The issue of anti-Jewish texts within the Byzantine rite is longstanding and complex. The Orthodox Theological Society in America is establishing a working group of liturgical scholars and specialists in Jewish-Christian theological dialogue to study and make recommendations for liturgical renewal within the Orthodox Church. To launch this endeavor, and in advance of this year’s…
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Church History, Liturgical Life
The Origins of Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in the Hymns of Good Friday
by George Demacopoulos | български | ქართული | ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски The oldest-surviving Christian hymns designed exclusively for Holy Week are a set known as the Idiomele. In the modern Orthodox Church, they are sung during the Royal Hours service of Good Friday morning (the final hymn is sung during two…
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Liturgical Life, Theology
The Good Friday Lamentation and Universal Salvation
by George Demacopoulos | ελληνικά | Română | ру́сский It is striking just how many verses of the central hymn of the most widely attended service in the Orthodox Church assert that Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection provide salvation to everyone—yes, everyone. If hymnography reflects the prayer and thinking of the community, what might this contribute to the millennia-long…
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Liturgical Life
Holy Arousal
by Thomas Arentzen St Augustine once observed: “It is longing that makes the heart deep” (Tractates on the Gospel of John 40.10). As a scholar of the early Church, I am often struck by how much early Christians longed. They ached and urged and craved intensely, wanted and thirsted immensely, desired and hungered and yearned…
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Uncategorized
It’s That Time of the Year Again: In Tone Four, “The murderers of God, the lawless nation of the Jews…”
Disturbing Words, Disturbed Emotions The words in the title are from one of the stichera at the Beatitudes chanted on Holy Thursday evening (Triodion, 589). Similar references to “arrogant Israel, people guilty of blood,” “bloodthirsty people, jealous and vengeful,” and “the perverse and crooked people of the Hebrews” occur in the unabbreviated English translation of…
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Liturgical Life
It’s That Time of the Year Again: In Tone Four, “The murderers of God, the lawless nation of the Jews…”
by Bogdan G. Bucur | ελληνικά | ру́сский | српски Disturbing Words, Disturbed Emotions The words in the title are from one of the stichera at the Beatitudes chanted on Holy Thursday evening (Triodion, 589). Similar references to “arrogant Israel, people guilty of blood,” “bloodthirsty people, jealous and vengeful,” and “the perverse and crooked people of the…
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Gender and Sexuality, Liturgical LifeBeyond the Binary
Beyond the Binary
Hymnographic Constructions of Orthodox Gender
Much like gender itself, Orthodox understandings of gender span a spectrum of diverse views. Many who address “the problem of gender” or the “role of women in the church” rely on an assumption that any theological interpretation of gender is necessarily situated along a cisgender binary. Simply, individuals with male bodies identify as “men” and…
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Public Orthodoxy is a publication of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University