able to reject what they are and thereby become nothing, "a man without a country," without a father and mother.

The culture of the United States can only find its real ultimate cultural life in the old Latin Mass. English culture ultimately springs from this as does all of European culture. There are so many unconscious connections to this regional liturgical life in our culture that it would be impossible to list them all. But they are still present in an intuitive sense. Even if we can't quite put our finger on it, we know that there should be something there. It is here that the regional and local cultures must once again begin to live. Authentic life demands it. Sanity demands it. A healthy integrated life demands it. Oremus. (Let us pray.)