I think perhaps there is a bigger cultural gap between our traditions than you realise, dzheremi.
That's highly likely. I tend to think of Anglicanism as one of the more traditional Protestant churches, but maybe that means something different in an Anglican context than it would in a Coptic Orthodox context.
You talk about educating "new members," but for many of our parishes, membership is a relatively fluid thing. As long as you've been validly baptised somewhere, you can worship with us and take communion and we're unlikely to pressure you about becoming Anglican. (A few months ago, in the parish I've just left, we formally received into membership a woman who was raised Roman Catholic but had been worshipping in that parish, highly involved as a lay leader, etc for the last 25 years). So requiring people to learn the Anglican way of things, in any way more formal than by osmosis, would be problematic right there.
Yeah, I did, but what I meant was the same as what you write here about learning by osmosis, not about pressuring people to become Coptic (Anglican, etc.). That's not what we do. But in terms of education, you learn what we believe and what we do and why/how by showing up. So it seems like our two churches are substantially the same, as far as that's concerned. During my time at St. Bishoy COC in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we had Jordanian Catholics, Jewish people, Roman Catholics, an Anglican family, etc. all come to visit us, presumably out of curiosity. Only the Jordanians ended up staying for an extended period of time (they said they felt that our liturgy was more truly 'Eastern' than theirs, and ended up staying and worshiping with us for several months before moving out of the area), but in no case were any ever pressured to convert, or even to give responses as we do. The Jordanians eventually got the hang of the responses (I guess it helps when some of them are given in Arabic and that's your native language), same as anyone would with repeated exposure. Learning by osmosis really works.
Here's the thing: the focus, for many of our parishes now, has become the question: If a random person who had never been to church walked through the door today, would they be able to understand and participate in whatever is happening? And if the answer is no, then the momentum is towards abandoning what that person could not understand and participate in. Since chanting vs. speaking is seen as adiaphora, chant has been a soft point that has, in most places, been abandoned very quickly. Because it's seen as a barrier, something that would be off-putting to that hypothetical random person.
(Why) is it assumed that chanting would make it not possible to understand or participate in what is happening? I can understand it being
foreign to people who are not used to it (as it was to me, coming to Orthodox from Roman Catholicism), but so long as it is in a language that they understand, or translations are available in real time (this is the thinking behind the regrettable proliferation of the screen with slides in modern Coptic churches in the West), then it should at least be understandable.
I will put it like this: When I go to confession, Father and I will discuss my sins and ways to overcome them in English (he is definitely a fluent English-speaker, and I am very much not a fluent Arabic-speaker), but when it comes to pronouncing the actual absolution, which involves a set prayer said over the bowed head of the penitent in the Coptic ritual, he always does it in Arabic. He has explained it to me in English, but he either does not know the proper translation and doesn't want to 'wing it', or more likely is simply more comfortable praying it in Arabic, and so lapses into it easily. I am being absolved in either case by the Holy Spirit, Who is above such differences and matters of human comfort, and that is what I ought to focus on anyway. At the end of the ritual, we pray together the Our Father, usually both in English, while in the liturgy we (all) pray it together in whatever language we know. Usually it is me praying in English and everyone else praying Arabic, but sometimes it has been me praying in English, others praying in Arabic, and still others praying in Amharic. And nobody bats an eye at any of this, because we know what we are doing and why. I have even worshiped in Arabic with Ethiopians who worshiped in English, because they felt more comfortable reading the (to my ears, clunky) English translation than attempting Arabic. After the conclusion of the hymn in question, one of the Egyptians leaned in to the Ethiopian man next to me to complement him on his Arabic, not realizing that it was me and not him who was singing it in Arabic.
So based on my own experiences I question just what understanding in worship actually means for the liturgy or any other ritualistic aspect of church life as it might be realized in any given situation.
Not to take anything away from the very admirable and Christ-like motivation to make sure that all are welcome, I would say that there are some things that are so central to our understanding of what worship is (and from that, what can be included in it and what cannot) that they are beyond being modified in any serious way as an accommodation to anyone, regardless of their status within or outside of the Church. (So it's not so much a matter of ecclesiology in the sense of maintaining an in-group/out-group dynamic, but a more basic question of "Are we worshiping God or not?", to be answered according to what we have been given regarding how we are to do that.)
Now you could argue that that question is putting the focus on the wrong thing, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you, but the fact remains that it is so.
I understand. Things are as they are regardless of whether or not you personally agree that they ought to be that way.
The decline in choirs is related to the shifting trends in church music, I think. Once you have a parish that prefers a worship band, with drums and bass guitar and a lead singer with a microphone, the choir begins to be seen as outdated or even an obstacle to growth. Again, I might argue with that view (I think choosing a musical style and doing it excellently will generally attract people, rather than being hung up on one particular style as the answer to all our woes), but the fact remains that in most parishes, certainly where I am, the days of a "proper" choir are long gone.
Am I to understand from this that there would have been a point in the past when this would not have been the case? If that's so, what is preventing at least an attempt to return to the earlier practice beyond the fact that it is now seen as antiquated and/or an obstacle to growth? Because I think the fact that we are having this discussion in a thread that is all about how Western Christianity is
not growing but shrinking ought to allow the Christians whose churches are affected by this trend to seriously consider that what they think will cause their churches to grow may actually be having the opposite effect. What if people
actually want things that are antiquate, perhaps because in this time of rapid change and disorientation there is an accompanying sense of rootlessness in a lot of Western Christian religious practice? (Note: I'm not accusing Anglicans or really anyone in particular of anything by asking that; just wondering aloud at what point the people who advocate for all kinds of changes to traditional practice and theology in the name of attracting people will recognize that all these changes are not having the desired result. Or are the very modern parishes actually exhibiting
sustained growth, despite all indications to the contrary about Western Christianity in general?)
What is being done to combat this? There are a few hold-outs. As I mentioned, the parish where I was after first being ordained maintains a proud "catholic" musical tradition, where I had to learn to chant and there is still an excellent choir. The cathedrals tend to nurture a proud musical tradition. But the problem here is that we are a church divided, and the more catholic parishes are in the minority.
That is sad. It is sad to see any church divided against itself. Lord have mercy.
Others are pushing ahead seeking excellence and numbers with the contemporary band-type approach. And when the majority of your clergy and parishes think the old styles of music are literally a waste of time, then... what do you do with that?
I don't know. To the extent that we have this kind of problem in my Church, the response is the opposite, and the majority who are against any innovations are not shy in saying so, with HE Metropolitan Serapion saying that the D.C. area (a notorious problem area for our Church in America)
needs an Orthodox bishop, and HG Bishop Abanoub, who oversees the beleaguered area of Mokattam in Egypt, openly and explicitly banning anyone who refuses to conform to the norms of the Church from operating inside of it:
Perhaps this is another cultural difference, as I know that Egyptians are not shy and have no problem yelling about things when they feel it necessary. But whatever will help you recover your neglected patrimony, I hope you do it.