This article on religion features Cathedral parishioner Christopher Orr and his conversion to Orthodoxy.

4.15.2008 In Search of Faith

By Lauren Johnston, AM New York, April 14, 2008



Amen. Shalom. Salaam Alaikum. Namaste.

If you're like a lot of young New Yorkers, more than one of these salutations appears in your religious lexicon. After all, the city offers a buffet of faiths from around the world and plenty of opportunity to sample different doctrines, or even mix them up."

It's like going to Starbuck's and how many variations of a café latte can you get," said Michael Plekon, an Eastern Orthodox priest and sociology professor at Baruch College.

And so, the conventional wisdom goes, in an era of instant gratification and cyberfame, the result is a bunch of "cafeteria-Catholics," "Christmas-Easter Christians" and various other sects of the fair-weather faithful who swap religions as
casually as they "friend" people on Facebook.

Thus, it may come as a surprise to find that for many seekers, their quest is part of a serious journey to find some deeper truth and meaning. As part of our look at the various strands of religion in the city, amNY spoke to a group of young New Yorkers who have followed their own spiritual quests.

A LIVING TRADITION

"More and more, we see how complicated religious life is," said Rev. Mary Foulke, a pastor at The Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village and professor at the General Theological Seminary. "People don't usually practice just one religion. There are lots of things that
inform people's spiritual lives."

Critics may call this practice "religion-on-demand," but Plekon sees it as simply the continuation of history and says there have always been adaptations of religious traditions. "That's why we call them living traditions," he said."

The fact that they are switching doesn't necessarily mean they will leave churches in the future, but I think it will mean we will see a lot more experimentation," Plekon said.

That's the case for 24-year-old Darby Parsons, a religion student in Vermont, who says that she, and many of her classmates, are now looking inward, trying to find a tradition that jibes with their moral beliefs."

For this generation, with the diversification of everything … it's much more of an open possibility for kids to switch from their cultural roots," she said.

What informs the quest for many Gen Yers is a search for the authority and discipline of religious truth. These are not journeys taken lightly and many have spent years combing through various strands of religious faith to find a truth that seems to them both logical and
honest.

Take Rabbi Dov Yona Korn. Today he wears the traditional long beard of an Orthodox Jew and heads the Chabad House at New York University – but about a decade ago he had a full head of dreadlocks and was more devoted to the Grateful Dead than the Torah."

I was Jewish – OK, Woody Allen, bagels, lox and cream cheese, but it wasn't as if I was going to make a major move in my life because of my Jewishness," said Korn, 29.

Raised "even less than reform," he certainly never expected to become a rabbi, but he was far from apathetic about faith. Judaism just didn't speak to him. So, at 15 he decided to find a religion that did. He left home, quit school and hit the road."

I wasn't engaged. I don't think most of the students with me in Hebrew school were. It was more, we had Jewish parents we might as well go to the synagogue," he said.

Unexpectedly, Korn's religious expedition ended where it began.

After living for a few years as a spiritual vagabond traveling cross-country to study Buddhism, Hinduism, Rastafarianism, Christianity and follow Jerry Garcia, he came full circle to dedicate his life to Judaism after spending a "mind-blowing" week in yeshiva, studying the Talmud and
exploring Jewish mysticism."

The fact that I actually accepted it on my own, for me was very special. I actually found something that I was really ready to agree with whole-heartedly," he said.


FINDING NEW TRUTHS

For other seekers, the expedition leads to a faith other than the one in which they were raised. A study released earlier this year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that more than 25 % of American
adults have left the religion they grew up with for another religion, or no particular religion at all.

The number jumps to 44% when you include those who have swapped one Protestant denomination for another or moved from being unaffiliated to following a faith.

Christopher Orr, 33, for example, wrestled for five years with his decision, finally, to convert from Lutheranism to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Back in Wisconsin, Orr's family went to church every Sunday. He attended parochial school and even considered going to seminary. "I was really happy in my Lutheran faith, I believed it," he said.

He remained strictly observant and active into his 20s – finding ways to worship even as his career path changed and the pursuit of an acting career led him first to Los Angeles and later New York.

Then came the triggers that jarred his devotion: extensive reading of 19th-century theology and history that raised questions regarding the tenets of his faith and a falling out with some friends in his Lutheran circle.

Orr, who now works as an executive recruiter, had long been interested in Russian history and literature, which led him to the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection, an Eastern Orthodox church in the East Village.
Within its walls he found something beautiful and pure that touched him immediately."

I started to go to as many services as I could and ask as many questions and read as much as I could," he said. He was formally received into the faith in January 2001."

It's not just smells and bells, there's really an organic aspect to every part of Orthodox worship," he said. He attends church at least twice a week and sings in the choir.

Orr's decision to convert came only after deep and serious contemplation, but he notes it's not that way for everyone. He didn't mix and match religions along his path to adopt a new faith and sees some of the blending going on as a function of
American consumer culture, in other words, the Starbuck's effect."

My own personal perspective is that people tend to want to create God in their own image rather than have their image conformed to God," he said.

Paul Sireci, 26, who converted from Judaism to Buddhism has also taken a purist path in his effort to commit to an adopted religion. Sireci grew up in a house of mixed faiths. His father was Jewish and his mother
Catholic, though neither were really followers by the time he was born."

They raised my brother and I with Christmas, Easter and Chanukah and Pesach, but not much else in the way of religious observance," he said.

He converted to Buddhism at 16, and has practiced his faith for the past 10 years. "I've found it meaningful not to mix and match views or practices," he says. "In trying to reach water, I want to dig
one hole deeply rather than many shallow holes."

FOLLOWING THE RULES

Like Sireci, many of his peers find themselves rebelling against the lax adherence of their parents' "If it feels good, do it" generation. Instead, they are looking for some authority, some doctrine. They want
to follow the rules.

Paul Camurati, 21, and Dan McGirr, 22 met after each had just completed a spiritual journey that led them from the sidelines to the sanctified center stage of Catholicism. Both had
non-practicing parents. Camurati started off just barely Catholic while McGirr was raised an "agnostic/atheist in a non-church household."

Camurati, a senior at Cooper Union who grew up in Fresh Meadows, Queens, now goes to church several times a week, but as a kid, his family attended mass for Christmas services, if at all. By the ninth grade he'd become an atheist.

In 2004, when he was a senior in high school, Camurati's grandmother died and after several years of floating between atheism, agnosticism and deism, this sudden brush with mortality shook
him. He remembers thinking, "If you die, you better be able to explain if you believe in God and what you believe about God and why."

And so he turned to his Catholic roots. For a year he studied the teachings of varied religious scholars and philosophers."

I basically Wikipedia'd myself back into Catholicism," he said, but not without grappling over some of its more contentious practices, like the exclusion of women in the clergy and rules against contraception. But
he believes commitment to faith needn't be blind.

"One of the things about my faith that I really love is that I'm always questioning it. It forces me to purify what I believe and makes me answer for it all the time," he said.

McGirr just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. He'd grown up with no religious teaching. An idea of God was never part of his worldview. But he had friends who were Catholic and after he began college at New York University, thought he
should learn more about it. So he started reading: the Bible, the Quran and the Catholic Catechism.

McGirr was drawn to the authority behind the Catholic teachings and the connection it offers him to other human beings: his obligation to love others as laid out in the Christian scripture."

Before I believed in God, I could tell you I believed certain things were wrong, the basic stuff like murder and theft … I knew it was wrong, I had a rationale, but without believing
in God and a sense of power, there's no authority behind that," he said."

It never occurred to me when I started that I would end up believing," he said. But as he studied, he says it became more difficult not to believe in God. "A lot of the atheistic arguments I
assumed would hold up didn't."

SERIOUSLY SPIRITUAL

And then there are those followers who are just the opposite of Camurati and McGirr. Those who were raised to believe and then dropped faith, a decision that can be just as difficult as conversion.

This is Jared Stanfield's story. He is "spiritual," a state he's reached after deep contemplation.

Stanfield, 25, who now lives in Williamsburg, was raised Baptist in South Carolina until the sixth grade, when his mother decided the family needed more "spiritual fulfillment," and converted them to Catholicism. His parents
had just divorced, and at the time the church was a source of stability. "I really needed that sort of structure in my life," he said. "I really felt like I belonged to nothing."

When he hit high school and realized he was gay, that sense of belonging evaporated. He tried desperately to follow the church and when he
couldn't, thought about suicide.

"I prayed to God every single night to make me straight … I dated girls -- that's what I was supposed to do and it was what God approved of," he said. Then, at 18, he moved
to New York and things changed again.

"I realized for the first time in my life it was OK for people to be different, so then I started to question what I really believed in," he said. The end result of that soul-searching was his decision that he didn't need organized religion.

"Because of religion, I had loathed myself for years," he said. But, he says, he still believes in a higher power. "To say I am spiritual means that I accept everyone for who they are and for what they believe in. I will
never condemn anyone, because they are my brother and my sister and we are all connected."

That conviction has led him to explore Buddhism. It's a path he's just beginning.

RELIGION IS IN

These stories craft a portrait of a vibrant faith in New York City. One full of young people with questions seeking to understand and connect with the world they live in through the lens of faith. Religion is in.

"I don't see us being in some kind of crisis of faithlessness or loss of faith," said Plekon. "I see that what we are struggling to do is to find ways in which to live a good life, to be able to find a way of
being at peace with one another and with the environment around us on our own terms and according to our own experience."

Copyright © 2008, AM New York

The Cathedral’s Andronoff Library now has a special section of over 300 titles of Georgian language books. David Ninoshvili and Gorda Sanikidze working with staff at the Georgian Mission at the UN began this initiative. The books were all donated to us and shipped from Georgia several weeks ago. Since we did not have adequate shelf space for the collection, Dr. Zurab Mosashvili volunteered to build new shelving, which was completed last week. His daughter, Natia Mosashvili, donated the material for the shelving. So we are very pleased to open a new section of Georgian language books for your reference and use.

The Andronoff Library has over 1,000 volume, including works in Russian, Romanian.


Who Was Archdeacon Vsevolod Andronoff?

The Very Reverend Archdeacon Vsevolod (Andronoff) (né Vladimir Andronoff, 1877-1953) was the cathedral deacon for the ruling hierarch of the Russian Mission in the United States from 1907 to 1926 and then again from 1945 until his death in 1953. He was noted for his Christ-like charity, humility, and kindness.

Vsevolod was born on July 13, 1877, into a churchly family in the town of Zhizdra in the province of Kaluga in Russia, being given the name Vladimir. Showing a preference for a life of service to Christ and His Church, young Vladimir entered the community of St Nicholas Monastery in Orlovsk Province, near the town of Karachev in 1893. Noticing Vladimir's talent for music, the igumen assigned him to sing in the monastery choir. While at the monastery, he also was trained in bell ringing which at Russian monasteries was a specific art.

In 1901, he left St. Nicholas Monastery to visit other monasteries in Russia, eventually entering the Znamenny Monastery in Kursk. There, on September 3, 1901, he was tonsured a monk with the name Vsevolod. On November 26, 1901, he was ordained a hierodeacon.

In 1907, as he was departing for the United States to become the ruling bishop of the Russian Mission, Archbishop Platon (Rozhdestvensky) invited Fr. Vsevolod to become the cathedral deacon at St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City. Fr. Vsevolod served in this position until 1926 when the cathedral was lost to the mission following disputes arising after the Bolshevik takeover in Russia. During the next two decades, Archdeacon Vsevolod served in many different parishes, as psalomschik, choir director, and deacon as was needed. On April 25, 1945, Archdeacon Vsevolod again returned to his position as cathedral deacon, this time at Holy Virgin Protection Cathedral in New York City on the lower east side of Manhattan.

In 1931, at the request of Harvard University the bells of Danilovsky Monastery were first rung in the US by Fr. Vsevolod who went to Cambridge, practiced, and delivered a half-hour recital on Easter Sunday. One of a very few sets of bells that survived the Stalinist era, dated from the 17th century, they were acquired by the university in 1930.

Archdeacon Vsevolod was known by all for his gentle and indulgent demeanor toward every human being. He was never heard to say a word of criticism, blame, or judgment against anyone. While of modest means, which he earned by singing in concert choirs, he contributed for the material relief of Russian refugees in Europe and South America, often not knowing where his contributions were being sent. He helped many immigrant Russians by arranging and paying for their transportation, sending affidavits, and initially supporting them after their arrival in the United States.

After a long and painful illness, Archdeacon Vsevolod fell asleep in the Lord on October 19, 1953, in New York City. He is buried at St. Tikhon's Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, next to Metropolitan Platon.