Many priests and bishops defend life in the womb and are outspoken against abortion. Just google “Orthodox Christians abortion” (look here).

I’ll answer the divorce topic later.

I think about the excited words of Phillip to Nathaniel, “Come and see!” (Jn. 1:46); what the Disciples felt as they realized at Emmaus, “Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us?” (Lk 24:32); the sheer violence of the Transfiguration that sent Peter, James, and John falling to their faces (Matt. 17:6); or the purely mundane “annoyance” of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, who scolded parents for removing a crying child from the chapel, calling it “holy noise,” and “for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 19:14). Instead, I read with a certain amount of awe at Mr. Dreher’s “gift” of the ability to serve up hesychasm without the stink of the monks and the Orthodox “way of seeing the world” without the bloody mouth of Maximus the Confessor who lost his tongue to opponents.Mr. Dreher offers up a sanitized Orthodoxy free of conflict, “innovation,” and presumably, “renovation,” and assumes the charcter of Theodore Metochites – “Everything that needs to have been said, has already been said” – probably for the better, because look what happened in the West. This would further suggest that if the West had just policed itself in the first place, the Orthodox could have quietly gone about their “ascetic rigor” under the radar; Mr. Dreher et al. would have continued, as the Service for the Reception of a Convert notes, in their “former delusion.” And what I find most disturbing about this essay is its smiling-jack appeal: “Conservatives, we are like you, and we think like you.” We are a good match. Nothing to offend your sensibilities here: everything Catholicism “once was,” no overbearing Papacy, and at least in DC, no homosexuals.

My thought is that Mr. Derher was asleep at the wheel for Holy Week and Pentecost and missed the Orthodox Church at its most radical, demanding, and forthright: “real men” will be “crying and holding each other” as the Master, not mildly seated upon the foal of an ass, but as we also read for Palm Sunday, comes seated on a white horse in blood-soaked garments, “for the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed has come.” (Isa. 63:4); when the Master is not attempting to engage us in a “mystical encounter” but disturb us: “”Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,” (Mt 10:34) paraphrasing the prophet, “[In that day] do not trust your friends or have hope in guides; beware even her that lies at your bosom, and tell her nothing, for a man’s enemies are the men that are in his own house.” (Micah 7:5-6); and, as St. Chrysostom notes, He tells them “The violent take [the kingdom] by force” (Mt. 11:12) to stir them up to a force of mind, and also by saying, “He that has ears, let him hear!” Beloved Professor S.S. Verhovskoy taught that we are called, one and all, to be Ezekiels “with a bone in your hand.”

This is not “a rich new source of spiritual and cultural renewal,” or “the organically grown wisdom of the past.” This is the radical, uncontainable, unrestrainable Energy of the Father that is and ever will be. And if St. Dionysius would say it is so beyond our comprehension that better we should say it is not, who would refer to it as “Conservative?” And but a week ago, we celebrated the Spirit, “Fire proceeding from Fire,” “acting, working, inspiring,” the means by which we articulate and re-articulate the gifts and wisdom and knowledge richly poured out on us. And while all gifts may have been “given,” it does not mean they are completed, accomplished, understood, exercised, or exhausted. “The Spirit goes where He wishes,” wrote St. Andrew of Crete, and our labels and categories are arrogant limitations to contain what will never be contained.

We are radicals, Mr. Dreher, in every sense of the word, and our “theosis” will be accomplished every bit by force as by “ascetic silence.” If you need to sell, sell the whole package: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” (Heb. 13:8)

The demonic always wins, until it loses.

I didn’t write the article, Rod Dreher did. You can post on his site by following the link in the article.

You write in the article above:

“And while Orthodox theology does not face the radical revisionism that has swept over Western churches in the past decades, there are nevertheless personalities and forces within American Orthodoxy pushing for liberalization on the homosexual question. And in some parishes—including St. Nicholas OCA Cathedral in Washington, D.C.—they are winning victories.”

Wow — that is a big bombshell but there is no follow up. I don’t think you can write this in a prominent Orthodox blog site without any supporting or backup evidence or describe what you mean. Most of us have no idea what you even mean. For those of us who don’t live in DC or don’t worship at St Nicholas, what’s going on at St Nicholas and what are the victories that they are winning there?

Thank you

Thus, I think it is safe to say that while it is true that most converts are religiously conservative in that sense, that isn’t necessarily a synonym for politically conservative.