Bridging the Ecclesial, the Academic, and the Political
by Aram G. Sarkisian “Beware, O sinful land, beware;And do not think it strangeThat sorer judgements are at hand,Unless thou quickly change.Or God, or thou, must quickly change;Or else thou art undon:Wrath cannot cease, if sin remain,Where judgement is begun.” -Michael Wigglesworth, “God’s Controversy With New England” (Written in the Time of the Great Drought,…
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Come, O faithful, let us enjoy the Master’s hospitality:the banquet of immortality.In the upper chamber with uplifted minds,Let us receive the exalted words of the Word, whom we magnify.(Holy Thursday, Canon Ode 9) In January 2022, I was invited to give the annual Father Georges Florovsky Lecture for the Orthodox Theological Society in America and…
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Not all critiques of secular liberalism over the past fifty years have involved flirtations with fascism, but in the apocalypse (literally, the unveiling) that Putin’s war on Ukraine has been, we can see more than ever the horrific consequences of not clearly separating the two. In January 1975, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, dean of St. Vladimir’s…
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by Kristina Stoeckl | български | ქართული | ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски The identification of moral conservatives in the twenty-first century with historical periods that predate the experience of twentieth century totalitarianism reveals a fundamental blind-spot in contemporary conservatism. Conjuring up political constellations of the 1920s to 40s as analogies for contemporary struggles between conservatives and progressives willfully ignores the ‘lesson’ of…
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by Aram G. Sarkisian For more than a decade, researchers have excavated the fascinating story of Philip Ludwell III, an Anglo-American convert to Orthodox Christianity who lived in colonial Virginia during the mid- to late-eighteenth century. A friend to Benjamin Franklin, cousin to Martha Washington, and a member of one of Virginia’s most established and…
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by Nic Hartmann | български | ქართული | Ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски Orthodox culture is alive and well. It is in the loaves of bread that are lovingly made by a Lebanese grandmother for her son’s birthday. It is in our Pascha baskets, our children’s hilarious mispronunciations of “Christ is Risen” in…
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The January 2021 Schmemann Lecture delivered by Mr. Rod Dreher, a Senior Editor of The American Conservative, has provoked bewilderment and objections especially among former students of Father Alexander. Was Dreher—neither an academic nor a theologian but a polemical journalist who proclaims it pointless to “dialogue” with Orthodox progressives—the appropriate person to deliver a lecture…
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From the opening pages of Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (Sentinel, 2020), the assumption is that the lies which most threaten to engulf Christians today are those coming from the cultural and political Left. Political correctness, cancel culture, anti-racist kinds of training, gender theory, the “cult of social justice”—all treated…
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by Fr. Micah Hirschy Much has been written in the last couple of years concerning the “Benedict Option.” People have found inspiration in it as well as a great deal to criticize about both the movement and Rod Dreher’s book. The historicity and theology of the book are questionable. The dire picture painted is…
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Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option has much to commend it. Among other things, it aptly recognizes that the landscape of American religious practice is rapidly changing and in some depressing ways. It affirms that a faith divorced from real-life practice is useless. And it recognizes that Christians benefit when they mine their ancient traditions….
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Public Orthodoxy is a publication of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University
