AOI – The American Orthodox Institute – USA

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?

The following prayer was offered by Fr. John A. Peck (see his Orthodox Church of Tomorrow below) at the Prescott (Ariz.) City Council meeting on Sept. 9. Fr. John is pastor of Prescott Orthodox Church, The “Mile High” Mission.

Invocation Prayer
O God, the God of principalities and powers, authorities and dominions, we ask You to send Your Most Holy, Good and Life-Creating Spirit upon this noble assembly, that You may bless what we do, and that we may do what You bless. Strengthen us to labor without partiality or favor for the increase of prosperity to the benefit of all Your people, to establish Your peace and Your justice among men.

Guide us by Your Holy Spirit that we may not tolerate in our midst those who would lie, cheat or steal, who would circumvent justice for the righteous, or reward the transgressor.

For You are the benefactor of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and to You we ascribe glory, together with Your Father, Who is from everlasting, and Your Most Holy, Good and Life-Creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

A little legal background: The constitutionality of the [Congressional] chaplains’ prayers was upheld in 1983 by the Supreme Court (Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783) on the grounds of precedent and tradition. The Court cited the practice going back to the Continental Congress in 1774 and noted that the custom “is deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country” from colonial times and the founding of the republic. Further, the Court held that the use of prayer “has become part of the fabric of our society,” coexisting with “the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.”

A new American Orthodoxy, one more vitalized by the Gospel, is taking shape now. There will be fewer parishes, more and younger bishops, a clergy that is better educated and morally rigorous. And, finally, the ethnic “coffee club” model of Orthodox Christianity will fade away. This is the vision of Fr. John A. Peck in “The Orthodox Church of Tomorrow,” just published on the AOI site.

“As frightening and disconcerting as it may seem to our leaders, they will learn that emerging from a cocoon, even a Byzantine cocoon, is not a bad thing,” Fr. John writes. “Orthodoxy is about to take flight on new beautiful wings.

Here he is on the future of the hierarchy in America:

If our current slate of bishops has been mostly a disappointment, reducing their number will only tighten this closed circle, making the hierarchy less and less accessible, and more and more immune to things like, oh, the needs and concerns of their flock. The process of selection for the episcopacy will contain a far more thorough investigation, and men with active homosexual tendencies, psychological problems, insecurities, or addictions will simply not make the cut. We aren’t far from open persecution of Christians by secularists in this country, and we need bishops who know the score. With better bishops, no one will be able to ‘buy’ a priest out of a parish with a gift of cash. Conversely, parish councils will no longer be able to bully priests into staying out of their affairs, and will be required to get out of the restaurant/festival business and get into the soul saving business.

Salvo describes itself as a magazine committed to “deconstructing the damaging cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded the appetite for transcendence.” Editor Bobby Maddex says Salvo aims for the type of reader that is “open-minded enough to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and invariably, it leads to Christ and his teachings.” Maddex spoke recently with Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse, president of the American Orthodox Institute. Read the entire interview on the AOI site. Here’s a quote from Bobby:

Our “vibe,” as you call it, was selected to counter the lies emanating from some of the hipper, youth-oriented, and hugely popular newsstand magazines-such as Rolling Stone and Wired. We were tired of the monopoly that these publications had on slick, edgy, and highly ironic content, especially since the worldviews that inhere in such content are so nihilistic, materialistic, and immoral. We are trying to fight fire with fire, using the rhetorical and design tactics of our competition, but in the service of Truth and right living rather than narcissism and a do-what-feels-good behavioral ethic.

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.