Another errand into the wilderness

A very American story about a group of people who probably don't think of themselves as American at all: The Old Believers of Russian Orthodoxy.

At the Atlantic Monthly, Wendy Jonassen and Ryan Loughin report:

Members of the Old Believers -- a Russian Orthodox sect that left the church in 1666, in the face of state-issued church reforms -- traveled more than 20,000 miles over five centuries in the search for the perfect place to protect their traditions from outside influences.

Minus a turkey or two and a friendly native who happens to know how to speak the newcomers' language, the travels and travails of the immigrants at Nikolaevsk, Alaska could be the story of the Pilgrims and the First Thanksgiving. What they've done at this outpost in Alaska follows the form of a deep American myth. Even as -- but also sort of because -- it involves resistance to American culture, a passionate desire to be separate, seek a better country, go on an errand into the wilderness, build a city on a hill, and these sorts of things.

It's not just the ur-myth of the Pilgrims, either. As T.C. Boyle ably illustrated in Drop City, where a group of utopian-dreaming hippies move to Alaska and live side-by-side with utopian-dreaming right-wing survivalists, this idea and ideal re-emerges in many ways across American culture and history. Whether it's 16th century Puritans or the Mormons walking to Utah, the Free State Project or the leftist utopians who moved into the California redwoods in the 1880s and named the largest tree in the world the Karl Marx tree, the vision persists, and persists with such strength that people are compelled or inspired to try again what's been tried before. But different this time.

So these Russians in Alaska are reenacting an old, old story, one that's a deep part of the identity of the outside culture they're resisting:

Slight signs of assimilation had begun even in the community's shorter stops elsewhere in the globe, for example in Brazil. 'In Russian, beans is frazol,' Vasily says. 'But we say fijon. That is the Portuguese word for beans.' Yet a century after they left Siberia, many Old Believers still speak Slavonic, an old peasant dialect that dates back hundreds of years. The four to five hour long church service in Nikolaevsk is still completely in Slavonic. And in many homes, the elders only speak Slavonic and children are scolded when they slip into English in the wrong setting. 

But for the first time in Nikolaevsk the majority of the younger generation speaks English as their first language. While many of them can speak Slavonic conversationally, it's only a matter of time before the language dies out completely [....] 

The Slavonic church services may even be in danger. 'I am looking down the line, maybe not in my lifetime, but whoever is going to be the priest after me, is going to have to really consider incorporating more English into the services,' Father Nikolai says.

It's a fear that, at root, John Winthrop wouldn't have found strange.

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Atheist seeks to free Hispanics from faith, community

What holds American Hispanics to their faiths? Community.

That was the claim made at the American Atheist's 2013 convention in a talk by David Tamayo about how to reach out to Hispanics. According to a conference report, Tamayo thinks a substantial number of Hispanics in America are skeptical of religion -- even "natural atheist allies" --  but trapped by their families and their communities, and their needs for the infrastructure and social support that religion provides.

Whether or not this is generally true, it is the case that this is what happened in Tamayo's own life, as he told a Virginia newspaper last year. The paper reported:

Tamayo cites his own life as a case in point. Raised in a Catholic household, he described himself as an extremely devout youth who even pondered whether to become a priest. 

By the time he realized he was an atheist at around 40, it still took him years to explain his beliefs to his parents, who remain skeptical, he said. 

He has been asked not to attend marriages of friends and why he hates God. He feels uncomfortable discussing his beliefs at work, where a prayer group meets regularly.

Tamayo said many Hispanics, especially younger Hispanics, are religious mostly for such social reasons. It's not belief, per se, in these of individual propositional statements one mentally affirms, that makes them religious, but social reality. The good that religion does in their lives is the good of community and support systems -- somethings he thinks freethinking groups and networks can replace. And should replace. And must.

The promotional material available from Tamayo's website, though, takes a different approach. There the approach is more New Atheist, in style, depicting non-believers as heroic and strong for the ability to dispense with the fictions relied on by the mentally and morally feeble. A brochure that's billed as something that can be given to family and friends, for example, states:

Some Hispanics live without the fear of imaginary beings and superstitions. Some of us put our hope in science instead of prayer, witchcraft, or homeopathic medicine [....] Sometimes we have struggles, heartaches, disappointments, and trials just like anyone else, but we solve our problems without the comfort or help of imaginary beings such as angels, ghosts, gods, fairies, or even chupacabras.

Such statements seem to be more about affirming atheists in their non-belief and promoting antagonism towards the religious, rather than outreach or recruiting allies or giving people community support alternative to the established religious communities. Perhaps their are other forms of outreach, though, that Tamayo and other atheists are using to reach Hispanics and, as the conference commentator put it, "unlock the demographics."

"Unlocking the demographics" has brought about a lot of interest in Hispanics, recently, political and religious. A number of Catholics have been talking about Latin American immigration as a source of possible spiritual renewal. Political conservatives have speculated that "mass immigration" could save social conservatism in America.

The most interesting comparison for atheists wanting to reach Hispanics, however, might be Pentecostals.

It strikes me, at least, that American Hispanics joining Pentecostal churches can face similar serious opposition from friends and family, of the same sort that Tamayo describes. These matters of faith are matters of communal rupture. In addition to the questions of specific beliefs and practices, it can be issues of community and support and connection that are decisive in such conversions or de-conversions.

Arlene Sánchez-Walsh, for example, a professor at Azusa Pacific University, writes that for many, becoming Pentecostal means a life of tension with fathers and mothers, siblings, aunts and uncles. Of herself, she writes:

I was born and raised Catholic, and you can ask just about anyone who made this sojourn to Pentecostalism, whether through a dramatic Damascus-like narrative, or, like me, through a painful year-long process of searching, it is, as my colleague Fr. Allen Figueroa Deck has written, "a familial rupture" that separates you from the weddings, funerals, quinceaneras, and family get togethers that have marked our lives for years. Where, if they are anything like the family gatherings I have had -– the dancing, drinking, and partying is part of the package. As my colleague tells me, once the music played at the weddings, his Pentecostal mom took her kids and left–before all the craziness ensnared her impressionable young boys. Well I don’t know anything of that high-tension piety, I don’t know what its like to have one’s faith played out on that field -- and perhaps one reason why I study this community, is because I am trying to understand how my community lives, how it worships, and if I ever will cross over from the feeling I have had for nearly 20 years, that I am an interloper.

One of the ways Pentecostal churches help Hispanics maintain the decision they've made, despite family and social pressures, is a steady flow of anti-Catholicism. A sustained fusillade against the church, its teachings and practices, works to counteract or at least tempter the tolerance new converts might otherwise have for the validity of family members' faith. Promoting antagonism -- such as public displays of disapproval like leaving a party when the dancing starts -- is one strategy. Another, though, is exactly what Tamayo was talking about at the conference of atheists, Easter weekend.

At least one of the ways Pentecostalism has helped converts maintain the decision they've made is to offer alternatives to the communities they've known.

A third-generation Pentecostal woman (who's now pursuing a degree in the sociology of religion) writes, for example, of how her whole life, growing up, was wrapped up in her church. Erica Ramirez writes:

I spent my adolescence at Westover Hills Assembly of God, in the Northwest side of San Antonio, completely immersed in the life of the community there. I sang in the choir and was part of the youth group. I went to camps and conventions because I wanted to. I imagined there: I imagined myself whole, I imagined the world meaningful; I envisioned a future for myself that replicated the most healing experiences I have had in my life -- I would lead worship I would help people. It was simplistic, but it was a safe space to be, emotionally. I could remake myself in the space of that church and people would, people did help me.

It's this sort of social reality, and especially the attendant personal imaginaries, that Tamayo is saying would have to be replaced by freethinking associations in order for Hispanics who are actually (he says) already skeptical of religious claims and supernatural stuff, to be freed from what they don't believe.

"There isn't anything a church can do that a secular organization can't do," Tamayo told the Virginia newspaper.

It's not clear to me that, strictly sociologically speaking, that's true. But it does seem right that if your goal is to de-convert American Hispanics and liberate them from the "comfort or help of imaginary beings,"talking about the existence of supernatural realities may be less important than offering social replacements for baptisms, confirmations, funerals, feast days, family prayers, and all the other ritual, social ways in which beliefs are communal realities.

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'We have to forgive him'

Lu Lobello, a former Marine who was involved in the killing of three civilians in the early days of the war in Iraq, approached the family, now American immigrants, asking for forgiveness.

The family is Jehovah's Witness.

As recalled by the journalist who reported the story, that made a difference:

"She spoke and she said, 'We want to help him.' [...]

"One of the oddities in the story, and there are so many, and I'm really -- I'm not sure what it means -- but they're Christian, for one thing, which makes them a minority in Iraq. Something like two percent of the population or probably a lot less now because so many have left. And they're Jehovah's Witnesses, and they're very religious, and I get -- certainly as anyone would be after something like this, but, it was just, every time I asked them about forgiving Lu or what had happened or how they feel about it or why are they not bitter, because they're not, they kind of of -- they would just default immediately to the Bible or they would start talking about religion and God and forgiveness.

"It was really amazing.

"I mean, you could just see the power of religion at a really really micro level. I mean, they, you know, believe deeply in their religion. And they said, she said, over and over again, we have to forgive him, you know, this is what God commands us to forgive. He's forgiven us and we have to forgive. We must.

"And there was no doubt in their mind about that."

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German prayers in America

Meeting notes taken in the late 1930s -- that seems to be the very last remnant of the German language in the history of the German United Evangelical Synod of the North America.

Everything official was in English, at that point. There was just one last meeting where one old churchman kept notes in German.

There is no German United Evangelical Synod of North America today. The church joined with the Reformed Church -- itself formerly the German Reformed Church -- in 1934. Then that church, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, joined with the Congregational Churches in 1957 to become the United Church of Christ. Even before that series of ecumenical mergers, though, what was once an immigrant church with a strong ethnic, "Old World" identity had accommodated and assimilated, jettisoning its Germanness, according to History of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, over the course of about 90 years.

That story is the story of immigrant assimilation in America.

The church began in St. Louis in the 1840s, a collection of immigrant congregations that defined themselves in opposition to the area's "ultra-Lutherans." These congregations adhered to the Heidelberg Catechism. The new church called itself a verein -- a union or an association -- and had a strong ethnic identity. Thought it existed only in the American Midwest, it formed with a German name: Der Deutche Evangelische Kirchenverein des Westens. After about 30 years, the church officially translated its name into English, re-christening itself in the late 1870s as the German United Evangelical Synod of North America.

Not quite two decades after that, in the 1890s, the church took the next major step in assimilation, following a course that was, by then, fairly well defined by other religious groups transplanted from Europe to North America: Sunday School curricula was switched to English. 

The catechism was put in English, then the church's hymnal, then, soon, the entire church was functioning in English, and the only remnant of the original language was those synod meeting notes, kept in German long after anyone needed them to be German.

Other groups were pressured to make the transition into English by war. Some Dutch Reformed churches faced serious social pressure to assimilate during World War I, for example. As James D. Bratt notes in Dutch Calvinism in Modern America, Christian Reformed Churches that continued preaching and praying in Dutch elicited outrage from "American neighbors unable to distinguish between 'Dutch' and 'Deutsch.'" Several Midwestern states actually passed laws prohibiting churches from holding services in any "foreign" language, unless full English translations had been given prior approval by the state legislature.

For the Kirschenverein, though, it wasn't nativists and nationalism behind the push to translate the church into English. It was religious competition. The big concern for the German United Evangelical Synod of the North America in the last decade of the 19th century: Lutherans.

The Lutherans had all their services in English at the time, and the Evangelical Synod leaders heard horror stories of youth across the Midwest abandoning the faith of their fathers and mothers for English-language Lutheranism.

It's a curious moment. A kind of tipping point for an immigrant community: there came a moment in the 1890s where, for a younger generation of German-Americans, churches they'd never attended more familiar, more inviting and less strange than the churches they'd grown up in, because of the issue of language.

The "religious marketplace" pushed the Evangelical Synod to adapt to America, in a sense, and so, about 50 years after it began, the immigrant church shed its immigrant language. For the sake of maintaining a connection to children and grandchildren. And 40 years after that, on the eve of the Second World War, the last remnant of the original language of the church was scribbled in synod meeting notes, and then was no more.

The Evangelical Synod was the last major German church to jettison its immigrant identity, one aspect of which was its language. By the time of the First World War, when Dutch pastors were finding their homes graffitied in "paint raids" with slogans such as "Be an American" and "Buy a Liberty Bond," the once-German churches in the American Midwest didn't really seem German anymore.

That wasn't the end of German-language worship in America, though. There are some small pockets of resistance to assimilation, and also ways in which assimilation has come to include, rather than exclude German-language prayer and worship. Assimilation, being what it is, doesn't seem to ever mean the total erasure of immigrant history. Instead there's a often kind of submersion, where "identity" becomes "heritage," which is another sort of identity.

It's accessible -- for what gets called, in cultural studies, "projects of the self" -- in part through the persistence of  culture tourism and "heritage" consumer products.

For German-Americans, this means "German villages" in California and Georgia, an annual "Wurstfest in Texas, and companies selling imported German food, German-style windows (made in America), and "authentic German garden gnomes."

In the back of one the last remaining German-language papers in the United States, Troy, Michigan's Nordamerikanische Wochen-Post, one can find four listing for German-language church services:

1. A Catholic Church in Detroit, St. Joseph's, where one can find "Feierliches Deutsches Hochamt mit geistlichem Gesang von deutschem Quartet (Die Minnesänger) an jedem vierten Sonntag des Monats um 10:30 Uhr morgen," "A solemn German high mass with spiritual singing from the German quartet (The Minstrals) on every fourth Sunday of the month at 10:30 a.m.," as well as a weekly German-language novena.
2. St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Warren, Michigan, which has a bilingual, German-English service every Sunday at 10 a.m., according to the Wochen-Post.
3. Gemeinde Gottes -- of a very small, strict Holiness denomination -- in Swartz Creek, Michigan, which seems to have retained German not as a preservation of heritage but as one way of maintaining a distinction from the surrounding culture and the churches deemed "apostate." They have a weekly "Bibel- und Gebetstunde" "Bible and prayer hour" in German, and a German-language service three Sunday evenings a month.
4. Benediction Lutheran Church, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they hold one German-language service a month, "normalerweise" on the third Sunday of the month at 2 p.m.

Just as German-language prayers ended in the 1890s as a way for parents to maintain a connection with their children and grandchildren, German-language prayers continue today, in various ways, as a means of retaining continuity with generations past.

There's been a strong trend away from "denominational histories," in recent years. One doesn't have to dig too deep into the records of various denominations and religious traditions, though, to find all sorts of interesting, enlightening aspects of American history, and "the American experience." Church history becomes immigration history becomes war-time conflict or generational relationships, becomes the religious marketplace, becomes identity formation.

The end of German-language prayers in America becomes -- curiously -- German-language prayers offered again, every third Sunday or with a special deutschem Quartet

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