Attacks on Serbian Church Prompt More Americans to Explore Orthodox Christianity - Bishop

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The attacks on the Serbian Orthodox Church during and after the Yugoslav wars have prompted some Americans to learn more about Orthodox Christianity, with some of them converting to it, Bishop Jerome (Shaw) of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) told Sputnik.

The bishop, who was born and raised in the United States and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in the 1960s, said that news about Orthodox Christianity in years past were often published in the US newspapers' culinary sections.

However, the Western attacks on Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church during the 1990s and later on changed the situation and stories about that part of the Christian world became "hard news," he said.

"As a result, more and more people found themselves asking 'What is it that somebody hates so much - and why?' Thus, many Americans went from cultural to ideological Orthodoxy and finally joined the Orthodox church," he said.

The interest in Orthodox Christianity may also be in part because the Russian Orthodox Church may be the most change-resistant institution among the other denominations, Bishop Jerome said. Services and other customs remain as they have been for centuries and only few "secondary" traditions had changed, he added.

Archpriest Michael van Opstall, rector of ROCOR’s St. George church in the US state of Utah, said that an increasing number of Americans have expressed interest in Russian Orthodox Christian traditions.

"I suspect that changes happening elsewhere in the world are pushing some people to seek something more firm and less changing," Opstall said.

While some Orthodox denominations turned to the so-called "new" calendar and began celebrating Christmas on December 25, the Russian Orthodox Church, including ROCOR, continues to follow the old calendar style and commemorates the Nativity of Christ on January 7, he said.

When asked about differences in holiday traditions in Russia and the United States, Opstall said most ROCOR parishes hold the Divine Liturgy in the morning, as they have for decades, but in Russia, the Moscow Patriarchate generally holds it at midnight.

Bishop Jerome pointed out that Christmas in the United States has been commercialized but in Orthodox Christianity it is "first and foremost a religious event."

The bishop noted that after the split into Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054, the latter went a long way through reformation, counter-reformation, Jesuit reform and other changes, resulting in the change of many traditions.

"Efforts have also been made in this country to secularize Christmas observances so that some avoid saying 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year' lest they offend non-Christians by mentioning anything connected with the New Testament or with the Bible at all. But the result of all that has been that for those who do keep to Christmas, the spiritual meaning is felt all the more," he said.