O Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance, granting to Thy people victory over all their enemies, and by Thy cross protect Thy community.

You can almost hear the melody when you see the words, can’t you? You do this song so often for the different feasts of the cross during the year that it gets to occupy a permanent place in the Orthodox jukebox in your head.

The whole thing seems a little poignant this year. Do we even know what we mean by “granting Thy people victory over all their enemies”? Suppose we went with the Nassar translation of this troparion and said, “granting our believing kings victory over the Barbarians.” Kind of gives the sense of what Orthodoxy might have been up against in past centuries. But talk about politically incorrect! Leaving aside the whole idea of ‘barbarians’ for a minute, do we really desire victory? Do I want the cross to vanquish foes, eradicate all false gods and false philosophies and reign supreme? Or do I only want it to win as long as nobody has to lose? Do I want the Idea of Christianity to prove so irresistable to non-Christians that the battle will be won for me without me ever having to take a stand?

I suppose what I’m getting at is: what do we really think of Christian activism? And what will we do if there’s a need for activism, in spite of whether it’s what we want or not?

I ask because here we are a week or so into the brouhaha over the Pope’s remarks in a speech. As this article by Professor Bainbridge sums up, …

The simplistic view is to focus on the portion of the speech in which the Pope quotes Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus’ comment that “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Predictably, certain Muslims leaders are whipping up outrage over the quotation (the same ones who whipped up the outrage over the Danish cartoons?).

And so there’s an excuse to be offended, and a really weak excuse to react violently, and the savage factions of Islam are going for it. There’s been damage done to Anglican and Orthodox churches in Palestine, and now a nun has been shot in the back (HERE).

I’m not sure I know why Pope Benedict chose this time to throw down a gauntlet. And I don’t believe he didn’t know that’s how it would be perceived. Considering that the radical Islamists are the people who were willing to riot over silly cartoons of Mohammed with a bomb for a head, hearing the Pope of all people tell them that spreading Islam at the point of a sword was evil and inhuman must’ve seemed like blasphemy beyond belief.

And maybe it was even a cowardly thing to do. After all, the Pope has airtight security. The Eastern areas that were the most likely to boil over in response to his speech weren’t exactly thick with Catholic churches that would be at risk.

All the same, I’m interested in the Orthodox response and, sometimes, non-response. I won’t bother myself over the official response at the highest levels, although at least one other Ortho-blogger has alluded to their lack of grit in this current crisis. I don’t feel that I can find fault, because I have no idea what political landscape they’re looking at. Harsh words from bishops and metropolitans in at-risk areas might cause terrible revenge to be exacted on churches and people. That should be enough to make anyone think twice.

But at the laity level and in this country, we have no such fears. For a variety of reasons (for which we should be truly thankful), America right now is not a hotbed of Muslim radicalism. We don’t have to worry that we’d have to go into hiding, like the Danish cartoonists, or be called to task by the craven international community, like the Pope. And yet it seems that there is still a wish amongst us for all this unpleasantness to just go away.

Consider this article by George Strickland at Directions in Orthodoxy. He had written an article about the Pope’s speech and got mixed responses from Orthodox readers.

Fortunately, many readers responded well to it, while others took me to task for a defense of Western civilization and the debt it owes to Christianity. For various and complicated reasons of history and culture, some readers equate Western civilization with Latin Christianity and all the alleged ills that this affinity has wrought. Put another way, Eastern Christianity has nothing to do with the West. Really? I don’t think so. For at least a thousand years, there was one Christendom which laid the theological and moral foundation for Western civilizational progress.

Orthodox Christians belong to the West and are designers of the great institutional accomplishments the West has produced. A lot of Orthodox gainsayers equate the catastrophic theological schism of 1054 with a repudiation of the West. To do so they deny the role Christian Orthodoxy played in the tutelage of the builders of the West.

Another way of saying this is that we who are Christians belong to the West regardless of the social location of our forebears.

Exactly. For a mild-mannered, non-confrontational Orthodox to hear the rabid criticism of Western values from secular liberals on one hand and fundamentalist Muslims on the other and then wave them away as not being relevant to Orthodoxy seems like a dangerously foolish game to play. At the very least, it permits the wrong kind of detachment — one that flatters itself with its superior position and permits cowardice to wear an Orthodox cross.

It may not be in the nature of Orthodox to want to make waves, but if a tsunami is heading your way, you ought to by-golly conquer your qualms and get an oar in the water before it’s too late.

If we don’t even have the nerve to back up accurate statements against the same Islamic oppressive tactics that enslaved Christian and non-Christian nations (some of which are still enslaved) because we’re too busy figuring out whether the speaker is “one of us” or not — or whether we would’ve used the same words or not — do we really mean it when we sing to the Lord to “save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance” by the Cross?

The present crisis may come to the moment of truth or not. Even barring anything apocalyptic, which after all seems — all apologies to the Left Behind readership — kind of far-fetched, things may get worse before they get better. Or else, this gauntlet the Pope has thrown down may only serve to prove that in spite of a lot of tough posturing (shooting a nun in the back??? Lord, have mercy!), there’s no fist in that nasty-looking glove anymore.

But even without the risk of a trial by fire, I think we need to know. The words that were penned centuries ago by our forefathers can just be the chant du jour if we never listen to them, if we never actually mean them.