Brendan--
I think we've covered the white vs non-white cultural issue well enough. I understand your views and why you have them--my concern is that an overemphasis on that issue can push it over into an obsessive concern to preserve White culture (which has alternated from paganism to Christianity to paganism again) over preserving Christianity.
"White" culture would never have progressed from the druidism, forest deities and wiccan sacrifices if Christians had not evangelized them. An African Christian once told me that in his country (Kenya) the tribes who were progressive were the ones who were Christian, freed from tribal devils and juju men. By contrast, when the very civilized Germans dumped Christianity in the 20th century in favor of a return to Wotan and Valhalla to preserve their Germanness, they turned into war-mongering Nazis. In doing so, instead of preserving their German culture, they coldly murdered other peoples, murdered physically and mental handicapped Germans (in pursuit of a perfect race), and brought wholesale destruction upon themselves, losing 1/3 of their own male population in a totally unnecessary war. The Japanese did the same thing, enslaving Koreans, exterminating Chinese, and miserably maltreating our POWs because they assumed Europeans to be an inferior race (because they dared to surrender). Race is just another form of tribalism, just like the kind that rules the eternally war-torn places like Afghanistan, but Christianity is not tribalism, but available to anyone who believes in Christ.
As for myself, I enjoy seeing other peoples and cultures around me who manage to get along and respect each other. In my town we may be finally learning to be neighbors, which is so much better than what I grew up with. The town I grew up in (just across the river from where I live now) was very segregated and remains so. The townsfolk still talk about the innocent black man who was lynched and burned in the town's square. The grease spot was cleaned up after church the next day. Our area barely managed to escape race riots in the 1960's, perhaps because of the vivid memories of the really awful one in 1917 where armed white folks arrived in truckloads and shot anything that moved, including children fleeing burning houses. I've seen the pictures of refugees fleeing across the bridge from their burning city from that time. It looked like a war was going on. This same city later became all black because of white flight, any whites left in the area were hounded out by the blacks. All attempts at school integration failed in the first two days of school as white kids were beaten up getting off the bus. The whole area for miles around has long suffered psychologically and economically because of racism from both sides. I can see why there is the fear and the hate on both sides. But I'm really fed up with white power and black power--these have gotten us nowhere but in a stinking mire of hate. ENOUGH is ENOUGH.
There is no solution to this tribalism and racism but Christianity which has nothing to do with either. Why don't we focus this discussion on how to evangelize with Christianity, specifically Orthodoxy? How to make the Church strong again? The problem is White people are becoming agnostics or Druidic pagans or turning to Islam or other Eastern religions; the original Christian theology of black churches is being replaced by Afro-centrisms and they are also being invaded by Islam; other races and ethnic groups in America are spiritually drifting back to tribalism, too. Everyone is reverting in some way to tribalism. Let's not add to the mess, but instead offer a real solution in Christianity, which would give all these lost souls, whatever their race or tribe, a common and overarching identity within the Church.
