“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” —Michael Corleone Let me note, before anything else, that I am not concerned in what follows to defend my orthodoxy, which anyone who cares to may impugn without protest from me. I long ago lost the least interest in how others reckon orthodoxy…
Continue readingReligion and Humor: An Unorthodox Relationship?
To say that religion and humor make for strange bedfellows may be stating the obvious! Yet one cannot escape the other; they are “mutually attracting phenomena” (Schweizer 2020, p.162). According to Christian writer and philosopher G. K. Chesterton, “Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you…
Continue reading(Review) Holy Beauty: Prolegomena to an Orthodox Philokalic Aesthetics
Chrysostomos A. Stamoulis, Holy Beauty: Prolegomena to an Orthodox Philokalic Aesthetics, translated by Norman Russell, Cambridge, UK: James Clarke and Co, 2022, xx + 236 pages. It is not often that a theologian reaches outside his or her own comfort zone. That is true of many, if not most disciplines. But like his mentor, Nikos…
Continue readingIs Multiculturalism a Solution to Phyletism?
Phyletism: The Problem of Bigotry in the Orthodox Church In our contemporary era the Orthodox Christian world is, sadly, once again grappling with violent conflicts involving ethnic, religious and political identities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as the Orthodox churches in the United States, Canada, and Australia engage in heated jurisdictional disputes…
Continue readingA Forgotten Orthodox Woman Theologian
Myrrha Lot-Borodine and the Mystical Theology of Deification
Four women were particularly prominent in Orthodox theological circles in Western Europe prior to World War II. Mother Maria (St Maria of Paris) (1891-1945) is well known, especially since her canonization 2004, for her devotion to assisting the poor in inter-war Paris and Jews during World War II, and her challenging articles on spiritual and…
Continue readingOrthodoxy and (Anarcho) Socialism
Post-Easter and Mayday Meditations
Christ is risen!Workers of the world, unite! Are these two exclamations mutually exclusive? Can one be an (Orthodox) Christian and an anarchist or a socialist? It all depends on what one means by “Orthodoxy” (or “Christianity” for that matter), and what one means by “socialism” or “anarchism.” Orthodox Christianity, in my view, cannot fully be…
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