Orthodox Church

Update (10/13/08): The complete, unedited column is now available on Terry Mattingly’s site under the title, “Beyond Orthodox folk dancing.”

(10/11/08): Religion writer Terry Mattingly has a column in today’s Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera newspaper that is a must read. He looks at the controversy surrounding the publication of Fr. John Peck’s “The Orthodox Church of Tomorrow” here on the Web site of the American Orthodox Institute. Mattingly is a blogger at the GetReligion site, a syndicated columnist, and directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He recently joined AOI as an adviser.

About Fr. Peck, Mattingly said that “the 46-year-old priest wrote an article about the positive Orthodox trends in America, as well as offering candid talk about the problems faced by some of his friends. He finished ‘The Orthodox Church of Tomorrow’ soon after arriving at the Greek Orthodox mission in Prescott, Ariz., and sent it to the American Orthodox Institute — which published the article in late September on its Web site.

Bishops, priests and laypeople — some pleased, some furious — immediately began forwarding Peck’s article from one end of Orthodox cyberspace to the other. I received some of these urgent e-mails, since I am an Orthodox convert whose name is on several public Web sites.

After a few days, Peck asked that his article be pulled offline. Now the question is whether, after a scheduled Oct. 16 conference with his bishop, he will still have a job.”

Read the entire column here. Sign up for Mattingly’s weekly column here.

Mr. Harry Katopodis has sent AOI an article to further elaborate on the thinking behind his article in the Hellenic Voice, “Religious Right Must Not Set Agenda for Orthodox Church.” Which led to my post, “Where are the Orthodox Dominionists?”

The Katopodis response is published here unedited:

Dominionists or Pro-Life?

By Harry Katopodis

Several bloggers have criticized my article because I called called pro-life Orthodox dominionists, however the difference in reality is very small. The point is that whether I call them dominionists or religious right their stands are very similar, put Christian values and doctrine in the government of the United States. I was raised in the Orthodox Church, and I left the Greek Church and went to the OCA so I could hear English services. A few years later I returned home to the Greek Church when I felt I wasn’t welcome in the OCA because I am a Democrat and a proud union member that votes for Democrats because it is in my economic interest to do so. Right to Life Sunday was founded by a man I consider one of the worst presidents we ever had (anti-poor and anti-worker), Ronald Reagan, was offensive. Also having memorial services in OCA churches when Reagan died was unorthodox (will Bill Clinton be given a memorial service when he dies?-of course not he is pro-choice). When I saw all the pro-life (ie. pro-Republican) and anti-public school/pro-home schooling in OCA sources I could no longer stay there. OCA priest Very Rev. John Breck reflected an anti-public school view when he wrote “Moral discourse, like today’s public education, will be shaped by a vision of reality that is totally foreign to the Gospel.” (OCA Web site) Not only the pro-life aspect of the OCA and Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, but also the language used by many converts to talk about their “walk with the Lord” is essentially protestant reminding me of born-again meetings and Charismatic Renewal meetings I had visited. The OCA and Antiochian Churches are essentially turning into Byzantine-rite Protestant-like Churches. The difference between so-called liberal churches that support social justice is that one is not told they are sinners for voting a certain way, in the pro-life movement it is implied that voting pro-choice is a sin and that somehow pro-choice voters are not true Christians.

I don’t want to keep the Greek church for Greeks only (85% of all weddings are mixed), I want to keep the faith once delivered to the saints intact, not turn the church into an arm of the Republican Party. Orthodox right to lifers will not see this and repeat their claim that abortions must be stopped. Unless the hearts of the majority of Americans are changed, abortion will remain legal.
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The following prayer was offered by Fr. John A. Peck (see his Orthodox Church of Tomorrow below) at the Prescott (Ariz.) City Council meeting on Sept. 9. Fr. John is pastor of Prescott Orthodox Church, The “Mile High” Mission.

Invocation Prayer
O God, the God of principalities and powers, authorities and dominions, we ask You to send Your Most Holy, Good and Life-Creating Spirit upon this noble assembly, that You may bless what we do, and that we may do what You bless. Strengthen us to labor without partiality or favor for the increase of prosperity to the benefit of all Your people, to establish Your peace and Your justice among men.

Guide us by Your Holy Spirit that we may not tolerate in our midst those who would lie, cheat or steal, who would circumvent justice for the righteous, or reward the transgressor.

For You are the benefactor of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and to You we ascribe glory, together with Your Father, Who is from everlasting, and Your Most Holy, Good and Life-Creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

A little legal background: The constitutionality of the [Congressional] chaplains’ prayers was upheld in 1983 by the Supreme Court (Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783) on the grounds of precedent and tradition. The Court cited the practice going back to the Continental Congress in 1774 and noted that the custom “is deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country” from colonial times and the founding of the republic. Further, the Court held that the use of prayer “has become part of the fabric of our society,” coexisting with “the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.”

A new American Orthodoxy, one more vitalized by the Gospel, is taking shape now. There will be fewer parishes, more and younger bishops, a clergy that is better educated and morally rigorous. And, finally, the ethnic “coffee club” model of Orthodox Christianity will fade away. This is the vision of Fr. John A. Peck in “The Orthodox Church of Tomorrow,” just published on the AOI site.

“As frightening and disconcerting as it may seem to our leaders, they will learn that emerging from a cocoon, even a Byzantine cocoon, is not a bad thing,” Fr. John writes. “Orthodoxy is about to take flight on new beautiful wings.

Here he is on the future of the hierarchy in America:

If our current slate of bishops has been mostly a disappointment, reducing their number will only tighten this closed circle, making the hierarchy less and less accessible, and more and more immune to things like, oh, the needs and concerns of their flock. The process of selection for the episcopacy will contain a far more thorough investigation, and men with active homosexual tendencies, psychological problems, insecurities, or addictions will simply not make the cut. We aren’t far from open persecution of Christians by secularists in this country, and we need bishops who know the score. With better bishops, no one will be able to ‘buy’ a priest out of a parish with a gift of cash. Conversely, parish councils will no longer be able to bully priests into staying out of their affairs, and will be required to get out of the restaurant/festival business and get into the soul saving business.

Robert Moynihan, writing for Inside the Vatican, has a moving report on the world premiere of a “Requiem Concert” in Russia’s largest church, Christ the Savior, in a commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the execution of Czar Nicholas II and his family on the night of July 17, 1918.

The historical texts and music were by Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev of Vienna, Austria, head of the Russian Church representation to the European Institutions. Alfeyev also participated in the performance, reading Scriptural passages in which the sufferings of Christ seemed to foreshadow the sufferings of Christians in communist Russia. In the article “Requiem for the Romanovs,” Moynihan wrote:

No one can contemplate the bloody murder of four lovely, educated, refined, innocent girls, and their young brother, without a shudder. This sense of horror is multiplied by the sense that the children in some way represented the nation itself. The czar “incarnated” the “essence” of the Russian nation, according to the monarchical thinking of the age, and his children were thus the “future” of the nation. To see them live so vibrantly, and then see their lives snuffed out so brutally, would bring a tear to many Russian, and non-Russian, eyes, and did.

Sound, sight, and moments of silence tonight combined to create a sense of being transported back in time, back to the World War I period, of being “eyewitnesses” to acts of terrific brutality and terrible barbarism. (There were moments in the film footage showing the actual execution of prisoners by pistol shots to the head.)

So this was not simply a musical performance, but a multi-media “tour de force.”

Moynihan says that “in this performance … the Russian Orthodox Church sets forth a powerful, emotionally compelling case for public recognition on Russia of the crimes of the Soviet period.” He quotes a Russian priest, Fr. Vladimir Soloviev:

Russia stands at a crossroads. We are struggling to decide what our national attitude will be toward our communist past. For example, there are some who argue that we should remove Lenin’s body from his mausoleum beneath Red Square, at the center of Russia, and re-name those streets and subway stations in our cities which commemorate communist leaders.

I personally think we should do this. We cannot fully celebrate our great national festivals on Red Square as long as Lenin’s mausoleum stays in Red Square. Let it stay anywhere else, but not in Red Square.

Earlier this month, Fr. Georgy Ryabykh, the acting secretary of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, said Russian authorities should denounce the communist regime, both in word and practice. “For some reason, we are avoiding to give a clear moral estimation of this evil act. But this estimation is needed and should be voiced in public actions and statements. Denouncement of this crime and recognizing the feat committed by the Tsar family would resist any revolutionary intentions in the national mind,” the priest said.