I'm american and my parents were converts so I don't think of myself as being particularly affiliated with any of the ethnic jurisdictions. I usually just find a parish where I like the people and the services are in english.
Often that's OCA (russian-tinged american) but in the past it has been serbian or greek. As you're probably aware it's all technically the same church so there's no barrier or ritual to changing. The differences are mostly just musical style and other aesthetic traditions.
Thanks, I don't really know the customs of the other Orthodox churches, but they are different organisations. I don't know them well, by any means. I'm reading about them on wikipedia:
Apparently there are six Oriental Orthodox churches that are all "autocephalous" (i.e. they do their own thing). I think the Russians and Serbians are closer to the Greek church in custom.
And btw, that's why I asked. The Orthodox Greek diaspora are probably the largest group of Orthodox Christians outside Russia, but I was just curious.
Somehow I also find it curious that your parents were converts to an Orthodox church. I didn't think that happened. If I may pry, what were they converted from?
Yeah the jurisdictions are an unbelievable mess you virtually need a degree in history to understand. Downside of not being under a single bishop like the catholics.
The oriental orthodox iirc reflect an even earlier schism than the one with rome, and aren't in communion with the eastern orthodox (despite those words meaning the same thing) which is the greek & russian churches mostly, plus a bunch of smaller slavic & balkan ones, plus some middle eastern churches. Within those bounds though it's different organizations but one communion eg I could receive eucharist at a greek church one week and be a godparent at a russian one the next without having to ask permission or even tell anyone.
In the US there seem to be a lot of converts recently, it's a big ongoing... thing... in american orthodoxy. Most ethnic churches just serve their communities and that's that. But the OCA and antiochian archdiocese specifically try to welcome converts with some success. Orthodox is liturgically and theologically the closest thing to catholicism, so we catch a lot of people leaving that church bc of child sex abuse scandal, anger at the liberalism of the pope, or whatever.
There are also a lot of ex-evangelicals but their reasons are incredibly varied in my conversations with them. Often they are extremely pious and it's part of a deep and sincere effort to connect with what they consider the true or original church founded by the apostles. Sometimes, less wholesomely, it's simply "trad" fetishism and our historical connections with slavic racial superiority movements and ethnonationalism.
In cities with multiple orthodox churches there is usually an informal "convert parish" made up of at least half americans who converted as adults.
My parents were devout southern baptists who left their church in disgust during the civil rights movement. Archbishop Iakovos famously marched with MLK, and I think became a sort of symbolic figure for white southern christian supporters of the civil rights movement. It's a much longer story than that but it was enough to get them to explore the greek church and eventually convert before I was born.
Thanks, that's a great insight into the Orthodox community in the States that I couldn't easily find otherwise. I do have some family in the States but they're third- and more distant cousins and I don't have any contact with them.
I think I remember about Iakovos marching with MLK. It's even a little surprising and I wonder if it wasn't all down to Iakovos' personality, kind of like the current Catholic pope is a bit of a maverick. Certainly, in Greece the church is not known for its support for civil liberties. I reckon there's many Greeks who have distanced themselves from the church exactly because of its extreme reactionary stance in many everyday issues, so the opposite of what happens in the States. Well, those are different countries :)
Orthodox? Which kind? I grew up Greek Orthodox but then I grew up more atheist.