Barack Obama

A very timely story yesterday in the Wall Street Journal by Andrew Higgins about a land dispute between Syriac Orthodox monastery Mor Gabriel and Turkish authorities. Also yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, during a stop in Ankara, announced that President Obama will be visiting Turkey “in a month or so.” She said this toward the end of her public remarks:

I reiterate the Obama Administration’s support for Turkey’s membership in the European Union. The United States believes it will strengthen Turkey, Europe, and our transatlantic partnership. The United States continues to support the UN-sponsored talks now taking place to achieve a settlement of the Cyprus conflict based on reunification of the island as a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. We talked about Turkey’s democracy, its multiethnic heritage, and in that context, I raised the importance that we place on reopening the Halki Seminary and efforts to reach out to all of Turkey’s communities.

For the Journal story about Mor Gabriel, Higgins interviewed Bishop Timotheus Samuel Aktas, abbot of the ancient monstery, who claims that the surrounding villagers and local government officials simply want the Christian community to “go away.”

Here’s a snippet from “Defending the Faith — Battle Over a Christian Monastery Tests Turkey’s Tolerance of Minorities” [registration required]:

A big obstacle is Turkey’s continuing tensions with its ethnic minorities, notably the Kurds, who account for more than 15% of the population and are battling for greater autonomy. Also fraught, but more under the radar, is the situation confronting members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, one of the world’s oldest and most beleaguered Christian communities. The group’s fate is now seen as a test of Turkey’s ability to accommodate groups at odds with “Turkishness,” a legal concept of national identity that has at times been used to suppress minority groups. Continue reading →

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios announced yesterday that Bishop Savas of Troas, most recently the chancellor of the archdiocese, has been named director of the Office of Church and Society. The bishop will be charged with developing “programs and ministries that promote a creative Orthodox Christian engagement with contemporary societal and cultural realities.”

Readers of this blog will recall the effusive praise with which Bishop Savas greeted the election of Barack Obama, rejoicing that “this is the day that the Lord has made!” Yesterday, the Obama administration moved to rescind a Bush administration regulation, put in place in December, that cuts off federal funding for medical facilities that would force doctors, nurses and other health care workers to participate in practices, such as abortion, that “they feel violates their personal, moral or religious beliefs.” The move to lift the so-called “conscience rule,” which is subject to a 30 day public comment period, was applauded by pro-abortion activists and condemned by religious conservatives.

Perhaps the bishop, in his first official act, could issue a sharply worded statement and go on radio and TV to criticize the Obama administration for its attempt to overturn the health care “conscience rule” and pointing out how removing legal protections for religious belief in the workplace advances the culture of death. There’s a “contemporary societal and cultural” reality for you. Continue reading →

A word of warning from Joseph Loconte on the seductive appeal of government funding for Church-based social ministries. Loconte, a senior research fellow at The King’s College in New York City, says that the faith-based initiative, as it’s being reformulated under the Obama administration, will likely be filtered though a Religious Left/Social Gospel ideology which holds that “compassion is defined by government budgets and delivered by government agents.” From my point of view, the faith-based initiative has always been problematical because it surrenders the autonomy of the Church, and its ancient ethic of freely given charity, to federal bureaucrats. The danger here is the secularization of social ministries and a dependence on federal funding. Just say no.

Witness the bizarre debate that erupted in 2001, recently revived by Obama, about the right of religious organizations to make faith commitment a criterion for employment. Earlier this week, the New York Times demanded that the president revoke this right — the freedom of association, that is, once considered intrinsic to democracy — for churches and charities that receive government support. The writers at the Times failed to mention that the 1964 Civil Rights Act (banning employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion) nevertheless upheld this freedom for faith-based organizations, allowing them to choose staff for religious reasons. Until recently, it did not occur to policymakers to accuse the venerable Jewish Social Service Agency of discrimination for hiring Jews, or to insist that the Salvation Army, an evangelical ministry, open its employment posts to atheists. Continue reading →

John Mark Reynolds observes in the Washington Post that President Obama’s liberal Christian theology “represents a last chance for a faith that has been in decline in the West since the 1950s.” Reynolds, an Orthodox Christian, blogs at The Scriptorium Daily along with other faculty from the Torrey Honors Institute, a great books program at Biola University for which he is founder and director.

Reynolds:

President Obama has a chance at greatness, but Tuesday demonstrated that his theology could undermine him. Bush is gone and Obama can no longer simply not be George W. Bush to succeed. He has taken the Oath of Office and now must govern.

Of course, Obama could not truly fail on Tuesday.

Seeing him take the Oath of Office, the mere image, was a great moment for the nation, but his speech failed to add anything to the greatness. President Obama made history by being elected, but great presidents govern. The picture of the swearing in will make every child’s American history book, but nothing he said will improve on the image.

Being a change from the past will not be enough in the years to come. Republics never stand still and our culture demands daily vision or the leader will perish. President Obama is not some medieval monarch who can cure evil with a touch. He will have to govern.

Tuesday’s speech strained for greatness and failed. One can imagine a group of men and women sitting down and saying, “What is a great Inaugural speech? Let’s define our terms, study past models, describe a great speech, and then write one.” Anyone who has, like I have, been a member of a liberal Christian church recognizes the process and heard the mediocre product in the text of the Obama oration. Continue reading →

The Washington Times’ Julia Duin interviews Metropolitan Jonah who, she says, is enjoying an “Obama moment” because of his relative youth and sudden rise to prominence.

In Duin’s interview, the Metropolitan said he wants to expand outreach to youth and on college campuses.

“The thing I am most concerned about is the despair that grips so many of the young people in our culture,” he said.

“There is so much nihilism and atheism, all a result of the broken families, drugs, social and economic ills that grip our culture. So many of the young are in a state of existential despair.”

Why Orthodoxy?

“It is a very integrated way of life,” he said. “It’s a lifestyle, a way of self-denial as a way to greater fulfillment. It is a way of spiritual discipline to help people to bring themselves under control so they are not possessed by anger, lust and the seven deadly sins.”

He was persuaded to join Orthodoxy through the reading of one book: “The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church” by Vladimir Lossky.

Read the entire article here. Free registration may be required.