athanasius

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Orthodox Christians have “a message and a way of life” that they must present as “an alternative to the morally and spiritually down-spiraling contemporary American lifestyle,” says Fr. Stanley Harakas, Archbishop Iakovos Professor of Orthodox Theology Emeritus at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology.

Fr. Harakas was the keynote speaker at Fordham University’s Orthodoxy in America lecture on Feb. 17. He said that St. Athanasius is a useful model for Orthodox Christians as they anticipate their future in this country because “his battles for the Orthodox faith, his acceptance of repeated exiles and his unrestrained resistance against opposing forces in high places earned him in history a description as Athanasius contra mundum, or ‘Athanasius against the world.'”

Also, Alexandria, the city in which St. Athanasius was born and raised, was, in the first few centuries of Christianity, “a pluralistic place, full of variety and within the Christianfold of a wide range of contrasting beliefs, especially about the person of Christ,” Father Harakas said. “In that vital and pluralistic context so similar to our own, the life of St. Athanasius stands out as a model for the Orthodox Church to prepare for its future in the United States.”

Fr. Harakas said that that Orthodox Christians can affirm constitutional principles of freedom and be good Americans when “we affirm our identity as Orthodox Christians, while acknowledging that others have the same right.”

“Neither secularism, nor capitalism, nor socialism, or any other ‘ism’ is an authentic component of what it means to be American,” Father Harakas added. “Freedom of belief, of worship, speech and political exercise are the only things that are authentically American.”