Bridging the Ecclesial, the Academic, and the Political
Christ is Risen! Χριστός Ἀνέστη! Truly He is Risen! Ἀληθῶς Ἀνέστη! In a profoundly simple manner, the concise greeting, “Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!” contains within it the entire message of the Christian faith. The Apostle Paul of course had insightfully declared this when he wrote: “If Christ has not been raised, then…
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Sister Vassa discusses the “heresy” of the “Present and Future of the Russian World” document and what it means for the liturgical commemoration of Patriarch Kirill.
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It may be time to think beyond the parish ideal. Is there a vision that allows us to respond better in certain contexts, both to the global realities of our historical moment and to our vocation in the Gospel?
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One morning not long ago I sat down at a table in a Midwestern university’s special collections library, eager to spend several days working through a cart packed with anniversary books and commemorative pamphlets published by Orthodox parishes and dioceses across North America. These kinds of booklets are invaluable in my work as a historian,…
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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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I first heard the rumor’s confirmation as I was heading out the church door. The cantor was saying goodbye to me and added with a half-smile that change was inevitable. The Julian calendar was bound to fall behind the Gregorian calendar, he said, so much that Christmas according to the two calendars eventually would be…
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We are living in a time when wars and conflicts consistently occur. Whether we are in the midst of the war physically or mentally, in any case, we are damaged. Different states and the media can present the events occurring under different names and categories, yet the violence against human life is at the core…
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On September 1st, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine moved to the Revised Julian (“New”) Calendar. Fixed festivals will now align with Gregorian Calendar dates. In a statement, the OCU Synod stated that the Julian (“Old”) Calendar had become associated predominately with the Russian tradition. In addition, they point out that the Julian system has no…
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The Trinity by Andrei Rublev is undoubtedly the most famous Russian icon. Its reproductions can be found in various churches all over the world, not only in Orthodox churches but also in Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopalian. Even if an intelligent person is not interested in icon painting, he or she knows The Trinity. What is…
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Between the years 850 and 859, something unexpected happened in Córdoba. Some forty-eight Christians were martyred. Contemporary church historians usually refer to them as “voluntary martyrs” because almost all of them, by their own will, presented themselves in front of the Muslim authorities and confessed themselves to be Christians, denouncing Islam and Mohammed as a…
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On Bright Thursday 2023, the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States issued a statement about an Orthodox cleric without a canonical home. During the bright joy of Paschaltide, the bishops decided to tackle an issue plaguing Orthodoxy in the United States for the past several years: namely, how to publicly denounce a…
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In his 2018 book The Wizard and the Prophet, Charles C. Mann describes the work and approaches of two of the most important environmentalists of the 20th century: William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. Unfortunately, their “blueprints” are contradictory approaches to the problems of climate change. Mann categorizes those who follow Borlaug’s model of “techno-optimism” (that…
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The spirit of Christian freedom is a gift that in post-Soviet Orthodoxy has not, alas, been embraced or appreciated by many. Soviet-educated people, deprived of their experience of inner freedom, mostly failed to discover Orthodoxy as a liberating experience. Rather the opposite, immersion in church life became a convenient substitute for Soviet ideology. The path…
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It can be difficult to fathom the mindset of the followers of Jesus in the early to mid fourth century, as they gradually abandoned their commitment to the Way of total love towards all, even enemies. Before being called Christians, the disciples of Jesus were known as the people of the Way. What Way? The Way that…
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Students of Kyiv Theological Academy In 2022, the Russian Federation began full-scale military aggression against Ukraine. There are already many thousands of victims in this terrible war, not only military, but also civilians. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church took the side of the Ukrainian people from the very beginning of the war. Already on February 24,…
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On February 16, the second face-to-face meeting of initiative groups of clergy and laity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was held in Sophia National Sanctuary Complex in Kyiv. Its final appeal we published on Public Orthodox earlier. Now we follow up with the impressions and comments of…
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Originally published in Greek at Polymeros kai Polytropos, a publication of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies “Chronos (chronological or sequential time) is imbued with meaning by kairos (the opportune time), and kairos is nothing more than a stop, a way station, from which we can survey the past and look out onto the future….
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Your Eminences! My letter is addressed to the Orthodox bishops in Russia. I have intentionally not collected signatures or involved any Church structures or public organizations, because I am addressing not the episcopal body, not the leaders of the Moscow Patriarchy, but each of you personally. My letter’s addressee is an Orthodox Christian who…
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Russian Sophiology has returned. For decades, speaking of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov or any of the Russian Sophiologists was usually to invoke a niche interest. Yet today, judging by translations and secondary literature, Fr. Bulgakov in particular has emerged as a force in systematic theology that far exceeds mere historical or confessional interest. His contemporary relevance…
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“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, Anno. 1662) “Christian faith…
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“We have heard as they were read aloud those words,so shining and luminescent, we have taken in by ear,we have considered in our mindsand honored in our belief.” It is wonderful to be able to share with you how grateful I am for all the encouragement and support from the team at the Institute for…
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We are in the midst of a few anniversaries of note in the Greek world. Last year, of course, was the bicentennial of the war for independence. This year, it’s the centennial of the July 1922 founding of AHEPA, in Atlanta, and far more ignominiously, the conclusion of the Greco-Turkish War in September 1922. These…
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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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“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18) In our inaugural editorial in 2015, we stated: “The Wheel is a journal for the intelligent and constructive articulation of the Christian Gospel…
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War changes many things, primarily people’s minds, but also the usual flow of time. What takes years or even decades in peacetime takes a few months, or sometimes even days, during war. On May 27, the Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), the highest governing body of the church, after much debate, expressed its…
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“…For there must be also heresies/divisions among you, that they which are approved/tested-and-proved-reliable may be made manifest among you.” (1 Cor 11: 19) In this “Time of Troubles” of the Orthodox Church, many Orthodox Christians, particularly those in the Moscow Patriarchate, are contemplating either changing “jurisdictions” or taking a time out from the whole church…
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This article was published in the first issue of the newspaper “Narod” (“People”), published in Kiev in April 1906, with Sergii Bulgakov and A. S. Glinka (Volzhsky) as editors. The newspaper “Narod” was conceived as a printed edition of the failed political project the “Union of Christian Politics.” In the period from April 2 to…
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Much of the criticism currently directed at the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church for supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine is organized around the idea that the Moscow Patriarchate is ideologically compromised and theologically unsound. With few exceptions, scholars, journalists, and opinion writers condemn leaders of the Russian Church as apologists for the Kremlin’s “Russian…
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I, Bohdan Oghulchanskij, a priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, am writing this text on February 27, 2022, the fourth day of the Russian mass invasion. I can’t know what will happen by the time this text gets published. I have poor mobile communication, and it is difficult to access the Internet. Many times…
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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 totalitarianism. Nothing exemplifies this…
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