The protestant moment? Religion in the United States.

In her contribution to Commonweal's forum on the laity (September 1O, 1993), Margaret O' Brien Steinfels writes, "The prevailing individualism, the tempting congregationalism of American Protestant Christianity, and the pragmatic rationality of our economic and business systems are increasingly congenial to the mindset of American Catholics. All of these represent enticing alternatives to the communal, hierarchical, and sacramental understandings that lie at the heart of Catholicism."

True enough, and true not only of Catholicism. Since December of last year I have served as pastor of a small Orthodox church in New York. It has been an interesting experience. To go from theological discussions in seminary classrooms, to reading articles on feminine images of the Holy Spirit in early Syriac Christianity, then to further reading (like much of what appears in Commonweal and National Catholic Reporter and Christian Century), to go from this into a parish, and then to see what most people regard as their religious life, is instructive.

There are many differences between Catholic and Orthodox parishes, but what struck me in Steinfels's quote was the similarity, certainly with regard to this movement away from the communal, hierarchical, and sacramental understanding of the church toward a pragmatic, congregational, and individualistic approach to church membership. I am not sure who it was who said, "In America, even the Catholics are Protestants" (Conor Cruise O'Brien?), but it is true, and true of the Orthodox as well.

Which should lead to some caution, on the part of those Catholics who blame Vatican II, or Humanae vitae, or sexual scandals involving priests, for such phenomena as "cafeteria Catholicism," the decline in the number of priests, the fact that few people go to confession, and so forth. A comparison with the Orthodox experience might be interesting.

Take the decline in the number of priests. It is true that the exodus of priests following Vatican II doesn't have an Orthodox equivalent, and it is almost certainly true that the restriction of ordination to celibates is a major part of the problem. But the belief that a change in this discipline would lead to an adequate number of priests may be incorrect. My own jurisdiction, the Orthodox Church in America, is likely to face a priest shortage in the relatively near future. The reason for this is plainly not celibacy; the great majority of our parish priests are married. The reason, more likely, is the relatively low salaries most priests are paid, and the fact that most live in housing provided by the churches they serve, or are given a housing allowance. There is really little in the way of a "career path." The sacrifice is seen by many as too much to ask of a family.

Or take the matter of the decline in practice of confession. There are some Orthodox churches where Communion is infrequent, where confession is expected before each Communion. Increasingly, however, the trend is toward frequent Communion, and confession may be confined to penitential seasons like Lent and Advent. In a number of Orthodox Church in America parishes, general confession is offered, often in conjunction with Vespers. It has never been offered as an alternative to personal confession, and the fear that it will replace private confession seems misplaced: many people in these parishes still come to confession-- but in all parishes, there are a significant number (in some parishes a majority) who simply never go to confession.

Some Catholic scholars have located the problem in Humanae vitae: people began to make up their minds on significant moral questions without priestly help, this line of reasoning goes, when the Vatican showed itself unrealistic about a problem the people knew more intimately than their celibate counselors. Apart from the fact that in all likelihood most Catholics didn't go to confession to ask priests for advice, but rather to confess their sins, this doesn't square with the Orthodox experience. The Orthodox didn't have Humanae vitae to contend with, of course, but although the decline in the use of confession may not be as apparent as it is in the Catholic experience, we have a great many people who now feel free to come to Communion without having gone to confession; and this is something their Orthodox grandparents would not have considered. Here I'm passing over a difference in practice in various jurisdictions; churches with a Slavic background are more likely to emphasize confessions than Greek churches. It remains true in any case that Communion is increasingly seen as a private decision, having little to do with the communal nature of the church, and the communal dimension of sin with which confession is meant to deal.

Then there is the question of congregationalism. This was our problem in America before it was yours. Most Orthodox parishes were started by laypeople, immigrants who asked the churches in their mother countries to send them priests, and then proceeded to regard the resulting church as their own domain, and the priest as the employee of the congregation. The positive side of this is a great deal of lay responsibility, and a genuine sense that the people are the church. The negative side is parochialism: the sense of Orthodoxy as a wOrldwide church, and of the parish as a community which participates in a much larger reality, is terribly attenuated in a great many churches. Although this has its origin in American Orthodox church history, it has been reinforced by the Protestant congregational mentality to which Steinfels points.

Finally, we have our own equivalent of "cafeteria Catholicism." A number of Orthodox believe that any teaching of the church about any aspect of morality (abortion and premantal sex among them) must be decided by the individual; the tradition of the church isn't really consulted. The authority here is the zeitgeist.

The point of this is that all of us tend to be parochial. Catholicism looks toward its own particular history to see how and why people have jumped ship, stopped confessing, left the priesthood, taken a pick-and-choose approach to Catholic teaching, and so forth--but variations on this theme can be found in Orthodox Christianity and Judaism, and obviously can't be blamed on Vatican II or Humanae vitae. Judaism, of course, doesn't have to worry about Christian problems with the priesthood, confession, etc.; but there is among some Jews I know a real hostility to Orthodox Judaism, which is seen as too demanding and too serious about traditions which don't square with life in the modern world--at least with the lives a lot of us want to lead.

Habits of the Heart, by Robert N. Bellah, et al., spoke convincingly of the tendency of Americans to seek a religion that will satisfy them, confirm their expectations, and make them feel good about themselves-in other words, a religion that will leave them where they are, one completely incapable of transforming them.

The real question here may be the place of traditional religion in a culture that celebrates individualism. Traditions are necessarily communal: they place us in the presence of the shared voices of many generations, and insist that if we choose to disagree with the harmony that can be found there we may be seriously out of touch with reality.

This is the least that can be said about a traditional religion, and even this least goes against the American grain. I think this is more a problem for America than for Orthodoxy, Catholicism, or Judaism, but it is a problem that has consequences for Americans who want to be in touch with their traditions, who feel a love for them, and yet do not feel capable of moving beyond the quest for autonomy and individualism-indeed, can't imagine that there is a reality beyond them.