Friday, August 03, 2007

East Coast/West Coast differences

Now that I've been to three different churches here on the East Coast, I have noticed a few differences between these services and the ones at the two churches I used to frequent back West.

1) They really do morning services here- this is the service that happens before Badarak. One of my churches didn't do morning service AT ALL, and the other did it kind of quietly, and finished and had a pause before they went into Badarak.

2) At the beginning of the Badarak, the priest walks around the sanctuary with the little cross handkerchief for everyone to kiss. I had no idea what this was the first time I saw it.

3) Way more English. All the sermons are in English. I think that is because in the particular areas where I have gone to church, there aren't very many new immigrants. Maybe there are some who are my mom's age and came over in the late 1960s, but I am not sure if there are any people like my friend out in California, who came over from Baghdad three years ago. I know that there are a lot of Armenians who have come to the US from Armenia and other former Soviet republics, but I don't think they are settling in Boston. I know the Nashville Armenian community has a number of these new immigrants, as does Glendale. Even when I was teaching my undergrads, the Armenian students I had, who were 18, 19 years old, were mostly born overseas and came over to the US as children. The use of English is a welcome difference for me, since I barely speak any Armenian at all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

#2-that's apart of the Liturgy (Badarak) and should be done in every Armenian Orthodox Church..

Anonymous said...

what type of church do you go to, prelacy or diocese church?

Anoushig said...

I've been going to diocese churches.

Neither of the churches that I went to in California did #2, though, so it wasn't just one rogue church! I am wondering if not doing it is a Western Diocese thing.

Now that I am thinking about it, I can think of a third Eastern Diocese church that didn't do it either... but I am not 100% certain because I may have gotten there a couple minutes late and missed it- I don't think so, though.