Bridging the Ecclesial, the Academic, and the Political
The perennial issue of liturgical language has once again taken center stage following the recent comments of Archbishop Makarios of Australia on the primacy of Greek in the Church’s liturgical worship. As a faithful member of the Holy Archdiocese of Australia and convert of 22 years, I welcome His Eminence’s comments for having generated robust…
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When You, O God, shall come to earth with glory, / all things shall tremble / and the river of fire shall flow before Your judgment seat; / the books shall be opened and the hidden things disclosed! / Then deliver me from the unquenchable fire, / and make me worthy to stand at Your…
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We’ve written down the story given to us by Mary (the name has been changed) who was at the “Quench My Sorrows” Church in Mar’yino on the day of Alexei Navalny’s obsequies. It’s a survey of all that took place, through the eyes of a witness.
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Editor’s Note: The Orthodox Church in Russia is divided, but this division is not canonical nor administrative. Moreover, it is not always visible from the outside. While the official Church has become an integral part of Putin’s political regime, on a deeper level, there is resistance on behalf of small Orthodox communities and individuals who…
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Contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue has been defined, by and large, by the post-Holocaust, Western, American/European setting in which it emerged and by the predominance of Catholics and (liberal) Protestants, who have been the primary Christian interlocutors. And Orthodox Christians? According to Sandrine Caneri: … the Orthodox at this time were simply not in any condition to…
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Facebook celebrity Hyperdox Herman has offered ten satirical reasons for banning men from the priesthood, including: “The physical features of the structure of the male body indicate that the man was created for hard work, and not for serving in the temple, which does not require great physical strength.” “Men are too prone to emotions…
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“Today Anna bequeaths joy to all instead of sorrow by bringing forth her fruit.Today with joy she brings to the Temple of the LordThe true Temple and pure Mother of God the Word.” (Troparion in Tone 4) As faithful Orthodox navigating a tumultuous world, what does the upcoming Feast of the Entry of the Theotokos…
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When discerning how to approach wealth and commerce, American Orthodox Christians have their work cut out for them. Should we embrace the “Protestant work ethic” of righteous enterprise? Or does the Apostolic witness shun “filthy lucre,” instead favoring a communitarian path? We need more than simplistic answers. The “one thing needful” is Christ Himself, Who…
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“Meeting him I sensed immediately a quality of authenticity,of integrity, of completeness; here I felt was a true man.He was marked by a serenity, by a transparent and luminous joy”(Kallistos Ware, “Mount Athos Today” [1976]) A Moment of Pan-Orthodox Unity In a time when the Orthodox Christian world is broken by schism—the schism over…
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Most people who have written about the tensions between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) after the Russian invasion tend to focus on one thing: who is commemorated. This is not surprising. Accepting the authority of this bishop, but not that one, is an easy shorthand for where one…
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American Orthodox leaders, inevitably on one or other side of the widening Greek–Slavic divide in world Orthodoxy, typically echo the voice of the peculiar foreign “Mother–Church” to which each hierarch is canonically bound. So Archbishop Elpidophoros, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (GOA) in the USA, although expressing his sympathy for the hapless Russians being…
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Image: Wikimedia Commons After the communications breakdown between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP) over the status of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the issue of consensus in the Orthodox Church was of utmost importance. Moscow and Constantinople were questioned on whether they share the same ecclesiology, but the issue of…
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The image of God was truly preserved in you, O mother,For you took up the Cross and followed Christ.By so doing, you taught us to disregard the flesh, for it passes away;But to care instead for the soul, since it is immortal.Therefore your spirit, O holy Mother Mary, rejoices with the Angels. Troparion, Tone…
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Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has caught the attention of the public for multiple reasons. The humanitarian catastrophe, the sheer horror of ceaseless shelling, the shooting of protesters in the streets, the attacks on nuclear plants, the threats to assassinate President Zelensky and other leaders, and the war on democracy. One of the underreported consequences…
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In a famous scene from A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More defended his silence on the Act of Supremacy by citing a maxim of the law, “Qui tacet consentire videtur” (Silence betokens consent). His argument was that by saying nothing, the court must assume he agreed with the Act regardless of whatever his private…
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“For the peace of the whole world, for the stability of the holy churches of God, and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord.” (Divine Liturgy) This text is also available in pdf format in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Ukrainian, Croatian, Estonian, Hungarian, Portuguese, and…
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I first encountered the writings of Jim Forest in the summer of 1969. It was during the height of the Vietnam War. I was 19 years old. The previous December I had dropped out of Fairhaven College in Bellingham, Washington, and sent my draft card back to the Selective Service System with a lengthy note…
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With its autonomous church in Ukraine, the Moscow Patriarchate could not accept the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s actions to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine (OCU) in 2018–2019. The Moscow Patriarchate severed its relationships with Constantinople and other primates who recognized the OCU and searched for ways to emphasize conciliarity within Orthodoxy while at…
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“To find something that is lost is always a happy occasion!” So said Patriarch Sahak II Maşalyan of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, during his sermon at the first Divine Liturgy to be celebrated at the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church in Malatya, Turkey, in over one hundred years. Reconstructed through joint efforts of the…
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Commanders of the heavenly hosts,we who are unworthy beseech you,by your prayers encompass us beneath the wings of your immaterial glory,and faithfully preserve us who fall down and cry to you:Deliver us from all harm, for you are the commanders of the powers on high!(Troparion for the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other…
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In the months before Fr. Leonid’s passing, he was working on a revised version of the following address to publish on Public Orthodoxy. As he was unable to complete it, with his family’s blessing, we are posting the entirety of the keynote address he offered to the All American Council in July, 2018. We are indebted to Fr….
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Each year since his death in 1983, Father Alexander Schmemann’s legacy is evoked through an established annual lecture in his name at St. Vladimir’s, the theological seminary in New York in which his ideas flourished, nourishing generations of clergy and faithful and, through numerous publications and lectures, reaching the broader world. A permanent academic chair…
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Like all Byzantine art historians, I am concerned about the conversion this year of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Not being able to travel because of the pandemic, I only know about the current state of the building from images on the internet and from friends in Istanbul, especially David Hendrix, who has supplied the…
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One of the greatest impacts of the current pandemic is the effect it has had on interpersonal relations. The inability to embrace or hold a friend’s hand, the need for “social distancing,” and the knowledge that anyone we meet is potentially the carrier of a deadly disease all contribute to a feeling of suspicion and standoffishness,…
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What is emotion? Do emotions have a history? Who has emotion? Are emotions innate? These questions are far more complex than they might seem. Indeed, in recent years, scholars have explored how emotions were understood and enacted throughout history, investigated how emotional discourses acted as drivers of cultural and political change, and probed the performativity…
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This essay is published here on the occasion of the first prayers following Hagia Sophia’s reversion to a mosque, July 24, 2020. It was spring 1964—a difficult year for the Orthodox Greek brothers of Constantinople, because of the well-known anti-Greek acts of the Turks, due to Cyprus. I was in the Theological Academy of Chalke…
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I categorically refuse to pay an entrance fee for a church, out of principle. When I was in Bratislava, and the Catholic cathedral charged a very small fee, I did not enter. When I returned to the wonderful Cathedral Church in Trogir, Croatia, two years ago, it was selling entrance tickets—so I relied on my…
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During the last few days, the Bible has been disrespected not only by President Trump but also by many people who sought to defend it. The Bible is being used as an instrument of political rhetoric in a divided country. It has been subjected to ridicule in a time when we should be reading it,…
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In recent weeks, Church authorities have been looking for historical precedent to find ways of continuing ministry to the faithful and maintaining worship in churches during a time of global pandemic—because, as others have pointed out, closing houses of worship and ceasing to serve the Liturgy is not an option for the Church, even if…
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Much has been written and posted on line lately about Holy Communion and how it is to be distributed/received vis-à-vis the COVID-19 crisis. In light of this, it is interesting that little attention has been paid to the relationship between faith and reason. The overriding reason for this omission is related to an understanding of…
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