Andrew, wouldn’t it be a good idea if someone was to call the press office at 79th St and ask these questions?

Seriously, the picture you paint raises even more questions. Is it because we held the Riverboat Cruise up for ridicule (much deserved) that 79th St learned its lesson?

You know.. the more you think about this whole Hollister Award event the more questions you ask. Last year at this time we were 100% Green Patriarch all day and all night. It was all about the riverboat cruise. We had Patriarchal video games and statements galore. The GOA internet department was working overtime to broadcast the Green Patriarch everywhere.

Now one year later the Green Patriarch receives an award and there is silence. The GOA internet presence from its website to facebook have not one mention. Even Bishop Savas who basically equates the political left with Orthodoxy does not say a peep on his facebook page. The only thing we see is the mention on the Patriarchal website. We do not know who accepted this award or what they said. All we do know is the Temple of Understanding seems to be a creation of leftist extremists. Its a kook fringe kind of a place and kook fringe award.

So what is going on. Are there a few people pushing the Green Patriarch in opposition to the GOA? Honestly, what is cooking? I would be very interested to know from those with connections what is going on with this Hollister Event.

You’re right Andrew, Van Jones, the radical environmentalist and self-proclaimed communist, was the keynote speaker for this event.

http://www.templeofunderstanding.org/wwd_2010_awards-2.htm

In an April 12, 2009 WorldNetDaily article titled “Will a “red” help blacks go green?” Aaron Klein reported that Van Jones himself stated in a 2005 interview his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class “justice,” and that he was a “rowdy black nationalist,” and a “communist.”

I’ll work with anybody, I’ll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward,” he told the left-leaning East Bay Express in a 2005 interview. “I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.”

“There is a green wave coming, with renewable energy, organic agriculture, cleaner production,” Jones said. “Our question is: Will the green wave lift all boats? That’s the moral challenge to the people who are the architects of this new, ecologically sound economy. Will we have eco-equity, or will we have eco-apartheid? Right now we have eco-apartheid.”
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=94771

Van Jones is a self-proclaimed radical communist activist who was appointed by Barack Obama to serve as the Obama administration’s “Green Czar”. Jones previously served on the board of an environmental activist group at which a founder of the Weather Underground terrorist organization is a top director.

Jones was a founding organizer and leader[4] of the communist revolutionary organization, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM). The organization had its roots in a group protesting “U.S. Imperialism” during the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The leftist blog Machete 48 identifies STORM’s influences as “third-worldist Marxism (and an often vulgar Maoism).

STORM’s own literature describes it’s “Maoist orientation” which conducted “a group reading of Mao’s On Practice and On Contradiction.” The group studied Lenin’s theories of the state, revolution, the party, and “the political ideas of Mao Tse-tung.” STORM’s own history further states, “We also pushed at or went beyond the limits of the traditional Marxist canon, studying such topics as revolutionary feminism, the Palestinian liberation struggle, transgender liberation, methods of evaluation, self-care for cadre and revolutionary mass [community] organizing.”STORM was extensively involved in the community organizing movement. http://www.conservapedia.com/Van_Jones

Chris, once when the Apostle John was in Ephesus (I believe) and he was rather aged, he was at the bath with his disciple (Onesimus I believe). When he saw the Christian heretic Cerinthus enter, he immediately ran out, yelling “Come Onesimus, let us flee this place, lest the roof cave in over our heads!”

Oh my, that Temple of Understanding site reeks of neo-pagan ideology and “non-judgmental” pseudo-spirituality. Why on earth would an Orthodox hierarch want to be associated with such worldly, Christ-less, and feel-good nonsense? Can you imagine any of the 12 Apostles or great saints or bishops of our faith coming within 200 miles of such a place, let alone accepting an award from that kind of an organization?

Just got an email for a friend. The couple building the Ground Zero Mosque were on the list of attendees at the event.

Van Jones is worse than being a mere Truther, he’s a self-described Communist. Sigh, I long for the days of drawing and quartering traitors.

I’m wondering the same thing.

Whoa! Father…. if you look at the Temple of Understanding Website and click on the Hollister Honorees… at the bottom of the webpage click on next. This takes you to the event website. Part of this October 19th event is an interfaith conference. Well…Well… just look who the keynote speaker is….. VAN JONES. The head of the GOA which had one of its churches destroyed by terrorists on 9/11 accepts an award from an organization that features 9/11 truther Van Jones in its feature conference.

This is crazy….Maybe this is the reason why 79th Street did not want to draw too much attention to this…….

Maybe they know that the neo-pagan character of the Temple of Understanding would be too hard to defend. Can you see Pat. Kyrill or Pope Benedict doing cocktails there?

Most disturbing however is the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s subordination of human freedom to the fashionable fundamentalism of the environmental movement. Orthodox Christians have not forgotten the 2004 visit of Patriarch Bartholomew to Havana that saw His All Holiness praise Fidel Castro as an environmentalist while showing indifference to the regime’s laundry list of crimes and personally neglecting Cuba’s dissidents. How is it that the souls imprisoned by one of history’s great butchers are not worthy of pastoral concern?

The transformation of the successor of St. Andrew the Apostle into the “Green Patriarch” is a tragedy. Orthodox Christians do not need a leader who constantly beats the paranoid drum of global warming at the expense human freedom and dignity. Orthodox Christians need a shepherd who is willing to follow the example of the second-century martyr Ignatius of Antioch who reminded those in power that “Christianity shows it greatness when it is hated by the world!”