Theological troublemaker. Orthodox Christian.
Late Sunday evening I received an e-mail asking me to appear on Huffington Post Live, which is the video arm of the Huffington Post. Several other guests and I discussed the role clergy should play in the voting decisions of their congregants. Continue reading “My Appearance on Huffington Post Live”
Shortly before I was to appear on Ancient Faith Today with Fr. John Whiteford, I accepted his invitation to have a brief phone conversation. Telling me about his background, he made an offhanded remark that some decades ago kids began going to “Children’s Church,” and they never left. The more I think about that remark, the more disturbed I become (and not just because I actually agree with Fr. John about something). I think the well-intentioned efforts to meet the worship needs of children has contributed to an increasing trend toward a narcissistic faith. Continue reading “Children’s Church and Christian Narcissism”
I was in the library last month, looking for something from Fr. Dumitru Staniloae when I came across a book by David N. Bell. It’s title immediately caught my attention: Orthodoxy: Evolving Tradition. I had been thinking about what it means to be a modern member of the so-called “Ancient Faith” (read more here), so I picked it up. It reads a lot like an introduction to Orthodoxy, except that it is more frank about our warts than some other primers.
One of the things I loved about Bell’s book was that he constantly stresses the internal diversity within Orthodoxy. The church is not monolithic either in terms of belief or practice. This gets personal for me in the last chapter of his book. Continue reading “Ancient Faith Continued: Elastic Tradition”
This morning I read a quotation from my well worn copy of The Orthodox Church by Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, and I wanted to share it with you. Writing “by the rivers of Babylon,” so to speak, exiled from Soviet Russia and tending to the Orthodox Christians in Paris, Bulgakov writes about the way church and state have related in the past and they way they should relate in the future.
The Church’s methods of influence change; the work is no longer done outside, from above, but from within, from below, from the people and by the people. The representation of the people by the Christian sovereign, in force at the time of the Orthodox Empire, no longer exists; the laity participate in the life of the Church, without any intermediary, so that the Church influences the state in a democratic way. But it is a democracy of souls. New dangers, new difficulties arise in this way, analogous to those which existed at the time of the alliance between Church and state. The Church m ay be led to interfere in party politics; the latter, in its turn, may divert the Church from its true path. But an essential advantage remains; the Church exercises its influence on souls by the way of liberty, which alone corresponds to Christian dignity, not by that of constraint. Constraint leads more quickly to certain results, but it carries with it its own punishment. Contemporary history in both East and West proves this. Continue reading “Post-Imperial Orthodoxy”
The other day, my friend Joel Miller tweeted me about a blog post by Bart Gingerich on why progressives don’t like Augustine. I still haven’t figured out if Joel asked because I like Augustine and he sees me as “progressive” (I guess) or if he is in it for the entertainment value. Few things “get my nanny” like shallow analyses of politics or Augustine, and this article does both at once.
I have struggled to make heads or tails of Gingerich’s article. The context for the blog suggests “progressives” means “political liberals,” but he also talks about “emergent Christians and others from the Evangelical Left.” The author appears to have conflated political with theological liberalism. The result is a critique without nuance. Not having a clear picture of his foil, I have to proceed by addressing a few of his main points. Continue reading “Progressives Parading with Augustine: A Response to Bart Gingerich”
Ancient Faith Continued – A series of reflections about the meaning of Tradition in the life of the church today. Read more about the series here.
Blessed is she who placed her pure mouth on the lips
of that One, from whose fire, the Seraphim of fire hide themselves.
Blessed is she who nourished as a babe with pure milk
the great breast from which the worlds suck life.
– Jacob of Serug, “Homily 1,” On the Mother of God
