How Russia’s Information Warfare Targets the Church of Constantinople

by Evagelos Sotiropoulos

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew occupies a unique position in Christendom and shepherds his flock from an almost Muslim-only country: Turkey.

Headquartered in Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, the Ecumenical Patriarchate experienced prominence during the millennial-long Byzantine Empire, but persecution following the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and emergence of Ottoman rule, eloquently captured in Sir Steven Runciman’s classic The Great Church in Captivity.

Today, Bartholomew’s role is purely religious and like his predecessors he is primus inter pares (first among equals) in the hierarchy of global Orthodoxy, which is administratively comprised of 14 self-governing churches who share the same faith.

The Church of Russia is fifth in order of precedence, following Constantinople, and the other ancient Patriarchates: Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Its long-standing desire to be first, however, is well-known and unconcealed. Continue Reading…

Racism: An Orthodox Perspective

by Aristotle Papanikolaou

The primary goal of the Orthodox Christian is to struggle toward theosis—deification. The word theosis often conjures up images of a super hero like Thor or a Greek god like Zeus. When St. Athanasius proclaimed that “God became human so that humans can become gods,” he was not envisioning super-human strength, nor was he envisioning a life of moral perfection. To become like God is to love as God loves, which means, as Jesus proclaimed, even the enemy and the stranger. The struggle for theosis is one that entails a learning how to love. It is often so very difficult to love even our parents, siblings, friends—imagine now learning how to love the enemy and the stranger.

This learning how to love ultimately entails seeing all human beings as created in the image of God. This is not as easy as it seems. It’s one thing to declare that all humans are created in the image of God; it’s another thing to form oneself in such a way that such a belief is evident in our thoughts, feelings, actions—our very being toward the other person, especially the one who is different from us. Continue Reading…

African American Orthodox Christians Faith, Culture, and Emerging Values

by Lydia Kemi Ingram  |  ελληνικά  |  ру́сский  |  српски

In 2016, I began a series of interviews with African American Orthodox Christians in four regions of the United States.  An integral component of a wider ethnographic research project (one combining participant observation and digital research) personal narratives offer a necessary depth of insight into an Orthodox community which still remains relatively unfamiliar to many.

While the number of African American Orthodox Christians appears to be growing, research on this particular group remains scant.  Focused either on historical figures like Fr. Raphael Morgan, the first African American Orthodox priest— or on narratives gleaned from a “community of elders,” the most prominent exemplary African American Orthodox Christians, existing research can sometimes convey a single-story narrative, one not entirely untrue—but incomplete.  There remains, therefore, much to be learned at the intersection of Orthodox Christianity and African American culture. Continue Reading…

It’s Time to Merge St. Vladimir’s and Holy Cross

by George Demacopoulos

It has always been the case that forces beyond the control of the Church have prompted changes in the practice of theological education. For example, Ottoman repression led many Greek Christians to seek education abroad. Tsar Peter I imposed Western-styled seminaries upon the Russian Church. And the Bolshevik Revolution crippled religious education throughout Russia and much of Eastern Europe.

While not as dire as those examples, Orthodox seminaries in the United States face significant structural challenges. At one and the same time, the real cost of operating a seminary is steeply rising while active participation in the Church is diminishing.  What is more, the very nature of seminary education is undergoing a profound change that requires genuine transformation.

When they were founded, St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology functioned as cultural and theological oases, preparing priests for Russian and Greek immigrant communities. Over the past ten years, however, because fewer and fewer young men raised in Church pursue the priesthood, the majority of divinity graduates have been adult converts to Orthodoxy. Continue Reading…