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HT: OrthodoxNet blog
Fr. John Peck
Read more of Fr. Peck’s writing at Preachers Institute and Journey to Orthodoxy. Fr. Peck pastors St. George Greek Orthodox Church.
By Fr. John Peck
First published in 2004.
First of all, let me begin by saying that it is my duty, as a priest and pastor, to impose moral standards on you. Part of my job and function is to teach Christian morality and to get us, as a body, to adhere to Christian moral standards, so before you come to me with complaints about the separation of Church and state, be aware that I am doing my duty in telling you what the Church, as the Body of Christ, teaches about life and responsibility.
Moral theology in the Orthodox Church in America is pretty loosey-goosey, as is clearly evidenced by the Reflections on Voting for Orthodox Christians article that was posted, at first anonymously, on the OCA website. I have said, and will say here, that a more poorly reasoned collection of moral mish-mush does not yet exist. If you have read it, you can see that what is being said behind the lines is, ‘Things like abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell experimentation are wrong, but we don’t like the candidate who stands against these things, and anyway, capital punishment is wrong, and harming the environment is wrong.’ The statement that we are forced to become ‘reluctant republicans’ or ‘reluctant democrats’ betrays the writer’s real concern, which is to look impartial politically. He would have been very welcome by the Soviets in Russia, as a Christian who does nothing about his Christianity…
I always liked reading computer magazines and still do. In the late 1980’s I heard of this thing called the internet, was intrigued by it and went out and bought a 9600 baud modem. A friend had given me a computer, Windows based in the days before VGA was even a standard (my first was an Apple IIc). I learned DOS and got to work. The modem was lightening fast in those days and there was only one Internet provider at the time, a national service called Delphi. AOL, Compuserve, all the others were yet to be invented.