Our project is to preserve the spirit of our many various doings, but change the activities to convey the original spirit in the situation we find ourselves in right here right now.

It is fair to ask how such a flag has done for the people over there. Attendance at Orthodox churches in Turkey up as a result of this flag? Worked there so they are sending it here? Yes? Right. Exactly.

Take a look at the whole ‘foot washing’ thing. Right now I guarantee you that in every country in the world where people don’t follow their yak or cow or sheep to and from the pasture twice a day ‘foot washing’ is something that happens in a lady’s health spa along with really shiny toe-nail paint.

Let’s go back to the fish symbol: ICTHYS, or back to the drawing board.

Christ is risen!

LOL. I had to post this at orthodoxchristianity.net

(btw, the legends of St. Andrew founding Byzantium predates St. Constantine. The grandios claims of the Phanar, of course, do not).

On orthodoxchristianity.net
http://www.orthodoxchristianity.net/forum/index.php/topic,26922.0.html

doubt has been expressed that Met. Methodius has really issued such a directive, as expressed by a protopriest of his diocese. Does anyone in Boston have any thing contrary?

Chris, I seem to remember that the HVP cathedral in NYC flew this very flag under discussion back around 2000; I thought it was a ‘cool’ and ‘katholic’ gesture and we never mentioned it. But context is everything. I really would like to see the church flags being flown, since a big problem in some parishes is a lack of ecclesial identity. Where can I buy an OCA flag for my mission parish?

At the risk of sounding either strident or sectarian: the cross and the cross alone.
As our ascetical practice and liturgical service both make clear:

. . . our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Phil. 3:20)

If St. Paul, who was “a Hebrew of Hebrews” – an affiliation with a much stronger claim to divine preference than any other – should then

count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ

should we do less? We can’t. He doesn’t give us that option. Instead:

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.

Ethnic or political flags don’t move us in this direction.
The cross alone does.

Scott, I stand corrected. Lee’s army’s battle flag was called
“Old Suspenders.”

George,

And so appropriate on this day in particular, the anniversary of Lee’s surrender. Be wary though George, if Constantinople is the See of St. Andrew (the “Elder Brother”), they might claim that if you fly that flag you are acknowledging their exclusive jursidiction in the U.S. [pause for laughter]

One slight correction though, the X-shaped cross of St. Andrew does not appear on the “Stars and Bars”. The Stars and Bars was the first official flag of the Confederacy, not the battle flag to which you are referring. The S&B consisted of a thick red “bar” over a thick white “bar” over another thick red “bar”. In the upper left hand corner was a blue field with 7 white stars in a circle. Later the stars were increased to 11 (when 4 states of the upper South seceded) and then to 13 (to include Kentucky and Missouri, each of which had dueling governments).

Thanks Scott, I thought it was too. Just for the record, the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia (the old “Stars and Bars”) is a patently Christian symbol. The “X”-shaped cross is the Cross of St Andrew, patron saint of Scotland. You can also find it on the Bonnie Blue of Scotland itself as well as the flag of Jamaica.

Christos anesti!
The Phanar would have to first redeem the flag of the Millet-i Rum. Right now it is just as Greek, er, Hellenic, as the blue and white.

The fact that this comes just before the Episcopal Assembly scheme was to be set into motion is not encouraging.

Christ is risen!
When the priests wave the aer, while we are saying the Creed, I’ve told my sons that the priests are waving the flag and we are saying the pledge of allegiance.

The biggest disparity between ‘modern’ values and Christian ones is the understanding of hierarchy and obedience. Of course, there are many different types of hierachies and obedience can be life affirming or toxic.

Discernment is necessary.

My own understanding of the traditional hierachy in the Church is that it is what I’ll call a nested hierarchy in which, through communion with Jesus Christ, love and respect flow in a multitude of directions with authority being vested in the hierarchs. It seems to me to follow the Incarnational model of God becoming man. The monarchical, top-down linear hierarchy does not.

Unfortunately, it is easier to establish and ‘lead’ a monarchial hierarchy than a nested one. However, self-will tends to dominate such hierarchies. Such monarchs need flags as part of their “sceptered sway, their attribute to awe and majesty”. Tryanny, revolt and anarchy are the ususal fruits if ossification is avoided. If ossification sets in the result is a slow, lingering journey into the twilight of irrelevance and eventual dissolution.

Hierarchs in a nested community have to have mercy, discernement and sacrificial love. Obedience and freedom can and will florish.

Guys (and Fr. Peter),

The reason I wrote above that it might be a good idea not to have any secular flag on church property wasn’t that I don’t think patriotism is a good thing or that the church is beyond nationalities (which it is). The reason, for me, is that it is all too easy to confuse patriotism and piety. Patriotism can easily bleed into piety and distort it. Don’t think that we are above confusing American values with Christian values anymore than some in GOARCH or the Phanar are above confusing omogenia with Orthodoxy.

Long before there was a US, before there was modern democracy, before the “Enlightenment”, there were a well developed set of Christian values. These Christian values may not exclude Enlightenment/Liberal/traditional American values, but they don’t necessarily include them either.