Orthodoxy

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Are many Bible Belt military families losing faith in the U.S. armed services?

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Podcast: Are many Bible Belt military families losing faith in the U.S. armed services?

On Feb. 1, 2004, GetReligion co-founder Doug Leblanc opened the digital doors here at GetReligion and our first post went live. The headline: “What we do, why we do it.”

I tweaked that post a bit in 2019, but left the main point intact. The key was that GetReligion was going to try to spot what I called religion “ghosts” in hard-news stories in the mainstream press. What, precisely, was a religion “ghost”? I raise this issue once again because this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) focused on a “ghost” question in a very important topic in the news. Hold that thought.

That first post opened with Americans sitting down to read their newspapers or watch television news.

They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. …

One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels. Something is missing in the basic facts or perhaps most of the key facts are there, yet some are twisted. Perhaps there are sins of omission, rather than commission.

A lot of these ghosts are, well, holy ghosts. They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith. Now you see them. Now you don’t.

This brings us to a recent Associated Press report with this headline: “Army cuts force size amid unprecedented battle for recruits.” There are zero references to religion in this report, which is kind of the point.

Is there a religion “ghost” somewhere in this story? Here are some crucial paragraphs:

With just two and a half months to go in the fiscal year, the Army has achieved just 50% of its recruiting goal of 60,000 soldiers, according to Lt. Col. Randee Farrell, spokeswoman for Army Secretary Christine Wormuth. Based on those numbers and trends, it is likely the Army will miss the goal by nearly 25% as of Oct. 1. …


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Big story? American (at this point) archbishop baptises famous gay couple's children in Greece

, , , , , , , , ,
Big story? American (at this point) archbishop baptises famous gay couple's children in Greece

I think that I will write this post before I start getting emails (one or two from inside the wider circle of current and former GetReligionistas) asking whether or not I will write this post.

But first, before I get to the journalism question for this post, allow me to pause and discuss the meaning of a key term — “Byzantine.” Here is the word in context: To understand the following news story, journalists will need to enter the Byzantine world of Eastern Orthodox polity in North America.

The word “Byzantine,” when used as an adjective, has two definitions. First there is this:

… relating to Byzantium (now Istanbul), the Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Orthodox Church

Now, that meaning is — sort of — relevant in this case. But this second definition is the one that we need:

… (of a system or situation) excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.

When people ask questions about Eastern Orthodox “news,” I frequently have to remind them that Eastern Orthodoxy is not the Church of Rome. We do not have a pope, even if, from time to time, the ecumenical patriarch in Istanbul has tried to promote (with the help of many elite newsrooms) a papal vision of his “first among equals” role among Orthodox patriarchs, stressing “first” instead of “equals.” See: Ukraine.

With that in mind, let’s look at the GreekReporter.com story that ran with this headline: “First Greek Orthodox Baptism for Child of Gay Couple in Greece.” The question: Is this an important “news” story worthy of complex, balanced, accurate coverage in, let’s say, a mainstream publication such as The New York Times? Jumping ahead, my answer is “yes,” but with a heavy emphasis on “complex, balanced, accurate coverage.” Here is the whole story from Greece:

Evanggelos Bousis and Peter Dundas, both of Greek descent, became the first gay couple to hold a Greek Orthodox Baptism for their children in Greece. …

The couple’s children, Alexios and Eleni, were baptized by his Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America at the Panagia Faneromeni Church in the southern Athenian suburb of Vouliagmeni.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Yes, the Gray Lady made a somewhat understandable error in its stolen-tabernacle story

, , , , , ,
Yes, the Gray Lady made a somewhat understandable error in its stolen-tabernacle story

Let’s face it, liturgical traditions in ancient Christian flocks are complicated.

With that in mind, let me respond to an error in an otherwise solid story in The New York Times — the latest in what seems like an endless river of news reports about attacks on sanctuaries around the world. Our own Clemente Lisi has written many posts on this topic and, alas, it seems that journalists will be writing more crime stories of this kind in the future.

Here is the dramatic double-decker headline on this latest tragic story:

Theft of a Church’s Tabernacle Leaves More Than a Physical Void

A Brooklyn congregation condemned the desecration of their sacred sanctuary in a burglary that the pastor called “one more blow” to a struggling church.

As I said, this Times story does contain an error that I think is worth a correction.

However, I will have to admit that I read right past this error when I first saw this story and I can understand why it might have slipped past copy-desk professionals (unless a traditional Catholic was in the mix). Why would I have missed it? I’ll deal with that in a moment. First, here is the overture, which contains the error:

Deflated, Father Frank Tumino stepped into the pulpit at St. Francis Xavier Church in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning. Six blocks away, St. Augustine’s, the other church where he serves as pastor, was closed and cordoned off with police tape. At its center was a literal and figurative hole.

“This is just one more blow,” Father Tumino said after presiding over Mass. He was referring to the theft of St. Augustine’s tabernacle, a $2 million gold treasure that was separated from its 19th-century foundation last week with a power saw before presumably vanishing into the murky underground of stolen artifacts.

The ornate tabernacle box that held the eucharist — the wine and consecrated wafers that the faithful believe embody Jesus Christ — disappeared from the Park Slope church’s sanctuary sometime between last Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon, the police said.

The error?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

Ukraine's oldest Orthodox Church seeks independence, while the Lavra monastery is at risk

, , , , , , ,
Ukraine's oldest Orthodox Church seeks independence, while the Lavra monastery is at risk

This was a very important weekend in the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine and Russia — for those (including journalists) who believe that religious traditions and symbols matter as much as statements by government officials and headlines in Western media.

At the center of the drama, of course, was the city of Kiev, as it is known in to Russians and many Ukrainians, and Kyiv, as it is known to many Ukrainians, as well as officials in the United States and the European Union.

Here’s the quotation I keep thinking about, drawn from a historian (and Orthodox priest) I interviewed for a 2018 column that ran with this headline: “A thousand years of Orthodox history loom over today’s Moscow-Istanbul clash.” That quote: "Kiev is the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church is Kiev." From this point of view, the churches of Ukraine and Russia are brothers, connected by centuries of shared history — good and bad — and Orthodox tradition.

The crucial issue, in many ways, is one the press seems to think is secondary — the future of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the font of Orthodox spirituality in the Slavic world.

Let’s start with two short wire-service reports and, along the way, I will point readers to some crucial documents that add more depth and clues as to what is happening. First, from the Associated Press:

KYIV, Ukraine — The leaders of the Orthodox churches in Ukraine that were affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church have adopted measures declaring the church’s full independence and criticizing the Russian church’s leader for his support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Orthodoxy, the largest religious denomination in Ukraine, is divided between churches that had been loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate and those under a separate ecclesiastical body.

The council of the Moscow-connected body, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, on Friday said it “condemns the war as a violation of God’s commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ ... and expresses disagreement with the position of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia regarding the war in Ukraine.”

It also adopted charter changes “indicating the full self-sufficiency and independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”

Note, in the lede, the assumption that simply saying that this has happened means that it has happened, as in the “leaders of the Orthodox churches in Ukraine that were affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Now, the official declarations (click here for details) made by the leaders of the oldest Orthodox body in Ukraine — usually called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) — are very serious and they were accompanied by changes in WORSHIP that, for the Orthodox, are even more important than words on paper.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Pizza, beer and guys talking books: Lessons from the Hall of Men on the Kansas plains

, , , , , , , ,
Pizza, beer and guys talking books: Lessons from the Hall of Men on the Kansas plains

WICHITA, Kan. — The Hall of Men fits the name, with meetings offering beer, cigars, an open bar, some kind of guy food (think pizza) and lots of chatter around a giant wooden table.

But then there are the evening prayers, icons, Bible readings and lectures about authors whose portraits hang in this “Christian speakeasy.” The names include C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, W.H. Auden, Dorothy Sayers, Fyodor Dostoevsky, J.R.R. Tolkien and many others. Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan are there, as well.

This group has met twice a month for a dozen years and most of the faithful are Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran, with plenty of evangelicals at special events. The authors honored are selected after an informal process that usually starts during fellowship before and after lectures, with men talking about books that have touched their lives.”

The whole thing is affected by having that bookstore right next door,” said Pastor Geoff Boyle, a Missouri-Synod Lutheran long active in the project. “The man behind the front counter is used to having these conversations and obviously knows all about the books the guys are talking about. The books are right there and, if they’re not, they will be soon.”

“That bookstore” is Eighth Day Books, which draws customers from across the nation to an old three-story house with 46,000 new and used books — 27,000 titles — shelved and stacked anywhere that will hold them, including the basement “Hobbit Hole” packed with children’s literature. The white-haired man behind the counter is owner Warren Farha, an Orthodox believer with family ties to Lebanon.

This isn’t a “Christian bookstore” complete with knick-knacks, inspirational posters and religious self-help books — but “Eighth Day” is a reference to the Resurrection of Jesus.

Farha created the store in 1988 and selects all the books, with the help of an ecumenical network woven into the Eighth Day Institute and its conferences, newsletters, podcasts and groups such as the Hall of Men and the Sisters of Sophia.

“My goal has always been to be fair to the great traditions,” said Farha, in his office in the bookstore’s attic. “We have classics in history, literature, poetry, church history, theology and philosophy – Christian writings through the ages. … I’m always listening to people who GET the template for what we’re doing here.

“Great books from different traditions are on the shelves right next to each other, even if they clash in ways that we need to discuss.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Left and right: Where do U.S. religious groups stand on abortion-rights issues?

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Left and right: Where do U.S. religious groups stand on abortion-rights issues?

THE QUESTION:

Where do major U.S. religious groups stand on the contentious abortion issue?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

If the U.S. Supreme Court enacts that draft decision leaked to Politico, within weeks abortion policies will be returned to the 50 states for decision, adding to contention. Religious groups often consider the claims of the two lives, mother and unborn fetus, rather than this as simply a woman’s “decisions about her own body” per Vice President Kamala Harris’s formulation. Here are summaries of some major religious views.

It’s well-known that the Catholic Church, the largest religious body in the U.S. (and worldwide), profoundly abhors abortion, A 1965 decree from the world’s bishops at the Second Vatican Council declares that “from the moment of its conception, life must be guarded with the greatest care,” and calls abortion and infanticide “unspeakable crimes” against humanity. The church’s Catechism says the same and dates this belief back to Christianity’s first century (citing Didache 2:2 and Epistle of Barnabas 19:5).

These statements do not permit any exceptions. But a 1993 ruling from the Vatican office on doctrine, approved by Pope John Paul II, allowed removal of a woman’s uterus (hysterectomy) in “medically indicated” cases that “counter an immediate serious threat to the life or health of the mother” even though sterilization results. A 2019 follow-up defined other rare cases. Since abortion is only the directly intended killing of a fetus, some moral theologians would apply this principle when loss of a fetus is a “secondary effect” of necessary surgery.

America’s Eastern Orthodox hierarchy has joined with Catholic leaders to affirm “our common teaching that life begins at the earliest moments of conception” and is “sacred” through all stages of development. However, America’s 53-member Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops acknowledges “rare but serious medical instances where mother and child may require extraordinary actions.”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) advocated nationwide abortion on demand fully a decade before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade liberalization, stating that limitations are “an affront to human life and dignity.” It specifically endorsed abortion rights in cases of “grave impairment” of the mother’s “physical or mental health,” a child’s “serious physical or mental defect,” rape or incest, or any “compelling reason — physical, psychological, mental, spiritual or economic.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , ,

Concerning the new converts to Eastern Orthodoxy: Are they MAGA clones or worse?

, , , , , , , , , , ,
Concerning the new converts to Eastern Orthodoxy: Are they MAGA clones or worse?

Yes, to all of those who have written — I have seen the National Public Radio feature that ran with this headline: “Orthodox Christian churches are drawing in far-right American converts.”

It would be hard to imagine a more vicious, one-sided propaganda piece than this one and, if you want to see a blow-by-blow breakdown, read this post by Orthodox convert Rod Dreher: “The Cathedral Vs. The Orthodox Church.”

Rod is using the term “cathedral” as a reference to a particular set of elite media and cultural institutions on what used to be called the “left.” Needless to say, NPR — like the editorial pages of The New York Times — plays a crucial doctrinal role in this cathedral. Dreher (a close friend for nearly 30 years) notes, right up top, concerning this NPR sermon:

… I concede that it is based on a kernel of truth: some outsiders are finding their way to Orthodoxy, thinking that it will be the far right at prayer. A friend who attends a large parish told me last year that they are seeing some young men showing up with that in mind, only to find out otherwise. Let me be clear at the start of this essay that I concede that this phenomenon is not invented out of whole cloth.

In my own small parish, we have seen a surge of young inquirers, but they are coming not with far-right politics in mind, but because they are looking for something more stable and deeper than the churches they had been attending. And yes, it is true that some come because they correctly sense that Orthodoxy is much less likely to surrender to the wokeness that is infesting many Protestant and Catholic congregations. Note well, though, that to NPR, all of this is “far-right.”

Veteran GetReligion readers will know that I am a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, as well — coming from a Texas Baptist family with several members in the center of Southern Baptist life. If you want to know more about my own journey, see this lecture/essay from 2006: “What do the converts want?”

When people ask why I converted, my short response is that I was seeking a beautiful, conservative, ancient form of Christian tradition that didn’t include ties to American fundamentalism. Since my conversion 23 years ago, I have talked to — conservative estimate — several hundred converts in various settings, including my own parishes.

I would like to focus on the most obvious errors of omission and commission in the NPR piece — an important detail or two about the actual history of the “convert era” in “American” Orthodoxy, which began in the 1980s (click here for link to a crucial book). But first, here is the overture:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Angels and demons: Orthodox pain woven into this year's Pascha epistles in Ukraine

, , , , ,
Angels and demons: Orthodox pain woven into this year's Pascha epistles in Ukraine

With the barrage of horrors from Ukraine, it wasn't hard to distinguish between the messages released by the Eastern Orthodox leaders of Russia and Ukraine to mark Holy Pascha, the feast known as Easter in the West.

The epistle from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill offered hope for this life and the next. But his text contained only one possible reference to the fighting in Ukraine, which the United Nations says has claimed the lives of 3,000 civilians, at the very least.

"In the light of Pascha everything is different," wrote the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. "We are not afraid of any mundane sorrows, afflictions and worldly troubles, and even difficult circumstances of these troubled times do not seem so important in the perspective of eternity granted unto us."

But the first lines of the message released by Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine placed this Pascha in a radically different context -- a clash between good and evil, right now. It was released on April 25th, the day after Orthodox Christians celebrated Pascha according to the ancient Julian calendar.

This letter was especially symbolic since Metropolitan Onuphry leads Ukraine's oldest Orthodox body, one with strong ties to the giant Russian Orthodox Church.

"The Lord has visited us with a special trial and sorrow this year. The forces of evil have gathered over us," he wrote. "But we neither murmur nor despair" because Pascha is "a celebration of the triumph of good over evil, truth over falsehood, light over darkness. The Resurrection of Christ is the eternal Pascha, in which Christ our Savior and Lord translated us from death to life, from hell to Paradise."

The contrast between these messages underlined a complex reality in Orthodox life after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a land cruelly oppressed by the Soviet Union, but with strong Russian roots through the "Baptism of Rus" in 988. That was when, following the conversion of Prince Vladimir, there was a mass baptism of the people of Kiev -- celebrated for a millennium as the birth of Slavic Christianity.

Metropolitan Onuphry and other Orthodox hierarchs with historic ties to Moscow have openly opposed the Russian invasion, while trying to avoid attacks on the Russian Orthodox Church. The bottom line: Leaders of ancient Orthodox churches will ultimately, at the global level, need to address these conflicts.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Great and Holy Pascha in Ukraine: Details matter when war crashes into holiest day of the year

, , , , , , , ,
Great and Holy Pascha in Ukraine: Details matter when war crashes into holiest day of the year

Once a copy-desk fanatic, always a copy-desk fanatic. If you ever get caught up in obscure debates about items in the Associated Press Stylebook, then you’re trapped. You see picky style issues all over the place.

This is certainly true on the religion beat. Readers may recall that the AP team recently updated and expanding some of the style bible’s references to religious terms, history, etc. See this recent post and podcast: “Can the AP Stylebook team slow down the creation of new Godbeat 'F-bombs'?”

This brings me to the most important holy day on the Eastern Orthodox Christian calendar — it’s called Pascha and you may have heard that the ancient churches of the East celebrate it according to the older Julian calendar. It’s complicated, but there are times when East is East and West is West.

Pascha is certainly one of those times. OrthodoxWiki notes:

Pascha is a transliteration of the Greek word, which is itself a transliteration of the Aramaic pascha, from the Hebrew pesach meaning Passover. A minority of English-speaking Orthodox prefer the English word "Pasch."

Here is the note that I’d like the AP style pros to think about. It is also accurate to say that this holy day is, in the West, called “Easter.” Thus, we frequently see the term “Orthodox Easter” in the mainstream press. In fact, that is pretty much the only language that we see in news reports about this holy day.

Here me say this: As a journalist who is an Orthodox Christian (and a former copy-desk guy). I get it. I know that “Orthodox Easter” is a quick way to save some ink that journalists would have to use to offer an explanation of, well, Pascha.

But the word “Pascha” is real and it’s ancient and it has great meaning to the second largest Christian communion on the Planet Earth. If you are writing about Orthodox believers at this time of the year, why not use both terms in the story? Why avoid THE WORD. (Oh, and the name of our eucharistic rite is the “Divine Liturgy,” not “Mass.”)

This is an important issue, at the moment, because you have a war going on (whatever Vladimir Putin wants to call it) in the season of Pascha between Russia and Ukraine — two lands with centuries of shared history rooted in Orthodox Christianity.


Please respect our Commenting Policy