The following is an interview with the parish priest in Phnom Penh, Pritestmonk Paisie.
Please support the parishes in Cambodia by clicking here. Also see the parishes’ official donation page here.
The Orthodox Church in Cambodia
The following is an interview with the parish priest in Phnom Penh, Pritestmonk Paisie.
Please support the parishes in Cambodia by clicking here. Also see the parishes’ official donation page here.
Orthodox Christian Theology 
I live in the Guangxi area of China and I want to become an Orthodox Christian, but there is no Orthodox Church where I live. I found out that there is an Orthodox Church in Cambodia, can I go to your church to be baptized? Of course, I may not be able to go to Cambodia right away because of the policy control of the Chinese Communist Party and my health. However, I have personally watched some Orthodox videos and I recognize Orthodoxy as authentic Christianity inherited from the apostolic era, I only speak Chinese and a little English, I don’t speak Russian and I don’t speak Cambodian, please give me an answer, may the will of the Lord Christ be done, Amen
Father Paisie can speak English. I suggest contacting him on Facebook if that’s possible: https://www.facebook.com/paiskh
If you can only use WhatsApp I can put you in touch with him that way.
As a matter of personal curiosity (given that my wife is also Southeast Asian), have there been any serious efforts to adapt traditional Cambodian religious chant styles for use in vernacular Orthodox services?
Good question. The answer is no, they have not modified any Buddhist chants. They use Russian tones.
Thanks for answering! I hope that can change in the future. My belief is that the unique cantorial style of a people is the artistic expression of their language. As French, German, and Russian differ from each other linguistically, so do the vocal traditions of French, German, and Russian music. The different regional churches of the Orthodox faith preserve the authentic musical character of each church’s culture, even though those musical elements derive partially from pre-Christian elements (even the Greek modes, for example).
Do you know whether anyone has considered looking into this? I am not very familiar with Cambodian culture, but I understand that in Vietnam there are “secular” modes of cantillating poetry that are parallel to and independent of Buddhism which are easily adaptable for Christian prayer, so I wonder whether something similar might be doable in Cambodian. Personally, I value this sort of thing because I view it as more “traditional”, actually; it just better expresses the sacred character of the prayer in the vernacular than importing foreign styles, if it is done faithfully.