American Orthodox

Often I find myself being criticized for taking up political themes in my writing or speaking. Typically (in an America context at least) I am chastised for aligning myself with the political or Religious Right. While there is some truth to this, I think as the Catholic journalist and commentator John Allen points out in a recent essay (“Spain takes a page from the US pro-life playbook” ), critics conveniently ignore “the fact that the church’s political alignment in a given culture often depends on factors beyond its control. In both Europe and the States, one such variable is how open the political left is to pro-life sentiment. To put the point bluntly, if pro-lifers (including Catholics) can’t find a home on the left, many of them are obviously going to end up on the right.”

Allen’s observation about the Catholic Church’s response to political currents I can certainly claim as my own. Additionally, I think his view of the centerist inclination of the Catholic Church here is applicable to the Orthodox Church. “In politics, as in most everything else, the genetic disposition of Catholicism is to seek the sane center. When the church careens away from the center, it’s often because external circumstances have shoved it in that direction.”

What might this means for the Orthodox Church’s witness in the Public Square and for her internal life? Continue reading →

Both on the AOI blog and my own my post, “Pentecost, Lincoln and the American Experiment,” brought some very interesting and thought provoking comments. Your thoughts have helped me think a bit more deeply about the relationship between the Tradition of the Orthodox Church and the American Experiment. For this I thank you all.

And even more importantly, your words were very much in mind as I read Michael Baxter recent review of American Babylon: Notes of A Christian in Exile, by the late Fr Richard John Neuhaus.

As is no doubt clear from what I wrote, I do not see Orthodoxy and the American Experiment as necessarily in opposition to each other. Or maybe it might be more accurate to say, that the differences between Orthodoxy and America are certainly no wider or deeper than what one would expect between that between God and Caesar, between the City of God which is to come and the City of Man which is here and now.
Be that as it may, however, my interest in political philosophy is motivated by the intuition that—for better and worse—the City of Man conditions the pastoral situation of the Church until the Kingdom which is to come. Continue reading →

St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary has announced the topic for its summer institute and a very interesting lineup of speakers. The full announcement is available on the OCA site here. HT: orrologion

CRESTWOOD, NY [SVS/May 13, 2009] — Recent exchanges of views about Orthodoxy in America, the role of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the forthcoming pan-Orthodox sessions that will deliberate on the “diaspora,” emphasize how vital it is to reflect upon events that shaped the current landscape. As a foundational part of its mission, Saint Vladimir’s Seminary is a venue where controversial topics can be discussed openly and freely.

The seminary will host a summer conference titled, “The Council and the Tomos: Twentieth-century Landmarks towards a Twenty-first-century Church,” June 18-20, 2009. Conference speakers will focus on two watersheds that have shaped the Orthodox Church in America (OCA): the All-Russian Council (Sobor) of 1917-1918, and the Tomos of Autocephaly granted in 1970 by the Russian Orthodox Church to its daughter church, the Orthodox Church in America, then known as the “North American Diocese.” The conference will address the significance of the OCA’s presence in North America, and future paths and possibilities open to it, including its interface with the multi-jurisdictional Orthodox Christian communities in the US and Canada.