All news is local? I guess not, when it comes to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

I looked forward to coverage of Pascha (Easter in the West) this year for several reasons — in part because bishops in America have cooperated with “shelter in place” orders, but have also been creative in some of their responses. It’s hard to capture Orthodox liturgy with one digital camera, but monasteries and parishes have been doing their best, often with beautiful results. (Click here to visit my old parish outside Johnson City, Tenn, in the Smokey Mountains.)

Thus, I was disappointed when I read the Associated Press feature about Pascha. It was an impressive effort to cover the global angle of this story — but completely ignored the fact that Orthodoxy is right here in North America, as well. The story ended with this reporting credit:

Daria Litvinova reported from Moscow. Theodora Tongas in Athens, Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, North Macedonia, Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed.

All valid. But who covered Dallas, Wichita, Kan., Pittsburgh, Southern California, Appalachia, Florida and Washington, D.C., among other obvious locations? Did I miss a story somewhere?

You see, Orthodoxy in America has turned into an interesting quilt of ethnic traditions and thriving parishes packed with converts, from lots of other flocks or folks who had no faith at all.

Yes, the Greeks are the Greeks and the Slavs are the Slavs. But there are also Orthodox red necks, Midwestern farmers and lots of other American archetypes. Here’s a rather normal pack of folks singing in lockdown:

The priest at our parish in East Tennessee returned the other day from a pilgrimage to Mount Athos, the Greek peninsula that for centuries has been the beating heart of Eastern Orthodox spirituality.

As far as I know, Father J. Stephen Freeman did not have any secret meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin while he was trekking from monastery to monastery on the holy mountain. However, you never know. After all, Father Stephen has many online readers in Russia and, well, he is the priest of Oak Ridge (and you know what that means).

Journalists in the West have said some rather wild things, as of late, about Orthodox Christianity and its role in Russia. This then connects with the whole "The Russians Did It, the Russians Did It" atmosphere in American politics.

But are we ready to politicize the holy mountain? Check out this passage from The Spectator, drawn from a feature with this headline: "What is behind Vladimir Putin’s curious interest in Mount Athos?" Orthodox readers may want to sit down to read this.

A secretive body of Elders governs here and all citizens are bound to total obedience. They wear identical floor-length black gowns and are not permitted to shave -- the style of dress favoured by zealots everywhere. And guess what? This state is in western Europe.

Few people have heard of Mount Athos and fewer still have visited it, and that is the way they like it. A notable exception is Vladimir Putin. He has been at least twice, once in 2006 and again in May of this year. ...

Putin has formed an unholy alliance with the Orthodox church in order to ensure he receives its blessing. This fits with his self-image as a modern Tsar embodying church and state. For believers, the Holy Mountain is the centre of their faith, their Rome, the place where the flame of their faith connects to heaven.

I wasn't expecting the Z-word.