The Soul Children of Chicago, the choir singing in the first link, have been around for a couple decades and have produced some beautiful music - much of it traditional Gospel, but also some from other spiritual traditions. I've heard it said that a lot of their alumni credit Rev. Whitman and involvement with the choir as having led their lives in a different direction than they might have otherwise gone. May God grant them many years.
Neil
"One day all our ethnic traits ... will have disappeared. Time itself is seeing to this. And so we can not think of our communities as ethnic parishes, ... unless we wish to assure the death of our community."
Watch what you ask for, with Protestants being the largest group of concerts to Orthodoxy and the location of many of our antique temples a Gospel Choir may sing the Divine Liturgy, in a-capella English.
Who is credited with your quote: "One day all our ethnic traits ... will have disappeared. Time itself is seeing to this. And so we can not think of our communities as ethnic parishes, ... unless we wish to assure the death of our community."
Chill, a simple observation. So are we ready to acknowledge the Evangelical's witness to orthodoxy with their music? If so here is a good one for Passion (Holy) Week.
Here is tit for tat
Protestants fought slavery Orthodoxy didn't fight serfdom. After all one of the trouble spots for human trafficing today is what use to be the USSR.
Who is credited with your quote: "One day all our ethnic traits ... will have disappeared. Time itself is seeing to this. And so we can not think of our communities as ethnic parishes, ... unless we wish to assure the death of our community."
I agree whole heartedly!
Michael,
It is from The Courage To Be Ourselves [melkite.org], the 1972 Christmas Pastoral Message of the beloved Archbishop Joseph (Tawil), of blessed memory, then-Exarch and later first Eparch of Newton of the Melkites. Character count limitations preclude me from crediting him by name.
In context, the fuller version says:
Quote
We have not yet mentioned the principal dangers which threaten our communities and their mission to the Churches: the ghetto mentality and the assimilation process.
In a ghetto life is closed in upon itself, operating only within itself, with its own ethnic and social clich�s. And the Parish lives upon the ethnic character of the community; when that character disappears, the community dies and the parish dies with it.
One day all our ethnic traits - language, folklore, customs - will have disappeared. Time itself is seeing to this. And so we can not think of our communities as ethnic parishes, primarily for the service of the immigrant or the ethnically oriented, unless we wish to assure the death of our community. Our Churches are not only for our own people but are also for any of our fellow Americans who are attracted to our traditions which show forth the beauty of the universal Church and the variety of its riches.
He then went on to speak of the second danger - at the opposite end of the continuum - assimilation.
I heartily recommend reading the entire message. It is as meaningful now as it was then.
Many years,
Neil
"One day all our ethnic traits ... will have disappeared. Time itself is seeing to this. And so we can not think of our communities as ethnic parishes, ... unless we wish to assure the death of our community."
Here is a hijacked version of Gospodi Poluj: (Warning, It reminds me of some Roman Catholic Nuns that I used to know.)
How is it "hijacked"? Is someone understood to own it? It can't be appropriated in different ways if someone wants to sing it with their guitar and make a folk song where they pray "Lord Have Mercy?"
The barb about the "Roman Catholic Nuns"... I don't get it. Are you a convert who is angry with a Catholic past?
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