I categorically reject that my personal life in Christ is incompatible with fighting for proper forms to communicate that life to those around me. I also categorically reject that it is someone else’s business. (Perhaps you are bound by an unconscious clericalism?) The task belongs to everyone, not just religious professionals.

The problem is that the problem is not at all restricted to words (or how they are pronounced). The whole issue is distinguishing betweeen what is essential to the Gospel and what is inessential, ethnic, external form in Orthodoxy’s strangeness. The more we shrug and just live with the strangeness, the less we are able to understand how strange visitors find it. I will continue to fight for an authentic American expression of Orthodoxy.

And part of that means pronouncing words and names in a way that doesn’t strike people as strange. (Here’s a hint: evangelicals, who centuries ago forgot how they’re pronounced anyway, are not the canon against which I’m measuring this; they’ll think it’s all strange, whether it’s Orthodox, Catholic or Anglican.)

No offense ment. Like I said…take it for what it’s worth.

Praise God, also, that Ss. Cyril and Methodius didn’t wait until they were free from all sin to create the Cyrillic alphabet and translate the faith into Slavonic. Thank God they continued to repent as they were making the choices that eventually led to you and I being Orthodox.

Praise God, also, that St. Paul did not wait until he was free from sin to take Christ to the Roman Empire. Thank God he and his companions continued to repent as they preached the good news of our salvation to the Greco-Latin world.

You imply a false dilemma between repentance and having strong opinions about how to translate Christianity in a post-Christian cultural context. I reject your false dilemma; I will continue to repent and hope for a recognition that English-speaking culture has been Christian since Ss. Columban, Patrick, Caedmon, Kevin, Bede and Augustine first preached Christianity to the Isles.

I had been Orthodox for less than a year and I was having lunch with a Priest during a lenten period. I ordered a salad with Ranch dressing. Later, when I remembered that I should be fasting from dairy I said, “Forgive me Father. I am eating dairy.” (paraphrased) Father’s respose was, “Praise God that you have so few sins that you can worry about what dressing you are eating on your salad.” (again paraphrased)

Take it for what it’s worth.

The argument that one pronunciation of Theotokos is better than the other is a difficult one for me. I have a similar struggle when thinking about how to label icons. If you use the Greek (or in the case of icons, the typical abbreviation) you can speak to all Orthodox. If you use English, you speak to a particular people and perhaps make it more comprehensible to non-Orthodox English speakers. (I suppose I should be more specific lest you think I’m saying don’t translate. I believe in using English in icons for here in Ky, but struggle with the well-known abbreviations for the Theotokos and Christ.) At some point words are translated or acquired and become part of the language and culture. In the case of Theotokos, Basil has made a good case for the Anglicized pronunciation that has been around for a while. One big point in its favor is that it makes English more consistent, not less. We need all the help we can get.

Correct pronunication of terms such at Theotokos etc. seem irrelevant in a context where, for example, the word “idea” is pronounced identically to the word “ideal” and vocabulary is culturally very limited to begin with, where the written word, when it is phonetically pronounced does not communicate that which it ought because of a vast difference between standard Enlish and the local dialect.

Your insistence on standard Enlish really seems like a moot point. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on this angle.

We also don’t want Orthodoxy simply to become a faith of the intelligenzia, well-educated, etc. The question I walked out of my tutoring session with was: How to catechize a down home Appalachian Kentucky native Baptist without her really knowing it? We DID discuss the Bible. It was a good time.

I think part of the answer has got to do with loving persons, and being involved in their lives, no matter what our ever-morhphing language sounds like.

Pronunciation, like spelling and meaning, are prescriptive and descriptive. Different dictionary publishers tend towards one or the other. Merriam Webster tends more toward description than prescription. Oxford English Dictionary and American Heritage tend more toward prescription.

Why do some people mispronounce “theology,” “Zaccheus,” and “Arimithea”? Because they learned it that way from others who were mispronouncing them. Were I in Russia or Greece (or any other land where another language is spoken), I would endeavor to pronounce their words the way they pronounce them. I am only asking the same.

But perhaps you’re right. I’ll just pronounce words the way I want; to hell with what others think of me. Were I to do that, I would be viewed as strange and eccentric at best; at worst, I would be ignored by everyone else as an idiot. If a community takes the same stance, the surrounding society will respond the same way. I really don’t care of some odd sect does that, but it really bothers me if the Church does that while also chanting, “We have seen the true light; we have found the true faith.”