Month: February 2010

FOCUS North America Board Member, Theodora Polamalu, and her husband Troy, two-time Super Bowl Champion, have partnered with FOCUS North America on the “Tackle Poverty with the Polamalu Family” campaign.

Troy and Theodora realize the great need in North America and are dedicated to doing something about it. Recognizing that the poor, needy and suffering are living icons, they choose to venerate them with love and compassion by living out the gospel as related in Matthew 25 to the fullest extent.

Theodora said, “What inspired us to become involved with FOCUS is the commitment to the poor domestically, from an Orthodox perspective.” She further says that, “FOCUS implements unconditional love and a genuine interest in each individual that is served so that by God’s mercy, people are being exposed to Christ’s Church, Christ’s Holy Apostolic Church, every time they are received by FOCUS.”
Continue reading →

His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah will be conducting a two day lenten retreat in the Baltimore-Washington area on the topic:

Three Foundations of Orthodox Spirituality – Reaction, Resentment, and Inner Stillness

Metropolitan Jonah

Call or write Melissa Edens at (443) 919-7091or tillie2@ix.netcom.com to reserve a space today.

The Orthodox Church of St. Matthew is located at 7271 Eden Brook Drive, Columbia, MD 21046 www.stmatthewoca.org

HT: Notes on Arab Orthodoxy

The interview was presumably conducted in English, posted in Russian here, translated to French here by Claude Lopez-Ginisty, whence the present translation.

We’re speaking in London with a new Orthodox Christian who was baptized today with the name Daniel. Daniel is not a Muslim name, far from it [actually, it does exist as a Muslim name, but it’s quite rare]. Although information about his conversion will inevitably circulate among the Muslims of London, for reasons of security we will not deliberately give details about this subject because there are very often cases of threats and violence and sometimes even murders perpetrated by fanatics. That said, Daniel’s experience is very precious for the Orthodox. Fr. Nicholas Savtchenko, interim rector of the Church of the Dormition (ROCOR) in London speaks with him.

Daniel, please tell us about yourself.

For many years I was a zealous Muslim, as were my wife and children. I was born in the UK, but during my life I have travelled a lot in Muslim countries. I knew both British and Muslim culture. I lived in Saudi Arabia, where I studied theology and contributed to the Muslim mission among foreign laborers. I also spent time in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, in Pakistan, and in the Pakistani part of Kashmir. I also spent time in Bosnia. In recent years, I’ve been living with my family in London, where, some time ago, I became the Muslim representative in a well-known inter-religious organization dedicated to peace. For the past two years, I was an advisor on Islam to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Two days ago, I called him to tell him I was entering Orthodoxy in the Russian Church.

Continue reading →

Attention New York readers: Wesley J. Smith, author and occassional commentator on the AOI Blog will be in New York on Thursday, March 4 to sign his new book. From First Things:

First Things and Encounter Books

Invite You To An Evening With

Wesley J. Smith

To celebrate the publication of

A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement

Date: Thursday, March 4, 2010

Time: 6:00 PM

Location: First Things Editorial Offices

35 East 21st Street, Sixth Floor
New York City 10010

Contact: Please RSVP by February 26th to Lauren Miklos
lmiklos@encounterbooks.com or call 212.871.5741

Wesley J. Smith, a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute, is the author of the prizewinning Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, as well as Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World and Forced Exit: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, and the New Duty to Die. He blogs regularly at Secondhand Smoke, a First Things blog. He lives in Castro Valley, California, with his wife, the syndicated columnist Debra J. Saunders.

“Like every antidemocratic ideology, this one [animal rights] is by definition antihuman, and like any antihuman ideology, it ultimately deteriorates into a nihilistic bitterness that is anti-life. . . . Wesley J. Smith knows too well that if the activists ever succeeded in their goals, if they established through culture or law that human beings have no intrinsic dignity greater than that of any animal, the world would not be a better place for either humankind or animals.”
—Dean Koontz