Orthodox Biz Blog

A few years back, I had the opportunity to deliver my standard presentation on Jihad to a Greek Orthodox Sunday school class. Towards the end of the presentation, I started fielding questions. A few of the ladies in the class were really interested in the role of the Middle East in fulfilling Biblical prophecy. I was taken aback by the questions. I knew the ladies were cradle Orthodox, but the tone and content of the questions betrayed both a knowledge of, and a belief in, the Dispensationalist view of the ‘End Times.'

I pointed this out, and dug into the source of these questions. Turns out these ladies, along with a bunch of others in the parish, had been reading the Left Behind series of books. They had no idea what the Orthodox Church taught about the end of the world, and, in fact, were surprised that Orthodox Theology actually opposes most of what they had managed to learn from these works of fiction.

Early in October 2007 a co-worker of mine was putting up a poster for a local Christian film festival. He's a part-time youth pastor at a Presbyterian Church. I stopped by to ask about it, and he told me that he was taking his whole youth group to several of the movies.

He tapped the picture ad for one of them in particular and said, "We really want to see this one." The ad was for Facing the Giants , a high-school football movie shot by an Evangelical Church in Albany, Georgia. It was released a couple of years ago, and was soundly panned by the critics, even within the Evangelical community, as an amateurish and clumsy attempt at film making.

Curious, I asked, "Haven't you already seen this one?"

"Sure," he replied, "A couple of times, but the kids love it."

"It's not very Presbyterian, is it?" I asked. Having seen the movie, I knew first hand that the tone and implied Theology of the film would be somewhat at odds with the way traditional Presbyterians did Church.

"Maybe not, but it's a good story," he answered.

The Invisible Orthodox

What these two little vignettes from my own life illustrate is the power of fiction. Good stories, or even bad ones that come along at the right time, can have an immense impact on people. They can teach them and transform them in ways that even the best non-fiction book or documentary just can't manage.

Your vision of Hell owes way more to Dante's Divine Comedy than to any Orthodox literature you've ever read. Millions more people learned the basic Christian story from C.S. Lewis' Aslan the lion, than will ever read Mere Christianity.

On the darker side, Anne Rice created a cult of the undead through her novels that has made paganism and the occult chic among our youth.

Among the examples of fiction influencing secular politics, Scotland demanded the revival of its own Parliament after the movie Braveheart caused an upsurge in Scottish patriotism.

Fiction transforms and shapes viewpoints. Fiction transcends boundaries between people. Fiction builds bridges among different segments of society. Fiction mainstreams and normalizes by making other communities into real people, rather than abstract concepts.

This shouldn't really be a surprise for Orthodox Christians, considering the reach and influence of Orthodox novelists like Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. These two Russian writers rank among the top ten novelists of all time. One was devoutly Orthodox, the other profoundly influenced by Orthodoxy while only reconciling with the formal church when close to death.

But somehow, the power of a good story seems totally lost on the Orthodox community in the United States. Well, either lost or ignored. I'm not sure which.

Why do I say this? Because all of our resources are poured into non-fiction. Check out a catalog from an Orthodox press. It will be page after page of commentaries on the scriptures, on church history, on the lives of various saints, on Theology, etc. You might have some mention of fiction, but it will always be a review or critique of an actual work, such all the anti-Da Vinci Code material that sprang forth a few years back. (I'm not defending Dan Brown, by the way, I bashed that work myself.)

Turn to the online world, and what do you get? Website after website dedicated to the same material.

But wait - even more of the same is on the way. The advance of technology is making it easier and easier to produce high quality podcasts and even video programs. So now, we will have even more options for hearing priests, Theologians, and college professors sit in front of microphones and discuss Orthodox Theology, church history, the lives of saints, the holy scriptures, etc.

The net result of all this is easily forseeable. The Orthodox will continue to not make so much as a ripple in the collective consciousness of the United States.

We have been ignored. We are ignored. We will be ignored.

But this cuts deeper than just not winning converts, or even respect, among the wider populace of the United States. Our current media strategy is also a recipe for continuing to lose our own Orthodox youth.

Orthodox young people are eager to see themselves reflected in media, to feel normal, to have role models that are just like them. The Evangelicals have figured this out, and are providing their young with just that experience. Hence the movies, film festivals, and a real effort to write and promote youth literature.

We Orthodox, on the other hand, wring our hands and wonder how to reach our own young people.

Well other people aren't having any trouble reaching our young people, are they?

Orthodox Media - More Expansively Defined

Part of the problem here, in my opinion, is a misdefinition of what constitutes Orthodox Media. The working definition of Orthodox Media seems to be drawn extremely narrowly at the present time to include only those materials which directly teach the Orthodox Faith. In other words, material that is non-fiction and explicitly educational in intent.

By this definition, of course, Brothers Karamozov or One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich wouldn't qualify. After all, one's only a novel about a patricide and the other a mere short story about a Soviet prisoner written by the greatest living Orthodox writer. But is such a restricted definition of Orthodox Media not completely self-defeating? Are we not, by foregoing the power of story-telling, simply guaranteeing that we will never reach a mass audience?

What is needed on the part of the Orthodox community in the United States is a dedication to breaking out of our current ghetto status through the power of media to tell our stories to Americans.

This has been done, and done successfully, by other minorities. Think about what the plays and books of Neil Simon have done for American Jews, for example. Because of such works as Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues, Jewish boys from Brooklyn have become positively mainstream.

Why can Jewish boys from Brooklyn go mainstream, but first-generation Russian immigrants can't?

Well they can, if someone manages to tell an interesting story about them that sells well enough to enter into the mainstream consciousness of our nation. Imagine what it would do for Orthodoxy in the United States if a good, solid, readable story deeply steeped in traditional Orthodox Christianity was topping the NYT best sellers' list and then made into a feature-length film?

Needed - A Commitment to Fiction

Within the Orthodox Christian community in the United States are film makers, artists, animators, writers, and publishers. What is needed is to mine that talent pool with a dedication to telling good, solid stories with Orthodox elements. Stories that can transcend our own ethnic and religious sphere, and cross-over into the American mainstream.

Given the new technology at our disposal, and the ever decreasing costs of bringing cultural product to market, it is well within our ability to do this. It isn't a question of talent or capabilities, it's a question of vision.

Don't mistake my intention. We shouldn't stop doing what we are already doing. We need catechism, and Bible studies, and the lives of saints. We need all that, but we need stories also.

So what to do? If you're a writer, then put Orthodox characters into your stories where appropriate, even if the book isn't ‘about' Orthodoxy. Greater exposure to Orthodox characters can help mainstream Orthodoxy in the American mind, and lays the groundwork for easier evangelism. If you write plays, do the same. If you make moves, do the same.

If you run an Orthodox ministry, or have the power of the purse at an Orthodox foundation, then consider programs to assist Orthodox writers in getting quality fiction to market. If you write Orthodox non-fiction already, consider doing a story instead of another non-fiction book next time. If you are a publisher, then look for quality fiction to bring to market.

If you are a consumer of media, then join with me to ask for quality fiction from our Orthodox publishers. Let them hear from you that you will buy a good story if they publish one. Where there is a demonstrated market, willing suppliers will show up, that's just the free market at work. And if it'll play with the Orthodox, why not in a broader space?

Once the American public has seen Orthodoxy, heard Orthodoxy, and gotten comfortable with Orthodoxy, then comes the time when the public is ready for books and programs on Orthodox Theology, church history, the saints, etc.

To sum the whole thing up, I'd like to leave you with a quote from an Orthodox teenager who said to me recently:

I'm sick and tired of people telling me about Orthodoxy! Couldn't somebody show me Orthodoxy instead?

Amen to that.

Glen Chancy is CIO for corfun.com and publisher of Orthodox Biz. You can contact him here .