(HT: ONet)<\/p>\n

On the one hand there are those who find it [the Manhattan Declaration] \u201cshocking\u201d and part of the culture war, etc. These are frightened that the document will be perceived as harsh and unloving, etc.. God forbid that anyone Christian ever stand in public for Truth. And on the other hand those that are relieved to see an Orthodox Pastor with backbone to stand with others and speak truth to error, truth to power, and truth to the politically correct stricture in our society that is choking free speech and seeking to criminalize Truth. \u2013 If this much sets you off, don\u2019t bother to read further.<\/p>\n

My Bishop, fifth generation Orthodox priest, survived the Holodomor<\/a>, the systematic starvation of between 10 and 20 million people mostly Christians in Ukraine by the communist in 1932 and 33. His father was forbidden to celebrate divine liturgy \u2013 all Christian worship was forbidden. He celebrated liturgy anyway and at the end of the service the local commissar showed up and told the congregation to return at 3pm that he had a wonderful surprise for them. He asked the priest to remain behind to help him prepare it. At 3pm the people returned and the priest was hanging upside down on the church doors. They held the crowd at gunpoint and slit the priest\u2019s throat. My bishop at age 14 watched his father bled like a pig on the church doors. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read Fr. Symeon: Danger of Christian Persecution in America<\/a> on the OrthodoxNet.com blog.<\/p>\n

Sign the Declaration here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(HT: ONet) On the one hand there are those who find it [the Manhattan Declaration] \u201cshocking\u201d and part of the culture war, etc. These are frightened that the document will be perceived as harsh and unloving, etc.. God forbid that anyone Christian ever stand in public for Truth. And on the other hand those that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[124,102,13,1115,114,1111,160,296,48,50,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4836"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4842,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4836\/revisions\/4842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}