Law

In response to comments here on this blog about whether the Byzantines will one day “save” the American Church, the answer to that, as has been observed, is that there are no Byzantines remaining to save us. What’s more, there would be little support among American Orthodox Christians for the sort of deep involvement by the state in Church affairs that was typical of Byzantium. The American Founders, in their wisdom, went to great lengths to make sure that the state would not establish a Church nor would the state control its life.

The following excerpt is from “Church Structures and Administration,” by Michael Angold and Michael Whitby, in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies.

In their broad outlines the administrative structure of the Byzantine Church as systematized under Justinian survived without radical change down to the end of the Byzantine Empire. This was testimony both to Justinian’s administrative and legislative abilities and to the Church’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Justinian saw to it that the structures of the Church were established by imperial legislation (Myendorff 1968). In his famous preamble to Novel VI Justinian enunciated an ideal of harmony between emperor and priesthood, for he singled out prayer for the spiritual well being of Christian society as the latter’s prime duty, while the protection of the Church was the most serious of imperial responsibilities.

This meant in practice that the administrative structures of the Church came under imperial supervision. It is for this reason that the term ‘Caesaropapism’ has been coined to describe the Byzantine emperor’s role in ecclesiastical affairs. This has been the subject of continuing debate between those who reject the notion, because it does not do justice to the spiritual autonomy of the Byzantine Church, and those who defend its validity on the practical grounds that the Byzantine Church was largely regulated through imperial legislation (Dagron 2003).

By the twelfth century the emperors had taken the title of epistemonarches or regulator of the Church. By doing so they made clear that the ultimate responsibility for the organization of the Church lay with them (Angold 1995). The assumption of this title was not a claim to decide matters of faith. This in the end was the work of a council of the Church which, it has to be added, was presided over by the emperor or his representative. As an institution the Byzantine Church enjoyed relatively little autonomy before the fourteenth century. The final choice of a patriarch lay with the emperor, who was able to depose patriarchs as well.

When in the early seventh century the patriarch Sergios (610-38) reorganized the personnel of the patriarchal church, it required imperial approval in the shape of a novel of 612 issued by the emperor Herakleios (610-41). It fixed the staff of Hagia Sophia at 80 priests, 150 deacons, 40 deaconesses, 70 subdeacons, 160 readers, 25 cantors, and 100 ushers. Their main function was to mount the lavish round of church services celebrated at Hagia Sophia. In addition to these there were supernumerary positions, filled by the administrative rank and file, 88 in total. Continue reading →

(HT: Orthodoxy Today)

The State of Kansas vs Frank Schaeffer in the Murder of Dr. George Tiller

By George C. Michalopulos

Recently, the notorious abortionist Dr George Tiller was gunned down in his church in Wichita, Kansas. The killer was a man who appears to be a dysfunctional loner with grave psychological problems. Nobody in the pro-life movement has stepped forward to applaud him or his actions; routine condemnation has been the order of the day.

One man however, has bravely stepped forward to take responsibility for this act. Frank Schaeffer, a self-described former member of the “Republican Party hate machine,” a group that included his father Francis Schaeffer, Jerry Falwell, and Ronald Reagan among many others, recently offered a mea-culpa in the left-wing journal The Huffington Post. Schaeffer believes that his life’s work as a young man in the Evangelical movement directly led to this incident because he helped create a “climate of fear” with his documentary (Whatever Happened to the Human Race?) and other work that made such atrocities like Tiller’s murder inevitable. As such, he puts himself in the pantheon artists like J. D. Salinger and Jodie Foster, whose ouvre inspired the murder of John Lennon and the attempted assassination of President Reagan.

On closer reading however, Schaeffer’s credibility is suspect from his first paragraph. He states that he “got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of [his] former hate-filled rhetoric.” Actually, he did no such thing. Sure, he may have abandoned the Evangelical Right, but as a new convert to Orthodoxy, he helped create an “Orthodox Right.” As for his abandonment of “hate-filled rhetoric,” one can read his various books and writings or view any of the numerous books and DVDs he produced since that time. There is more than enough venom against the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and secular humanism in the Schaeffer canon to choke a horse.

To be fair, it is possible that Schaeffer’s recollection of the “mid-1980s” extends to the years 2000-2002, in which he traveled the country barnstorming Orthodox Churches, telling them that America was going to hell in a hand-basket. One of his bugbears was abortion and the degradation of man. The other was the threat of Islamo-fascism. I first heard the term “Islamo-facism” in 2002 and it was from his lips. Schaeffer’s grave disappointment in President Bush actually started then, when he rightly saw Bush’s phrase that Islam was as a “religion of peace” as a sham. I got the impression sitting in the pews at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma that in Schaeffer’s mind, Bush should have taken up the Cross instead of placating the Islamic masses who were “an implacable enemy” of our civilization. Continue reading →

HT: Orthodox Christians for Accountability (Initial summary written by Mark Stokoe of Orthodox Christians for Accountability and edited by AOI.)

In a 15-page opinion offered to Metropolitan Philip, the Local Synod and the Board of Trustees of the Antiochian Archdiocese, dated May 13th, the Chancellors of the Archdiocese Robert Koory and Charles Ajalat shredded both the February 24th decision of the Synod of Antioch and the April 24th decision of the Local Synod as "invalid", "inapplicable" "inconsistent" and "ill-advised:"

…the February 24th decision is not a valid decision of the Holy Synod of Antioch. Moreover, even if were, it would have no effect on our Archdiocese since it wasn’t intend to apply to our Archdiocese and if it was intended, it would not apply because it is inconsistent with, negates, and would violate the irrevocable Resolution on Self-Rule, the Archdiocese Constitution and the Archdiocese Articles of Incorporation, filed with the State of New York.

Not only was the February 24 decision rejected, the Chancellors dismissed it as "folly". “Unless properly amended,” the Chancellors wrote:

…these documents cannot be overridden and the February 24,2009 decision is inapplicable to the Self-Ruled Archdiocese. Thus, what contradicts those articles in their application to North America is the Resolution of the Holy Synod granting self-rule, the Constitution of the Archdiocese of North America, the irrevocable creation of three diocesan bishops by the self-rule Resolution itself, the election and consecration of three bishops under the Constitution as diocesan bishops for North America and the enthronement of these various bishops their respective dioceses. To render all of these documents, resolutions and actions null and void by implication, or sub silentio, would be an absurd action. It cannot be imagined that the Holy Synod of Antioch, composed of wise and holy men, would participate in such a folly.

They further warned that all members of the Church bear the obligation to protect the Archdiocese Constitution:

Pursuant to the Constitution, all members of the Board of Trustees including the clergy and the hierarchs have an obligation to insure that the Archdiocese Constitution and Articles are protected. A constitution defines certain rights and privileges and obligations, these apply to the entire church population including the laity. It is incumbent upon all members to insure that these provisions are not violated even if one disagrees with them.

There is an element of trust that is underlying the role of a member of the Board of Trustees (and a member of the General Assembly) whether the person is a hierarch, priest, or member of the laity. That trust is that the member will act in the best interests of the Archdiocese and follow the dictates of the spirit as well as the letter of the Constitution. If the members do not act to protect the Constitution and the self-rule as defined therein, then they will have violated that trust. The consequences, among others, will be a legitimate lack of trust by clergy and laity in the leaders of this Archdiocese. That would be tragic.

The Complete Opinion

Continue reading →

In the June issue of Reason Magazine, Ezra Levant details his long and unnecessary struggle with Canadian human rights watchdogs over charges that he insulted a Muslim extremist, who claimed to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. This sorry episode also cost Levant, the former publisher of Canada’s Western Standard magazine, about $100,000. Read “The Internet Saved My Life: How I beat Canada’s ‘human rights’ censors.” (HT: RealClearPolitics). Levant sums it up this way:

The investigation vividly illustrated how Canada’s provincial and national human rights commissions (HRCs), created in the 1970s to police discrimination in employment, housing, and the provision of goods and services, have been hijacked as weapons against speech that offends members of minority groups. My eventual victory over this censorious assault suggests that Western governments will find it increasingly difficult in the age of the Internet to continue undermining human rights in the name of defending them.

In a review of “Facing the World: Orthodox Christian Essays on Global Concerns” by Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), I talked about the archbishop’s critique of human rights laws and how they should be properly understood by Christians.

In the essay “Orthodoxy and Human Rights,” Anastasios takes a critical view of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, and the later development of these declarations into exhaustive lists of economic, social, and political rights. Anastasios makes an important distinction between rights declarations, and their enforcement through legal and political forms of coercion, and Christianity’s preferred method of persuasion and faith. “Declarations basically stress outward compliance,” he says, “while the gospel insists on inner acceptance, on spiritual rebirth, and on transformation.”

Anastasios reminds us of Christianity’s contribution to the development of political liberty. “Human rights documents,” he says, “presuppose the Christian legacy, which is not only a system of thought and a worldview that took shape through the contributions of the Christian and Greek spirit, but also a tradition of self-criticism and repentance.” Those words should be hung from banners everywhere new constitutions and declarations are being drafted. Continue reading →