Theology

(HT: Orthodoxy Today)

The State of Kansas vs Frank Schaeffer in the Murder of Dr. George Tiller

By George C. Michalopulos

Recently, the notorious abortionist Dr George Tiller was gunned down in his church in Wichita, Kansas. The killer was a man who appears to be a dysfunctional loner with grave psychological problems. Nobody in the pro-life movement has stepped forward to applaud him or his actions; routine condemnation has been the order of the day.

One man however, has bravely stepped forward to take responsibility for this act. Frank Schaeffer, a self-described former member of the “Republican Party hate machine,” a group that included his father Francis Schaeffer, Jerry Falwell, and Ronald Reagan among many others, recently offered a mea-culpa in the left-wing journal The Huffington Post. Schaeffer believes that his life’s work as a young man in the Evangelical movement directly led to this incident because he helped create a “climate of fear” with his documentary (Whatever Happened to the Human Race?) and other work that made such atrocities like Tiller’s murder inevitable. As such, he puts himself in the pantheon artists like J. D. Salinger and Jodie Foster, whose ouvre inspired the murder of John Lennon and the attempted assassination of President Reagan.

On closer reading however, Schaeffer’s credibility is suspect from his first paragraph. He states that he “got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of [his] former hate-filled rhetoric.” Actually, he did no such thing. Sure, he may have abandoned the Evangelical Right, but as a new convert to Orthodoxy, he helped create an “Orthodox Right.” As for his abandonment of “hate-filled rhetoric,” one can read his various books and writings or view any of the numerous books and DVDs he produced since that time. There is more than enough venom against the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and secular humanism in the Schaeffer canon to choke a horse.

To be fair, it is possible that Schaeffer’s recollection of the “mid-1980s” extends to the years 2000-2002, in which he traveled the country barnstorming Orthodox Churches, telling them that America was going to hell in a hand-basket. One of his bugbears was abortion and the degradation of man. The other was the threat of Islamo-fascism. I first heard the term “Islamo-facism” in 2002 and it was from his lips. Schaeffer’s grave disappointment in President Bush actually started then, when he rightly saw Bush’s phrase that Islam was as a “religion of peace” as a sham. I got the impression sitting in the pews at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma that in Schaeffer’s mind, Bush should have taken up the Cross instead of placating the Islamic masses who were “an implacable enemy” of our civilization. Continue reading →

RIA Novosti is running a series on Russia’s religious sects. The news service takes a look at the history of some of these groups and their leaders, and also asks “why Russia has proved such fertile ground for the growth of new and bizarre beliefs.” Part one:

MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti’s Marc Bennetts) – Russia has seen a colossal number of sects and fringe religions throughout its long history, from the 18th-century self-castrating Skoptsy to the modern-day doomsday cult whose members threatened to burn themselves alive in the Volga Region last year.

Up until the mid 17th century, the Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed complete spiritual authority. However, in 1666, Patriarch Nikon decided to bring the Russian Church in line with Greek Orthodoxy, and ordered the rewriting of ecclesiastical tomes.

His move, in a country where dogma and tradition had always played a large role in religious life, caused an uproar.

Nikon’s assertion that Orthodox believers should use three fingers instead of two to cross themselves led to him being labeled the Antichrist by opponents of his changes. Pious Russians had long feared the year 1666, with its satanic associations, and Nikon’s actions seemed to them to be a sign that the Apocalypse was fast approaching.

The Old Believers subsequently fled to Siberia and other remote areas of Russia to escape persecution and await the end of the world. Some of the groups cut themselves off so effectively that isolated communities that knew little of developments in the modern world were still being found in the 1960s and 1970s by Soviet geological expeditions.

This 17th century rejection of the Church’s authority laid the roots for a subsequent explosion of sects and cults, many of them fixating on a single piece of scripture, or an interpretation of scripture, and basing their entire belief system around it. Continue reading →

The “Companion to the Greek Orthodox Church,” edited by Fotios K. Litsas, was published by Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in 1984 as a guidebook to various topics in Church life. The book included the article “Orthodoxy in the United States” by Rev. Thomas FitzGerald, now dean of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, and an expert on American Orthodoxy. Fr. FitzGerald closed his 1984 article with a bold prediction:

Orthodoxy in the United States may no longer be viewed simply as a diaspora composed primarily of immigrants intent upon returning to their homeland. Rather, Orthodoxy in the United States can only be viewed properly as an emerging local Church comprised primarily of American citizens of a wide variety of racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds.

In due course, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the various Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States will be united into an autocephalous Church which will be officially recognized as such by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the other autocephalous Orthodox Churches.

In the same article, Fr. FitzGerald notes:

Viewed from the perspective of Orthodox ecclesiology, the proliferation of parallel and often competing jurisdictions on the same geographical territory is a serious anomaly. The establishment of “ethnic” and even “political” dioceses rather than territorial dioceses may have served the short-term needs of the immigrants. However, the ecclesiastical requirements for canonical order, integrity, and the unity of the episcopacy in a given region were sacrificed. This led to an undue emphasis upon a policy of “congregationalism” which is alien to Orthodoxy, and to an attitude of phyletism, both of which have greatly diminished the mission and salutary message of the Orthodox Church in the United States until very recently.

The Associated Press has a story out of the World Council of Churches about deliberations toward a common date for Pascha/Easter. The story was based, in part, on this release from the WCC. From the AP:

Under the plan the unified Easter usually falls as it would under the Gregorian calendar used by Catholics and Protestants, said Dagmar Heller, an ecumenical professor in Switzerland heading the council’s faith and order commission.

In the next 15 years, the only time Western churches would have to change Easter is in 2019 from April 21 to March 24. The bigger adjustment would be for the Orthodox Church, which has experienced several schisms in its history over the question of dates.

“There are of course some fundamentalist Orthodox who say ‘The Julian calendar is our tradition and it was used in Jesus’ lifetime so we cannot change,'” Heller said, adding that some Eastern theologians might fear more breaks in their church as a result of a date change.

“And, of course, it’s an issue because the astronomical data is closer to the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by a pope,” she said, referring to Pope Gregory XIII’s reform of the calendar in 1582. It only slowly replaced the calendar named for Julius Caesar, who introduced it in 46 B.C.

Some Orthodox representatives at the meeting appeared to back the plan. French Orthodox theologian Antoine Arjakovsky acknowledged that the astronomy was closer to the Gregorian calendar, but noted that Catholic and Protestant churches were also compromising by “accepting that the date of Easter should be established on the basis of a cosmic calendar rather than by a fixed date.”

More detailed information on these talks, free of WCC spin, is available from the Religious Information Service of Ukraine, which reported on “A Common Date of Easter – Possible: The 1997 Aleppo Consensus,” a conference held earlier this month at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Snip:

Expressing joy that such an important theme had been raised in the seminar, Metropolitan Andriy Horak mentioned that such a detailed answer from the Orthodox representation concerning the Aleppo proposals could be received only after a Pan-Orthodox consultation and, eventually, a council. It is worth mentioning that Fr. Milan Zust, S.J., representative for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said that the Roman Catholic Church is waiting for a response from the Orthodox churches and he thinks that if the Orthodox would accept the Aleppo recommendations, then there would be no problems with establishing one, common date of Easter. If some remarks would come from the Orthodox representation or if they were to propose another variant, then the question would definitely need to be reviewed.

Dr. Konstantine Sigov, chief director of the publishing firm Spirit and Letter, who spoke in the name of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), mentioned that it is of huge importance to spread information about the possibility of establishing a common date for Easter – especially within an academic environment as well as among the broader public.

See the Orthodox Wiki entry on Old Calendarists.

orrologion says it’s time to open the windows of our Orthodox house and let in some fresh air:

I for one am glad that these sorts of conversations are being had. They reveal us. Our creation myths can be challenged. Our skewed views of ourselves can be corrected. Greeks can hear how they are perceived; Russians and Americans and Arabs likewise. We’re all used to the smell of our own stink; we forgive our own pet sins, but not others’. We can see how our actions (and lack of actions) hurt others, and we can change (hopefully). We can compare and contrast our strengths and weaknesses, our love, our piety, our good works, patience, kindness. We can learn from each other and grow. We can live rather than simply preserve and grasp. We can see how Orthodoxy is not only what I grew up with, what ‘my’ spiritual father told, what Prof./Fr../Geronda/Vladyka said it was – we can see Orthodoxy is bigger than my family, my clan, my tribe, my culture, my opinions, my theological clique. Our laxity, our excuses, etc. can be revealed, and our shame can change us, we can be corrected. We are all in desperate need of having the windows opened to air out the house; and converts need their new homes to be lived in, to be used and filled, to become home.

Let us all welcome the opportunity to become the servants of each other. Let us compete to serve and sacrifice more than each other. When all sides do this, then will they way be clear to us all – God’s way and not our own. Let the OCA lay down her claims of autocephaly and sole jurisdiction, let the EP lay down its demands of obedience to primacy, let us all place Christ and His Church, the Orthodox faith, ahead of all things including language, culture and our pet ecclesiologies and theologies and forms.

Read “Sacrificing All” on the orrologian blog.