Greek Orthodox

Bishop Savas, head of the Greek Orthodox Office of Society and Culture, is starting a new blog called Living in the LOGOSphere (no posts yet). He told Greek News that the new blog “will have a different, less personal, less whimsical character” than the travel diary blog he authored last year. Readers of the AOI Observer will recall that his blog greeting to the new president after last year’s election included this exclamation: This is the Day that the Lord has made!

The editorial focus on the new blog will range from “the political to the environmental, from bioethical issues to trends in popular culture,” the bishop says. A number of writers will be involved.

This is a positive development and welcomed here. Too much of what passes for “social witness” in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in recent years has been focused on the very mixed bag of “national issues” of the Greek state and constant collaboration with various and sundry Greek pols and bureaucrats. Defense of the Ecumenical Patriarchate against Turkish repression, certainly. Lobbying in Congress on the Macedonian “name issue,” ridiculous.

We hope that by citing “bioethical issues” the bishop intends for his new blog to offer a strong defense of the sanctity of life. But we know that might get him in “Church and State” problems with Greek Orthodox politicians who would rather defend a party platform than defend the unborn. We shall see.

Excerpt from Bishop Savas’ interview with Greek News:

Greek News: Please tell us something about your new office.

Bishop Savas: The Office of Church, Society and Culture is actually the revival and adaptation of the Department of Church and Society, which was an important part of the Archdiocese from the ‘60s through the 80’s. Archbishop Demetrios felt strongly about resurrecting that department to explore means of reaching out to the great numbers of Orthodox Christians who stand on the borders, as it were, of a full-blooded commitment to the Church.

You may recall that the theme of last year’s Clergy-Laity Congress in Washington, DC, was “Gather My People to My Home”. His Eminence and the Holy Eparchial Synod firmly believe that God has charged us to bring the world into the Church. To that end, my new directive is to promote a creative Orthodox Christian engagement with contemporary social and cultural realities. My office is charged with the task of developing and implementing programs and ministries that will assist those persons, and particularly young adults, who look to the Church for guidance in meeting the challenge of living lives that are both fully and authentically Greek Orthodox Christian and fully and authentically 21st-century American. Continue reading →

(Ecumenical News International) — A group of Orthodox clergy in Greece, led by three senior archbishops, have published a manifesto pledging to resist all ecumenical ties with Roman Catholics and Protestants.

“The only way our communion with heretics can be restored is if they renounce their fallacy and repent,” the group said in a “Confession of Faith against Ecumenism” that they circulated recently.

“The Orthodox church is not merely the true church; she is the only church. She alone has remained faithful to the Gospel, the synods and the fathers, and consequently she alone represents the true catholic church of Christ,” says the document.

The signatories say they wish to preserve “irremovably and without alteration” the Orthodox faith that the Early Church had “demarcated and entrenched,” and to shun communication “with those who innovate on matters of the faith”.

The list of clerics backing the manifesto is said to include six metropolitans (Panteleimon of Antinoes, Seraphim of Kythira and Antikythira, Kosmas of Etolia and Akarnania, Seraphim of Piraeus, Jeremiah of Gortyno and Megalopolis, and Artemios of Raskas and Prizrenis, Kossovo and Metohia), as well as 49 archimandrites, 22 hieromonks, and 30 nuns and abbesses, as well as many other priests and church elders.

The signatories note that many Orthodox patriarchs and bishops have, “essentially placed themselves outside the church” by abandoning its “uniform, steady and unswerving stance,” and attempting to impose a “new dogma and ecclesiology” that all denominations formed part of the church. Continue reading →

So I’m reading an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the Religious Left mounting an “aggressive” ad campaign on environmental issues and come across these lines:

The ads, funded by a left-leaning coalition, urge support for congressional legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions — by framing the issue as an urgent matter of Biblical morality.

“As our seas rise, crops wither and rivers run dry, God’s creation cries out for relief,” begins one ad, narrated by an evangelical megachurch pastor. Another opens with a reference to the Gospel of John, slams energy interests for fighting the bill, and concludes: “Please join the faithful in speaking out against the powerful.”

And I’m thinking, man, where have I heard talk like that? Was it … no, can’t be. Not the language used to describe the agenda of the upcoming symposium on the Mississippi River hosted by Patriarch Bartholomew, the Green Patriarch. That can’t be. I checked and found this:

Evening discussion: Can Religion Save the Planet?

To meet the ecological crisis threatening the planet, it is generally agreed that humankind must change its behaviour. Can religion as a moral force change hearts and minds and thus behaviour, as it did with the abolition of slavery and the American civil rights movement. Will citizens of the overconsuming part of the world voluntarily modify their way of life? Will technology and science save industrial civilisation? Will a cataclysm as the result of war, plague, or climate change so reduce population to make survival possible?

Possible Participants:
Fr. John Chryssavgis
Professor Mary Evelyn Tucker

Wow, almost sounds like the ad copy and the agenda were written by the same activist!

We know that Fr. Chryssavgis is environmental adviser to the patriarch, but who is Prof. Tucker? Turns out Prof. Tucker is co-founder and co-director, with John Grim, of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. They are organizers of a series of 10 conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Here’s what those on the Mississippi cruise can expect from her (I’ve highlighted the good parts):

Religion is more than simply a belief in a transcendent deity or a means to an afterlife. It is, rather, an orientation to the cosmos and our role in it. We understand religion in its broadest sense as a means whereby humans, recognizing the limitations of phenomenal reality, undertake specific practices to effect self-transformation and community cohesion within a cosmological context. Religion thus refers to those cosmological stories, symbol systems, ritual practices, ethical norms, historical processes, and institutional structures that transmit a view of the human as embedded in a world of meaning and responsibility, transformation and celebration. Religion connects humans with a divine or numinous presence, with the human community, and with the broader earth community. It links humans to the larger matrix of mystery in which life arises, unfolds, and flourishes.

In this light nature is a revelatory context for orienting humans to abiding religious questions regarding the cosmological origins of the universe, the meaning of the emergence of life, and the responsible role of humans in relation to life processes. Religion thus situates humans in relation to both the natural and human worlds with regard to meaning and responsibility. At the same time, religion becomes a means of experiencing a sustaining creative force in the natural and human worlds and beyond. For some traditions this is a creator deity; for others it is a numinous presence in nature; for others it is the source of flourishing life.

Not exactly the Philokalia, is it?

Prof. Tucker is also author of “Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase” (Master Hsuan Hua Memorial Lecture, Open Court, 2003). In the book, she “describes how world religions have begun to move from a focus on God-human and human-human relations to encompass human-earth relations. She argues that, in light of the environmental crisis, religion should move from isolated orthodoxy to interrelated dialogue and use its authority for liberation rather than oppression.” There’s a chapter titled, “Dogma: Orthodoxy versus Dialogue,” which promises to be a fun read.

Prof. Tucker, like most on the Religious Left, sees the redistribution of wealth as a means of solving our environmental problems. You’ll have to attend her lecture during the Mississippi symposium to find out exactly how this is all connected. She writes that ” … the unintended consequences of globalization in the loss of habitat, species, and cultures make it clear that new forms of equitable distribution of wealth and resources need to be implemented” and that “the common values that most of the world’s religions hold in relation to the natural world might be summarized as reverence, respect, restraint, redistribution, and responsibility.”

Here’s a suggestion. The next time that the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America assembles several hundred faithful benefactors for a dinner at the Waldorf or Ritz-Carlton, have Prof. Tucker talk to these people about “wealth redistribution.” See if that flies.

July 4, 2009
Independence Day

To the Most Reverend Hierarchs, the Reverend Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the Presidents and Members of the Parish Councils of the Greek Orthodox Communities, the Distinguished Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Day, Afternoon, and Church Schools, the Philoptochos Sisterhoods, the Youth, the Hellenic Organizations, and the entire Greek Orthodox Family in America

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The Fourth of July is a day when we join with people across this nation and around the world in the celebration of an historic achievement that exalted the necessity of human freedom and initiated a political and social environment filled with opportunity and potential. The United States of America, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, was “conceived in liberty,” dedicated to the ideal of justice and equality for all, thus becoming a nation that broadened the scope and function of citizenship and of the meaning of belonging and community.

As Orthodox Christians, in addition to our American citizenship, we know and experience community also through our worship, fellowship and ministry in our local parishes. In these communities of faith and love we are connected to a much larger and eternal community, the Kingdom of God. In God’s Kingdom, we are citizens of a realm of life and being, in which we follow His will, and are recipients of His grace. As citizens of His Kingdom, we are called to an awareness and response to the needs of others during the course of our lives on this earth. Our Lord affirmed this in His ministry and His teaching, even emphatically stating that the inheritance of the Kingdom and of eternal life is intertwined with our response to the needs of one of the least of these my (i.e. Christ’s) brothers (Matthew 25:40). Thus, an essential characteristic of our heavenly citizenship is our active care on earth for those in need. Continue reading →