Church Services

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In his celebrated history The Reformation, Diarmaid MacCulloch explains why the very conception of Christianity in the west differs from that of the east. He explains why his study of Christian thought and attitudes in the west does not include the Orthodox Church: "There is a simple reason for this: so far, the Orthodox churches have not experienced a Reformation."

It is hard to over-emphasize how difficult it is for Christians in the western world to understand how Orthodox Christians view themselves. What it means to be "Catholic" is impossible to understand without the opposite category of "Protestant," and vice versa. Christians in America see themselves as members of "denominations" or groups defined against or with relationship to each other. Our very idea of "pluralism," as it applies to Christianity, implies that we are divided into separate categories.

Orthodox Christians, who come originally from that half of Christianity outside the western European world, have a very different notion of themselves. We exist in direct continuity with the earliest ages of our church: imagine a Christian world without an anxiety about its legitimacy, its identity, its origin. Orthodox Christians focus upon their unbroken continuity with the earliest churches of the east, centered in the cities of the ancient Christian world.

 What Orthodox Christians believe, it can be affirmed by scholars and simple believers alike, is what all Christians at one time believed. When (as the Orthodox see it) Christians in the west decided to define themselves as the independent "standard" of Christian truth, they set the stage for subsequent divisions and competing claims. The Orthodox Church believes in the same seven Ecumenical Councils which, at one time in its history, the entire Christian church accepted as the standard of truth. We have defined no "new truth" on our own since the time at which the Church was one, and we pray at every service for a renewal of that unity.

Orthodox Christians, then, do not see themselves as a "sect" or a "branch" or a "denomination." Our modest parish of the Holy Ghost in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, may appear to be a quaint or ethnic phenomenon, a part of a legion of churches. Even within the family of Orthodoxy, Americans may be tempted to see us as a host of "ethnic" churches – Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, and so forth. But our parish sees itself to be the continuation of the same, solid, original, unbroken practice of Christianity from the earliest ages of the church. Our service, or "liturgy" as we call it, was formulated in the fifth century of the Christian era. The Gospel we proclaim and the books of the Scriptures we celebrate were proclaimed and celebrated long before the "Bible" became understood as a single book, bound in black and treated as an object of dispute and argument over interpretation.

We do not "proselytize" in the sense that we try to draw people, with rhetoric and argument, into our ranks. We place the emphasis, rather, on trying to sanctify the meter of ground on which we stand and welcoming others in the bond of love. As one of our great theologians, Sergius Bulgakov, once said, Christ did not try to persuade by argument and compulsion; rather, he attracted others by the spell of his love and inclusion.

In our own community, as in other Orthodox parishes, we try to live in continuity with that early Church. We celebrate the love of Christ in our living, in our worship, and in our relationship with each other.

Our services are sung, not spoken or proclaimed. We follow a ritual which has nurtured our community throughout the ages. We were once made up primarily of immigrants from west Ukraine. Now we are made up of descendants of those immigrants, but also of Orthodox descended from other parts of the world; and also more and more of us are made up of those who have been attracted to the faith and have, as see it, "returned" to the ancient sources of the Christian faith.

Visitors are welcome, always, to join us in our worship. We are a closely knit family of believers, and we try to not exude a sense of exclusion. We do not, like some of the "mega churches" in our midst, seek to provide a sense of media-borne entertainment and an atmosphere of "consumer driven" Christianity. We are, as has been explained, in continuity with the ancient Church. We do not "choose" this faith as if it were a market-driven option. Rather, the faith chooses us, shapes us, guides us. We are its unworthy and very imperfect vessels.

Our services are in English. We are American. We believe the Orthodox Church throughout the world, while it proclaims the same faith, wears the "dress" of its own culture and its own art and its own language. We are fully integrated into our community and we feel a union with and responsibility to our city and our nation. If you want to experience the Christian faith before it became a matter of division and a "tension of opposites," please come and join us on any Sunday or at any service announced in our bulletin on this web site.  

With the love of Christ,
Father Anthony Ugolnik