on ethnicity.

I'm writing this down because somebody asked about this immediately after I got home from vespers, where we discussed this very thing [not polemically, though, in a different context].

One question that always toots my whistle is when people imply the Orthodox Church is geographically tied or in some way limited by its "ethnic" nature. The person implying this is invariably a WASP. A WASP who has probably heard his grandmother talking about how, growing up, the Lutheran parish she was in was still speaking German or Norwegian, and whose grandfather's Dutch Reformed Church was still speaking Dutch. Perhaps he's a Baptist now and hasn't registered the fact that black Baptists and white Baptists attend different churches. Some people simply don't reflect on history. This is how immigration works. You go to the city forty years ago, you find the Ukrainians are Orthodox, the Polish and Irish are Catholic, the Dutch are Reformed, the English are Episcopalian, and Norwegians are Lutheran. The Methodies pick up those who drop through the cracks and everybody's happy. Assimilation is a long and slow process. The Dutch have been here for over 100 years, whereas most of the Orthodox came at least one generation later. Now, granted, the Greek community is more cohesive for a variety of reasons than a lot of other immigrant communities, but it isn't too much to expect at least one extra generation before real assimilation. You know what causes assimilation? Conversion or marriage. Lack of assimilation can't be an argument against conversion, because that's the only way anything happens. WASPs beget WASPs and Greeks beget Greeks unless you jump in the works and mix it up.

Other news: so I got Marjorie's book in the mail. I read it quickly before vespers, it was quite fine. I'll drop her a line.

And: unfortunately, it has been deemed unsafe to walk home at night [even in pairs], so I have to wait for busses. I'm a tad annoyed. Apparently the armed robber even robbed somebody right by Snitchcock. Bah!