St. Ananias (Eastern Orthodox)

I’m going to be very honest.  I really have no idea how to review this church, but I’ll do the best with what I have.  I have to be fair in my assessment, but I’m probably going to revisit them some Sunday so I can have a better representation of what a “legitimate” worship service was like.  I have a partiality to Eastern Orthodoxy because I don’t know much about it, it’s unique compared to the churches I have been to, and I’m fascinated by their take on Christianity.  However, two things worked against me:  1) Saturday night Vespers is not an accurate representation of a “normal” worship service and 2) this particular night wasn’t quite an accurate representation of a normal Vespers meeting because the Father was sick and couldn’t show.  So, I’ve decided to give St. Ananias a temporary score that is subject to change if I’m welcomed back on a Sunday morning.

Eastern Orthodoxy, for those who don’t know, is the church that essentially split with Roman Catholicism in the Middle Ages for a few reasons – the main beef being iconography, with issues concerning language and culture thrown in for good measure.  For the Western Europeans, they continued on the path with Roman Catholicism, answering to the Pope, while Eastern Europeans, parts of Asia, and Africa carried on the Orthodox tradition of Christianity, with no ties to Roman Catholicism aside from tradition and history.

In my religious studies, I have to admit that Eastern Orthodoxy is somewhat of a gray area where I have relatively little knowledge.  I know enough to have a casual conversation, but if we start talking in-depth theological views, I’m in over my head.  So, with very little information in my hand (or in my mind), I chose to sit in on Saturday night Vespers at St. Ananias Orthodox Church.  The experience was…interesting.

I pulled up the St. Ananias around 4:45, 15 minutes before start.  I thought I was lost or in the wrong place because I was the only car in the parking lot.  I sat for around ten minutes before another family pulled up.  They welcomed me, let me in, and I talked with a few of them briefly concerning why I was there.  Out of respect, I asked if I could observe their Saturday night gathering and I was welcomed in.

Now, I’ve done a little preliminary research and the Saturday night Vespers is a prayer vigil – plain and simple.  There’s no message, there’s no offering, and very little singing on the part of the parishioners.  So, you can understand how difficult it is going to be to write this review.  In addition to those issues, the Father was sick, so the mass was one where those who showed up did their part, but it was missing the element of leadership from the priest. 

So, upon walking in, I watched the few parishioners there kneel and kiss some pictures on a podium.  I didn’t get a chance to see who they were paying reverence to until after the service, but upon the podium were three framed pictures – one of Mary (the Theotokos), one of Christ, and another of St. Moses (kind of the “Saint of the week” as I found out later).  After sitting down, a younger gentlemen introduced himself to me.  He was about my age, maybe a few years older.  I was able to field a few questions to him, and he went out of his way to gather some information for me.  St. Ananias shines, my friends, in the amount of information I was given.  I have a stack of pamphlets, a calendar with the names of the saints, a couple of business cards, and enough reading for me to keep myself busy for a while.  As a kind of an aside, the calendar is really cool – they have a Saint for every day of the week, and trying to keep their feasts and fasts in line are difficult.  It’s a great reference tool.  Anyway, after a short first discussion (there was a second where I found out that St. Ananias is named after the Christian that anointed and healed Saul/Paul after his conversion on the road to Damascus) he took to the side of the sanctuary with another young woman in the choir.

Before the start of the service, I made a few general observations about St. Ananias.  First and foremost, it is the only Eastern Orthodox Church in town.  The congregation meets in the bottom of the health building across from Schnucks on Washington.  This place, if you’re not looking for it, is easy to drive by.  I’ve been driving by it for almost a year and a half.  I was astounded to learn that the Eastern Orthodox Church I wanted to visit for so long was almost right under my nose.  They are, to their credit, looking at options for a larger place of worship, but where they are now seems proportional to the amount of folks they normally have (50 people on a good day).  The sanctuary itself is small.  It sits about 50 or 60 tops people, but it is beautiful.  I can’t offer my compliments enough to the Father and parishioners – the iconography, the pictures, the items used in worship were all wonderfully placed, and obviously taken care of.  This place culturally aroused my interest the same way the Roman Catholic Church touched my senses when I sat in on my first mass.  The icons are very overwhelming at first, but after taking it all in, St. Ananias was beautiful – plain and simple.  The lights were dimmed, it was very quiet, and when I wasn’t scribbling notes, I felt at peace.  As I told the gentlemen I was talking with, I can see a very large appeal to coming to Saturday night Vespers.  If I was a believer, and I had a stressful day and I needed a spiritual connection, I would easily come to Vespers simply because of the mood and tone set.  I commend this church on setting about a mood that encourages thoughtful prayer to Jesus Christ.  I attempted to imagine what it would look like with hundreds of people both chanting and praying.  It would’ve been a heck of an experience.

So, 5:00 rolls around, and I felt a bit awkward.  There were about ten people there, with myself making around eleven.  I sat in the back, but I still stuck out like a sore thumb.  Vespers began with chanting, and, for the most part, chanting and repetition made up the service.  If you think of a Catholic mass with just continual chanting, no genuflecting, no message, you would have a rough approximation.  The young gentlemen I spoke to earlier and the woman he was with began chanting, sometimes together, sometimes separately, and sometimes in a call-and-response format.  I complimented him after the service; for one guy and one gal doing a chant for what could have been a whole crowd, I was impressed.  Their voices helped set a tone.  It worked for me, though some of the kids were bored out of their wits, so chanting can have both positive and negative results.  However, somewhere around the latter end of the service, I was remiss that I, as an atheist, have no god to pray to, as it would have been the key to experiencing the moment to its fullest.  As an observant, I can only relate to what it may have been like, but in terms of spiritual reflection, St. Ananias definitely excels.

During the service, the Father’s wife and kids came and spoke with me.  I was attempting to follow the service through one of the Great Vespers guides I was given, but it was more a template than a word-by-word representation of what would be spoken.  I was later told this, but while I was able to follow along to a degree, I did eventually get lost.  So, having these folks to talk to was quite helpful.  As a side note, one of the kids kind of rudely touched my forehead (not a big deal – won’t fault a child for being curious), but I was able to ask some further questions.  Vespers, for what it would have been if the Father wasn’t sick, would have been a bit of a different experience.  During the normal Saturday night meeting, he would have walked around the entire room with incense – rose, lavender, myrrh, etc.  I was sorely disappointed he wasn’t there for that.  What can I say – I am a big fan of incense, and I believe it very much helps in setting particular moods.  That combined with the dimming of the lights would have been so much more beautiful.  I attempted to play the scene out in my mind, but as the Father’s wife and I both agreed – there’s no substitution for the real thing.  I was able to ask her a few questions and she was very informative and polite.

As for the chanting itself, it was mostly filled with things you would expect to hear.  Again, I can draw comparisons to a Catholic mass.  One example of something that might have been chanted:

“Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this evening without sin.  Blessed are Thou, O Lord, the God of our fathers, and praised and glorified is thy Name forever.  Amen. 

“Let thy mercy be upon us, O Lord, even as we have set our hope in Thee.  Blessed art Thou, O Lord; teach me thy statutes.  Blessed art Though, O master; make me to understand thy statutes.  Blessed art Thou, O Holy One; enlighten me with thy statutes.

“Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever.  Despise not the works of thy hands.  To Thee belongeth worship; to Thee belongeth praise; to Thee belongeth glory; to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.  Amen.”

The service ended with more chanting, the Lord’s Prayer, and a few other readings that I, unfortunately, couldn’t follow along with.  I was able to talk with the young gentlemen again after the service.  Now, I have to say, the folks I talked to, in general, were pretty nice, but the mood compared to other services was very different.  I was comfortable enough, at the end of the service, to tell the younger gentlemen that I was a member of the Evansville Freethinkers, though not necessarily writing on their behalf, nor of their affiliation.  I mentioned I was co-opting a project with one of my fellow Freethinkers that was, for better or worse, a book about comparative religion (which is somewhat true – that’s a large portion of it).  I was able to explain to him that I was there to watch them worship, though, for my own personal research.  I related to him my fascination with religion, my insistence to get out and observe people worshipping in their natural environment, and how I’m always open to learning.  I didn’t drop the A-word, but he did ask me if I was a Christian, to which I honestly replied ‘no’.  He looked a little apprehensive, but I played ignorant so I could get some information out of him.  He took me around, showed me some of the icons, and I was able to ask whatever questions I needed.

Some things to point out:  Eastern Orthodox folks do cross themselves, though they bow before they do it in reverence of Christ.  They kiss pictures of Christ in somewhat the same manner as Catholics would genuflect upon entering a service.  They do a Lord’s Prayer and, from everything else I caught, they are more similar to Catholics than I realized, but where they differ, they do so in abundance. 

I asked what drew my guide to the Eastern Orthodox Church.  He shared his story, essentially believing that the Eastern Orthodox Church was the one, true church with the legitimate history that can be traced all the way back to Christ.  No argument there…except Catholics claim the same.  He found it to be the best fit for him, and I understand that as a reason to join a church or community.  I told him that the Vespers was a very unique experience – and I do mean that respectfully – as I was raised with a Western Christian tradition in Protestantism.  I related that I felt a little awestruck – the same way I felt when I went to the Catholic Church.  He was also able to relate to me what type of outreach programs they had, which were few, but considering the amount of members, the programs they did have were proportionate.  St. Ananias is a small-knit community – everyone knows everyone, so it’s much more insulated than a mega-church may be.

I couldn’t tell if it was his mannerisms, but after I told him I was part of the Freethinkers, he seemed a bit…off.  I eventually asked if he wanted to ask me questions, to which he asked what “freethinking” was all about.  I explained that it was an all-encompassing term that includes anyone who self-identifies as such.  Anyone of any faith can be a freethinker, even theists if they feel their faith is based on logic and rational reasoning.  I hope that put him at ease and that he didn’t think I was just a “dirty atheist” coming to sit in on their service.  I gave him my email address, as the Father usually follows up with people, and I left.

Now, knowing what I know about Eastern Orthodoxy, I hold it in high regard.  If I was going to convert to Christianity, I would join the Eastern Orthodox Church.  I admire the sense of community, their adherence to routine, how open they are, the rigidity of their schedules – there’s a lot of structure here that most churches don’t have.  Their doors are open almost every day where someone can come in and worship.  I love the openness of this church.  However, seeing as converting would be against my senses, I’ll have to keep the Eastern Orthodox church high on my list of respected faiths in a “what-if” scenario.

So, all in all, I’m giving it a grade that’s subject to change.  I go to these places for what constitutes an average worship service.  On average, the Father isn’t sick, nor is Vespers representative of a Sunday service, so instead of faulting St. Ananias for these, I’ll give them brownie points that I’ll exchange when I go again.  The church was small, but beautiful, and the people were generally nice, if not a bit reserved.  Or, at least they came off that way.  There wasn’t the joking and such I received at the Church of Christ, which makes sense since Vespers is a somber event.  There wasn’t a message proper, but I can still rank “the message” as it pertains to what reading material I was given.  For what I did see, and what I was able to learn, I found the experience very educational:

1. Congregation
1. Friendliness (.7/1)
2. Message
1. Topic Interest (.7/1)
2. Inspirational Value (.5/1)
3. Clarity (1/1)
4. Applicability (.6/1)
3. Worship
1. Content (.6/1)
2. Audience Participation (.5/1)
4. Outreach
1. Community Involvement (.8/1)
2. Variety of Activities (1/1)
5. Information
1. Accessibility (1/1)

Total = 7.4