c. 2003 Religion News Service

CRESTWOOD, N.Y. _ Growing up in a Russian Orthodox Church in Lakewood, Ohio, where the Church Slavonic language and ethnic customs were integral to parish life, the Rev. Andrew Clements was taken aback his first few days at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary.

Everything was in English.

“My jaw just dropped for 30 days and stayed there,” Clements said. “I went `Wow’ for about the first month.”

As early as the 1970s when Clements was a student, St. Vladimir’s Seminary in Crestwood was the living laboratory for an Orthodox Church in the United States that transcended ethnic boundaries. Conducting services in English, celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25, admitting women to the seminary, St. Vladimir’s was a place where the Orthodox faith reached out to all Americans whether they were born in Russia or Albania or New Mexico or North Carolina.

Today, Clements is rector of St. Nicholas Church in Mentor, Ohio, creating his own vision of an Orthodox Church in the United States with a congregation that crosses several ethnic lines.

He is among hundreds of several St. Vladimir’s graduates throughout the country who are leaders in the movement for a church in the United States that seeks to foster converts and reach out to younger generations and their non-Orthodox spouses.

Amid the ebb and flow of ethnic and jurisdictional politics, the seminary nestled in a pastoral setting in suburban New York continues its role as a vision of unity for Orthodox Christians in America.

“We have been self-consciously multijurisdictional, pan-Orthodox,” said Dean John Erickson. “I would like to make St. Vladimir Seminary a place of dialogue, a place of engagement … a beacon of hope for Orthodox unity, for Orthodox theology, maybe even for sanity in Orthodox church life.”

The first Orthodox clergy came to Alaska in the late 18th century to minister to Russian fur traders, but quickly became advocates for the native peoples. Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the missionary church embraced waves of immigrants from Europe and the Middle East, holding the hope of eventually forming an independent church in the United States.

The chaos of the Russian Revolution and a rise in ethnic nationalism quickly divided the church into ethnic jurisdictions. There are more than 30 ethnic jurisdictions in the United States today, most administered from abroad in places from Moscow to Jerusalem to Istanbul.

St. Vladimir’s Seminary was founded in 1938 as a place to train Orthodox leaders for service in the United States. Led by influential theologians such as the Rev. Alexander Schmemann and the Rev. John Meyendorff, St. Vladimir’s helped moved Orthodoxy into the mainstream of American life. The seminary became a place that encouraged dialogue both among Christian denominations and among the various Orthodox ethnic jurisdictions.

English-language services became the norm at St. Vladimir’s, which also supported a revised Julian calendar to celebrate fixed feast days such as Christmas on Dec. 25 with the rest of the country.

“Unity is a fact of life of the seminary,” says Juliana Schmemann, 79, the widow of the former seminary dean Alexander Schmemann.

As she sat inside the seminary chapel recently, Schmemann remembers every change “was always a fight,” but she says developments such as English-language services have been well received because worshippers can understand the services.

Even today, work for Orthodox unity remains a struggle.

Hopes were raised in 1994, when U.S. bishops from several jurisdictions convened in Ligonier, Pa., and committed themselves to work toward administrative unity. But some overseas patriarchs, reluctant to give up control of the U.S. churches, rejected the Ligonier conference.

In churches in the United States, there also are concerns that some ethnic traditions members value may be compromised or lost in the move toward unity. There are still ethnic churches in the United States where it would be considered outrageous to use English in the liturgy.

Still, the unity movement is seen by many as inevitable for a church that with each generation in the United States lessens ties to its immigrant past.

As St. Vladimir wrapped up its academic year last weekend, the 87-member student body included individuals from Antiochian, Greek, Romanian, Russian, Serbian and nine other Orthodox jurisdictions. The majority of students studying for the clergy are converts, attracted by the church’s spiritual teachings rather than cultural ties.

The Rev. John Parker, a former Episcopal priest born in North Carolina who is now with the Orthodox Church in America, says he comes to the church with no jurisdictional memories. “It’s not on my radar screen,” he says.

Demographics also are driving the push for American churches.

As Orthodox move out into the suburbs and throughout the country, more mission churches are being founded as all-English, multinational congregations.

And in older congregations, more young people are staying in the church as services switch to English, many pastors say.

At the seminary, students filled with the enthusiasm of youth and the commitment born of choosing a faith by conversion envision a time of growth.

Sophia Sanders, a first-year divinity student and convert from Santa Fe, N.M., says as Orthodoxy becomes better known, “more people will just start piling in.”

Nicholas Belcher, an Antiochian Orthodox student, said his father’s first attempt to become Orthodox was rebuffed by a priest who told him converts were not welcome. His father persisted, and Belcher is now studying for the priesthood.

“It’s a great time to be Orthodox. It’s a hopeful time to be Orthodox,” he says. “We’re going to be unified in a matter of time. If we really lead the life, loving and being pastoral, God will work it all out.”

One sign of growth at the seminary is a new library complex dedicated last year. Metropolitan Herman, primate of the Orthodox Church in America, says the facility makes St. Vladimir’s the premier center for research in Orthodox scholarship on this continent.

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In a mix of the sacred and secular, the seminary is a green oasis of contemplation bordered by suburban houses, just a few hundred yards from the Bronx River Parkway and only a half-hour from Manhattan.

Trees surround the grounds, and seminarians can ponder nature from wooden and stone benches or as they walk over wooden bridges traversing a gently flowing creek.

On the highest ground in the seminary is a cross atop a gold-domed cupola over the chapel.

It is there, in prayer, as often as five times a day, that students say they get the spiritual strength for the work ahead of them.

Parker said an excellent faculty and a theological tradition embracing important thinkers are giving him strong tools for Orthodox ministry.

“Put all that together with apple pie and a Ford,” Parker said. “That’s where I see myself going.”

DEA END BRIGGS