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Met. Nicholas on Michigan’s Economic Crisis

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Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Nicholas of Detroit discusses Michigan’s severe economic decline — caused by the state’s close ties to the auto industry — and its effect on the state’s parishes in an interview with the Greek-American newspaper National Herald (available on the Orthodox Christian News site with free registration).

To tell you the truth, our people have been affected in some ways, but not as strongly as some other communities because the majority of our people our educated people. There are scientists working for the auto companies and also people working in the lines, but many of those people have retired so either they received a buyout or pension. Most of the young people are working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists.

Interviewer Theodore Kalmoukos also asked Metropolitan Nicholas about the direction of the Church in America. The Metropolitan answered:

I hope we are going to God’s kingdom, but in order to get there, we have to strongly proclaim the gospel message. There was a proposition in our ballot here to increase embryonic stem cell research and I, along with Roman Catholic leadership of this area and some other Churches took a stand. We did not think it was appropriate. It was interesting because it was one of the first times where we made a short statement for the clergy to read in the parishes of Michigan and we had a number of people that came and said thank you. We wanted a statement from our Church and we had a few people asking why the Church was talking about moral issues. If we are going to be effective in this community, then we have to engage the community more strongly. I think we have to be able to witness who we are and what we are and why we have something to offer, by offering the people the words come and see.

Michigan’s Proposal 2, which voters passed 53 percent to 47 percent in November, allows the use of human embryos for research permitted under federal law.

As for the parishioners who questioned Metropolitan Nicholas about the church “talking about moral issues,” a simple reply would be — Isn’t that what churches do?

Obamakis and Bidenopoulos

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Political candidates follow a time-honored campaign strategy of reaching out to ethnic groups and religious communities, and Orthodox Christians have been courted this way for years. It works both ways, of course. Now, little more than a week after the election, we’re getting a good look at how politicians and political operatives of Greek descent — many of them prominent in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese — have been working for years to promote President-elect Barack Obama and running mate Sen. Joseph Biden. The Greeks for Obama group, for example, developed this catchy slogan: “If you are Greek and love Obama, clap your hands.”

Opa! Obama!

On Nov. 5, the National Coordinated Effort of Hellenes told supporters that it had raised $500,000 for Obama’s campaign just weeks before the election. (full message appended at bottom of post). Andy Manatos, a public relations executive who also chaired last summer’s GOA Clergy-Laity Congress, led the effort for this group. “Moving the huge American bureaucracy to treat Greece, Cyprus and the Ecumenical Patriarchate fairly is never easy in light of competing American interests,” Manatos said. “However, having Obamakis and Bidenopoulos in the White House opens the door to some good possibilities.”

The blowback came pretty fast. Earlier this week, Greek News reported that the “Obamakis and Bidenopoulos” statement received an angry reaction from “almost every one of the community leaders that participate in the Coordinated Effort.” But, of course, that was more a question of how the press release was handled rather than the facts surrounding the “Coordinated Effort.”

Yes, those “competing American interests” that Manatos referred to after the election. Those would be the interests that are of great importance to the United States, and not necessarily to the nation of Greece. But if you read the statements of Obama’s ethnic Greek supporters, you get a sense that any American interests have been pushed completely out of sight. The focus is for the most part is on three issues: Cyprus, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the Macedonia/FYROM naming issue.
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Obama Defeats ‘Social Darwinists’?

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Update (11/19/08) — In “Bush’s record in Africa receives well-deserved praise,” USA Today’s DeWayne Wickham gives us this:

This year, Bush signed a bill that authorized up to $48 billion to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria — most of it to be spent in sub-Saharan Africa — from 2009 through 2013. Since 2003, the Bush administration has provided funding to increase the number of Africans receiving anti-retroviral drugs from 50,000 to about 1.4 million, Frazer said.

— End update —

Bishop Savas of Troas

Did God ordain an Obama victory? You get that impression from Sava on a Rolla, the blog of Bishop Savas of Troas. In a post titled, “This is the Day that the Lord has made!,” the chancellor of the Greek Archdiocese celebrates the victory of President-elect Barack Obama in terms that can only be described as divine:

Do I expect miracles from the President-Elect? Am I confusing the man with the Messiah? Of course not. But neither is he the Antichrist, as some of his opponents would have you believe. Americans did a good thing yesterday, an inspired thing. They didn’t voice their opinion, they shouted it. A new day has dawned, a day that the Lord has most emphatically made. Are you as delighted as I am? Send up thanks to the Lord our God! Are you for any reason unhappy? Pray to the same God for our President-Elect’s enlightenment.

I don’t know. It’s almost like reading the Genesis account of Creation. OK, the Bishop’s guy won, and he has every right to celebrate. Then he goes — to put it nicely — really over the top.

The goal of government ought not to be to protect us from one another, to teach us to treat the other as competition or nuisance or threat, but to help us to help one another.

Could the Bishop be talking about those American citizens, many of whom were Orthodox Christians, who voted for John McCain? Or other Republican candidates? Or for President George W. Bush during his two terms? He doesn’t say so, but something here leads me to believe that the Bishop is doing just that.

Actually, one of the fundamental goals of government is to protect us from those who would do us harm, whether they live down the street or in another part of the globe. Read the newspaper on any given day, and you’ll see why this is so. And let’s take it a step further. As the American Founders foresaw, with God-enlightened genius, one of the main roles of government is to protect us from bad government and bad rulers

Finally, Bishop Savas tips his hand with this parenthetical dig:
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