by Ryan Hunter and Nicholas Chapman When we think of the pilgrims, who came to the American continent from England to start a new life and a new country, we think of Puritans and Calvinists. But how many of us know that one of the largest landowners in the state of Virginia, a personal friend […]
Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn To Live as Exiles in Our Own Country
Rod Dreher is a senior editor and blogger at The American Conservative. Voting Republican and other failed culture war strategies are not going to save us now No, the sky is not falling — not yet, anyway — but with the Supreme Court ruling constitutionalizing same-sex marriage, the ground under our feet has shifted […]
Gay Marriage and the Houston Gay Rights Ordinance
Source: Orthodox Clergy Association of Houston and Southeast Texas We, the Orthodox clergy of Houston and Southeast Texas, are compelled by our responsibilities before God to speak out plainly against the rebellion against God’s created order that we see being waged on both the local and national level. It is God who created the two […]
What Do Orthodox Bishops Have to Say About “Same-Sex Unions”?
In A Statement on Moral Crisis in Our Nation, all the Orthodox Bishops in the United States made their position very clear: The Orthodox Church cannot and will not bless same-sex unions. Whereas marriage between a man and a woman is a sacred institution ordained by God, homosexual union is not. Like adultery and fornication, homosexual acts are […]
On the Sakkos and the Mitre
by Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) With the upcoming consecration of a friend to the episcopacy, I’m offering a little more on episcopal vestments for your edification. The Sakkos The sakkos, from the Hebrew sakk meaning “sackcloth” was part of the emperor’s wardrobe in Byzantium. This garment had no sleeves and was donned over the head and […]
On Sexual Relations
by Fr. Josiah Trenham American Orthodox Christians find themselves at the beginning of the 21st century encompassed by a cultural milieu that is post-Christian, secular, and foreign to the mind of the Church. Nowhere is this reality more evident than in the area of human sexuality. Sex has been violently torn from its proper context, […]
From Catholic to Orthodox?
by Rod Dreher The conservative Catholic writer John Zmirak says that Pope Francis and his allies in Rome are playing with fire in their attempts to liberalize Catholic practice on divorced Catholics receiving communion. What they could end up doing is inadvertently making the ecclesiological case for Orthodoxy. Excerpt: If the pope permits divorced couples […]
The Best Church For American Christianity In Exile
By Rod Dreher Carl Trueman states plainly what many of us American Christians see: that we are living through the sending of the Church into internal exile. Excerpt: We live in a time of exile. At least those of us do who hold to traditional Christian beliefs. The strident rhetoric of scientism has made belief in the […]
Welsh Church Uncovers Medieval Iconography
Although they seem to have forgotten the word, this is obviously iconography in a Welsh Church, in the Medieval European style – Orthodoxy in the life blood of Welsh churches. Built on the site of a 7th century monastery and founded around 1200, St Cadoc’s in Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan is, from the outside, just another beautiful […]
Another Orthodox Priest Murdered
On the night of May 9th, close to Sloviansk, Archpriest Pavel Zhuchenko of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) was shot and killed. He served at the St. Dmitry Donskoy church in the city of Druzhkovka (Donetsk region). The circumstances of the priest’s death are unknown.