Author: Fr. Johannes Jacobse

The Human Life Foundation awarded its “Great Defender of Life” to Wesley J. Smith last month for his tireless work in defense of human life. I’ve admired Mr. Smith’s work for years, have read most of his books, and even reviewed one for Town Hall a few years back. His books are invaluable in keeping you informed about the relentless assault on human dignity waged behind closed doors in our culture. You are not informed about these issues unless you are familiar with his work.

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Reflections on the American Orthodox experience by foreign leaders are often interesting. Sometimes they are even insightful. That’s what we see in the recent interview with Bp. Hilarion of Vienna and Austria conducted by Dr. Peter Bouteneff, Associate Professor of Dogmatic Theology at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York. Discussion ranged from the American jurisdictional divisions, proper ecclesiology, the failure of ecumenical initiatives, to Bp. Hilarion’s musical compositions (The Passion of St. Matthew).

Some highlights:

Your Grace, as an archpastor and scholar, with experience both within the Moscow Patriarchate and globally, you have reflected on a vast array of topics, many of which are now of key importance to us in the Orthodox Church in America as we prepare to meet in council and elect a new primate. While we in America reflect on the origins of our autocephaly, the recent scandal in our Church, and the challenges we face, how do you see a way forward for us?

I find it helpful here to recall the history of more than two centuries of Orthodox presence in North America. Orthodoxy came to North America from Russia through Alaska (which, as Governor Sarah Palin has recently reminded us, is “sort of near the eastern border of Russia”). The roots of Orthodoxy in North America lie with St. Herman of Alaska, who came to Alaska in 1794 and spent more than 40 years there, and St. Innocent (Veniaminov), the future metropolitan of Moscow. In 1872, five years after the sale of Alaska to America, the see of the Russian bishop was transferred to San Francisco. From 1898 to 1907 St. Tikhon, future Patriarch of Russia, governed the diocese. It was he who organized the all-American council of 1907, which renamed the diocese as the “Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in North America.” Thus began the future autocephalous American Orthodox Church.

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James G. Jatras, foreign affairs policy expert and advisor to AOI, faced challenges by Muslim scholars who contend that Americans are “Islamophobic” among other charges on Press TV. View the video:

Why Should the Islamic World Feel Besieged?

Turning Cows into Ideas
Roger Scruton, philosopher & farmer, tells us how to make farms profitable even if no one buys a thing:

Very few farms are profitable, and ours exists more…as a rural consultancy and ideas factory. Our neighbors turn grass into milk and make a loss; we turn grass into ideas and make a profit. We keep horses of our own, which we look after, and allow our neighbors to use the pasture for their cows: cows too, viewed from the window, can easily be made into ideas. We also keep chickens, and occasionally pigs, which we turn into sausages, after their brief time as ideas.

Aging, Individualism, and Our Middle-Class Dreams
Peter Augustine Lawler, ethicist and critic, tells us how caring for the old competes with our work-a-day society’s love of freedom and laboring:

Surely there is little worse than to have Alzheimer’s and be alone…Yet the currents of our time push us almost inescapably in this lonely direction. Lives moved by a veneration of independence threaten to leave us unprepared for depending and being depended upon, and so actually to increase the burdens of long-term care for the dependent in our society. The inability to think clearly about the basic human need of caregiving—and so the inability to provide effectively for it—may be the price paid for all the undeniable and wonderful technological success that characterizes our time.

Vigen Guroian on Flannery O’Connor’s Iconographic Fiction and Christian humanism.

Stephen Gatlin decipher’s Francis Collins’ chatter about God.

T.L. Reed’s short story “Weight on Lilies” depicts aging and things left undone.

Bart Fleuren finds the endangered species Homo Economus Christianus in some Third Ways.

Adrienne Su’s poem “Fear of Flying” reminds us of what we know we know.

Read the announcement of Clarion’s Web launch on Christian Newswire.

The Clarion Review is published by the American Orthodox Institute, a research and educational organization that engages the cultural issues of the day within the Orthodox Christian moral tradition.