Historical article from South Africa on racism in the church

I find this interesting as South Africa is one of the places where "White Rights" activists are always looking. It's a story of how they dealt with somebody pushing racism. TL;DR version: eventual excommunication. Of course, this was a very, very bad form of racism which denied somebody was even human, and that's right out of the question.

This is relevant in more ways than that outcome: the leader of that traditionalist has worn an Ian Smith shirt around before and quite recently their group wrote some on facebook praising the idea of Orania - a whites-only town (actually, Afrikaaner-only) in the middle of South Africa which would hopefully expand to their own little self-sufficient nation purely for their own "volk". Frankly, this model is less odious than some other ones (ie, the bantustan idea), as they're taking voluntary action to create a self-sufficient community rather than, say, claiming all the good land in the country or exploiting a permanent underclass of workers to maintain their advantage, but it's still wrong.

Context

Racism has been in the news a bit lately. Of course, Orthodox Christianity categorically rejects it, as in Christ there is "neither Jew nor Greek" and the Gospel is proclaimed to "all nations". Doing so generally requires some mixing of those nations. This is so obvious now that I must say "of course", but perhaps it is not obvious to everybody else.

A couple weeks ago, a Catholic web-logger brought up his discomfort, or rather Fr Alexander Schmemann's discomfort, with some of the hymnography on Holy Friday. I remarked that there are certainly a few sentences in there that could be tweaked. Of course, there was the typical response, which I think kind of misses the point, but it should be in there for completeness.

Anyway, this is a prelude to bringing up some unfortunate nonsense. Focused attention, of course, seems to be what the guy wants and which the people at the incident in question seemed to try hard not to give him. However, given how much racism pops up in the news these days in general, it's good to bring up that we are all one in Christ.

EDIT: more commentary

That last guy wasn't so bad.

In the grand scheme of things, it's making a tempest out of a molehill. There are worse things in this world, like racism or beating people up using a cross ("the instrument of peace").

converts should be neither seen nor heard

After seeing a particularly embarrassing performance from a web-logger who has barely toweled off from his baptism, I want to take a moment to remind the internets that converts should be neither seen nor heard, at least until their initial enthusiasm has worn off. Also, please resist the urge to baptize your political leanings, at least until, again, until you're dry. I mean, I have strong leanings in support of the poor, the desperate, the destitute, the aliens, and the widows, but I'm not about to pretend that my religion is dictating this concern. So I ask the same courtesy when you want to be a useful idiot for the capitalist class. At least until you've been Orthodox for a few years.

Trubachev died in 1995?

 
I've been forced, as a matter of course, to look at a lot of church choral music lately and that has made me keep track of names. Having people in the 20th century isn't so surprising, even in such an allegedly "conservative" church as this. More Kastalsky! More Chesnokov! But I was rather surprised that somebody with so many familiar pieces was so relatively recent. I mean, that's recent enough to light a candle for him as he makes his way through Purgatory the Toll-Houses.

Two multilingual liturgical puns

The first is that "Agape Vespers" always makes me think of the Evlogitaria:

The angelic host was filled with awe,
when it saw You among the dead.
By destroying the power of death, O Savior,
Thou didst raise Adam, and save all men from hell!

But that's a different "agape".

The other pun, perhaps more obscure, was a response to this comic, which was posted on facebook with the caption, "Oggi ci comporteremmo così con la Resurrezione?"



My response was "Voskresenie Khristovo video-ed". It's not perfect, but I think it's pretty close.