secularism

Albert Mohler: Vanishing Christianity — A Lesson from the Presbyterians

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Albert Mohler

AlbertMohler.com

“Liberal Protestantism, in its determined policy of accommodation with the secular world, has succeeded in making itself dispensable.” That was the judgment of Thomas C. Reeves in The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Protestantism, published in 1996. Fast-forward another fourteen years and it becomes increasingly clear that liberal Protestantism continues its suicide — with even greater theological accommodations to the secular worldview.

The latest evidence for this pattern is found in a report just released by The Presbyterian Panel, a research group that serves the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) [PCUSA]. The panel’s report is presented as a “Religious and Demographic Profile of Presbyterians, 2008.” The report contains relatively few surprises, but it is filled with data about the beliefs of Presbyterian laypersons and clergy.
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Patriarch Kirill & Pope Benedict: A Tale of Two Leaders for a new Missionary Age

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I’ve been asked to become an Orthodox columnist on Catholic.org and accepted. Below is my first essay. Regular readers will notice ideas we discussed on the AOI Observer.

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Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Pope Benedict and Patriarch Kirill know that virtue is the only bulwark against oppression. That’s why they exhort their flocks to moral virtue in almost identical language.

NAPLES, FL. (Catholic Online) – Over four decades ago Pope John Paul II said that the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church was necessary for the cultural restoration of Western Europe. At the time his words seemed audacious. Russia was still under the Communist yoke, the winds in Poland were just starting to blow, and the Berlin wall loomed invincible.

Culture watchers dismissed the statement as the wistful longing of a faithful man. Yet John Paul, with his gift of seeing through the clutter of immediate events into the deeper and far-reaching ways of God, knew better. He believed that the fall of Communism would unleash a transformation that could only come from those who suffered.

His words are proving true. The Orthodox Church in Russia, after 80 years of brutal persecution, is emerging not only as a religious force in Europe, but also as the new leader in worldwide Orthodox Christianity. More Christians have been killed for their faith in the last century than all other centuries combined. Many of them were the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe.

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Archbishop Hilarion: The Church has been granted the Primate required by our troubled time

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Compare the vision expressed below with recurring missteps like Orphangate, the uncritical embrace of global warming activism, assertions of ethnic supremacy (Hellenism uber alles?), the flattering of politicians, and the like and ask yourself: –Who really gets it? –Who has the better grasp of the crisis in Western culture? –Who really comprehends that any resolution to that crisis is moral and religious?

“The Church has been granted the Primate required by our troubled time.” An interview of Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk to “Interfax-Religion”

– What changes in the Russian Orthodox Church since 1 February 2010 have been most obvious and impressive?

– The election and enthronement of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill have, undoubtedly, been the most important events in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church last year. By the will of the Holy Spirit and through the election by the Local Council, the Church has been granted the Primate required by our troubled time, a time of impetuous changes and everyday challenges.

Today our Church is facing an unprecedented task to teach an active faith in Christ to people who have heard of Him but failed to listen to Him, to bring nominal Christians to the wholesome life in Christ. This task demands that the whole Church should exert maximum efforts, interpret creatively and sometimes even critically of what has been done or undone, and reflect fruitfully on what is to be done in future. A particular responsibility in this context is placed on those people who are entrusted with governing the Church. Therefore, a cost of a mistake, of an erroneous assessment of the situation, a wrong or irrational straining of efforts could be catastrophically high.

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Russian Orthodox Church opens seminary in France

‘Europe, spiritual homeland’

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In “For Rome and Moscow, It’s Spring Again,” Sandro Magister on Chiesa looks at the book, in Italian and Russian, presented to Pope Benedict recently by Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk. It is a collection of the main speeches of Benedict, as cardinal and pope, on European culture made over the past ten years.

Pope Benedict and Abp. Hilarion

The title of the book is taken from an expression that Benedict used in Prague: “Europa, patria spirituale [Europe, spiritual homeland].” Magister translated the archbishop’s introduction (excerpts reprinted below). But listen to his amazement:

Those who expect an Orthodox Church removed from time, made up only of remote traditions and archaic liturgies, will come away shaken from reading the introduction to this book.

[ … ]

The image that emerges from it is that of a Russian Orthodox Church that refuses to let itself be locked up in a ghetto, but on the contrary hurls itself against the secularist onslaught with all the peaceful weapons at its disposal, not excluding civil disobedience against laws “that oblige the commission of a sin in the eyes of God.”

It is a text that is also striking for its frank, politically incorrect language, unusual for the pen of a high Church authority.

As you read Archbishop Hilarion’s words, note the stark contrast to the formulations of neo-dhimmitude we’ve been receiving non-stop from the Phanar of late. May God grant this bishop many years.

The help that the Russian Orthodox Church can give to Europe

by Hilarion Alfeyev, Archbishop of Volokolamsk

Introduction to: Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, “Europa, patria spirituale,” Moscow/Rome, 2009

When traveling in Europe, especially in the traditionally Protestant countries, I am always astonished at seeing not a few churches abandoned by their congregations, especially the ones turned into pubs, clubs, shops, or places of profane activities of yet another kind. There is something profoundly deplorable in this sad spectacle. I come from a country in which for many decades the churches were used for nonreligious purposes. Many places of worship were completely destroyed, others were turned into “museums of atheism,” and still others modified to be used as secular institutions. This was one of the traits of the so-called “militant atheism” that dominated for seventy years in my country, and collapsed only in fairly recent times. But what is the cause of similar phenomena in Western Europe? Why has the space for religion in Western society been reduced in such a significant way in recent decades? Why does religion have less and less space in the public sphere? And again: why has this contraction of the religious presence in Europe coincided with processes of consolidation on the political, financial, economic, and social level? […] Continue reading →

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