Month: March 2009

The Greek newspaper Kathimerini is reporting that President Obama will meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew when he is in Istanbul on April 7 during a visit to Turkey. “However,” the paper said, “the US president is also due to hold a one-on-one meeting with the patriarch in the White House on November 3.”

The plans were firmed up when Archbishop Demetrios met with the president on March 25 during a White House reception in honor of Greek Independence Day, Kathimerini said.

During the public ceremony, the archbishop compared the president to Alexander the Great. While in Washington, he also attended a reception hosted by the Ambassador of Greece to the United States Alexandros Mallias at the Greek Embassy. Minister of Justice Nikolaos Dendias represented the Greek Government at the Independence Day events.

Meanwhile, the tug-of-war between, on one side, the Turkish government and, on the other, the U.S. Greek lobby and the Greek government, continues over a proposed meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat.

George Michalopulos, Orthodox Christian Laity board member and frequent contributor to the AOI blog, penned the official OCL response to Arch. Elpidophoros Lambriniadis’ recent talk at Holy Cross School of Theology. Original article is posted on the OCL website.

An OCL Board Member Responds to the Message of Chief Secretary of The Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

March 25, 2009 – the Feast of the Annunciation

I. Introduction: An Archimandrite Speaks

Recently, a certain archimandrite, the Very Rev Dr Elpidophoros Lambriniadis, spoke at Holy Cross School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. His position is one of auxiliary professor at this seminary but his formal title is “Chief Secretary of the Holy and Sacred Synod.” His remarks thus were more than the observations of a mere academic; indeed he stated from the outset that they were authorized by the Ecumenical Patriarch himself and “with the consent” of Archbishop Demetrios, the primate of the Greek archdiocese.

What began as astute observations of American Orthodoxy by a highly educated clergyman-scholar quickly descended into vituperation, slander against other jurisdictions, and almost total ignorance of America. Moreover, his understanding of canon law and Byzantine history itself was questionable. It is unknown whether this was deliberate or merely the result of ignorance. At best, this willful twisting of history can be viewed as Phanariote propaganda, which like all good propaganda uses words and ideas for some higher purpose. The purpose of this reply is not only to identify that which is propagandistic, but to point out the severe internal and logical contradictions contained therein.

Read the entire article. Return here to leave comments (or use “Hellenism and Orthodoxy” quick-link).

Archbishop Demetrios, leader of the largest Orthodox Christian jurisdiction in the United States, compared President Obama to Alexander the Great at a Greek Independence Day celebration at the White House. Politico, noting that the president got “a little unexpected flattery” from the hierarch about his crisis management skills, said the archbishop told Obama: “Following the brilliant example of Alexander the Great…you will be able to cut the Gordian knot of these unresolved issues.” The unexpected flattery was so over that top that it embarrassed the president and earned the archbishop a link on the Drudge Report.

In the video, someone can be heard hailing the president as an “honorary Greek.” Just a hunch, but I bet that little hosanna came from one of the Obamakis and Bidenopoulos set.

Back story. In the last few days, the Greek Lobby has been in overdrive over a report in Hurriyet that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to meet with Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat in Washington later this month in advance of Obama’s pending trip to Turkey. Continue reading →

It used to be that I would skip printed interviews in magazines and journals, and especially in newspapers. They seemed like rehashings of what the interviewee had already said–perhaps better–in print. As an editor, interviews also struck me as filler for slow issues. And so it went for years that I did not read a single interview even while enjoying interviews on television and especially on the radio.

What you could call my prejudice against print interviews was only broken by that maker and breaker of prejudices: experience. I read a couple of deft interviews, which appeared, strangely enough, in leftist publications like Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and Slate (I have not seen many interviews, and especially many notable ones, in what could be called conservative or right-wing publications. If you know of some, please post them as a response). I say strangely enough since I had never thought that certain genres or print formats were more or less preferred by one side or another in the culture wars. After a little reflection on my last five years of reading, I concluded that whereas the left seems to run the gamut in its literary output, the right is mostly an article, book, and blog literary culture. I have joked with friends who sit on boards of right-leaning institutes that without the article, tri-fold pamphlet, monograph, and dinner-speech, western civilization would disappear. A more revealing comment may be what a not unrenowned conservative friend of mine told me “I just don’t have time for fiction,” he looked toward his vast library, “it requires too much self-disclosure.” There are notable exceptions, yet this seems fair, considering the temperament of many famous litarati of the right and left.

Be that as it may, printed interviews can do in a short space what an essay cannot, and this is its virtue and its temptation to vice. An interviewee can offer a collection of thesis statements, roughly argued, with implications and connections from and between them, without the reader thinking that too much has been said too soon.  Sometimes, when the interviewer is knowledgeable of the interviewee’s corpus, the questions can generate felicitous syntheses of the corpus, with strings strung between seemingly disparate subjects. In this way there is serendipity in the interview–a coming upon what was perhaps not thought before by the author, or understood by the reader. There is a dialectic. Yet, unlike live interviews, the printed interview is usually edited after the fact for content, with many things being restated. This allows the interviewee to hone what he said, and perhaps edit out what is sub par.

Recently, the Clarion Review, published by the American Orthodox Institute, began printing interviews by prominent European intellectuals. The first two were with Roger Scruton, Britain’s most prominent conservative philosopher, and Remi Brague, an influential French scholar and academic, who specializes in medieval Christian, Muslim, and Jewish theology and culture, and their interrelations.

I encourage you to read these provocatively titled pieces, certainly if you find yourself with my old prejudice against the printed interview. Continue reading →