Orthodox Reflections

Clearly just forcibly shutting down recalcitrant Churches is not a good solution for the government. Now, of course, the government doesn’t have to. The banks can shut the Churches down instead. Your Church opposes same-sex marriage, sexually mutilating children, has hymns that are “antisemitic”, or has the word “Russian” in its name? No bank account for your Church.

No problem, you say? You can just donate cash? Sorry, welcome to the digital dollar. There is no cash. By the way, as an affiliate of a known radical, subversive, hate group – let’s just cut off your bank account as well. Just how do you keep a parish open, or a family from starving, with absolutely no access to any way to pay for anything?

The government does not even have to ask for everything all at once. After all, Satan normally works incrementally. Today you have to accept non-discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons in hiring for Church support positions (admin, daycare, teachers, professors, etc). That’s okay, right? The Church should be fair, right? You can easily talk yourself into that. Next week, you have to stop preaching against same-sex behavior. No sweat, lots of other topics to cover! Next month, you change a few hymns that are not “inclusive” enough. The month after, you have to ordain women. At some point you find yourself so far gone that there is no coming back. https://orthodoxreflections.com/central-bank-digital-currency-is-the-end-of-freedom/

This American individualistic ethos is therefore poison for the Church. It is in fact lethal to anything that savors remotely of tradition, self-sacrifice, and so on. The individual’s all-consuming, all-American ‘pursuit of happiness’ will make him reject any restraints that he believes hampers this quest of his – marriage, children, loyalty to his ancestors and to his birth place; especially traditional Christianity – embracing instead whatever brings him pleasure: in the most advanced cases, even things like murder (unborn babies inclusive), transgenderism, transhumanism, psychedelic drugs, and suicide.
https://orthodoxreflections.com/americanism-vs-christianity/

The lockdowns revealed those bishops and clergy who were willing to fight for their Orthodox brethren, and those who would throw them under the bus. Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of Orthodox Christians in Canada objected to taking the Covid shot because of its connection to the abortion industry. In almost every case, employers used the public statements of a few North American Orthodox bishops and priests to rule against religious exemptions for these faithful employees, and to justify their firing. Such situations were spiritually very good for the faithful, forcing them to draw close to God and His saints, and to the prayers of the faithful – to reject such apostate bishops and priests, and to leave their churches. The Report of the Assembly of Bishops tells this story in technicolour, as do the annual financial statements of certain Orthodox jurisdictions, who faced financial abandonment by their faithful. While a few hierarchs forbade their priests from writing letters of pastoral support for such faithful in their time of need, scores of other priests wrote hundreds of letters of support, saving the jobs of many faithful at a time those faithful needed it most. If times of division come upon the Church again, as seems likely, one can only imagine these faithful will remember those who were shepherds, and those who were wolves. That is a good thing. https://orthodoxreflections.com/good-news-from-the-covid-lockdown/

Most Evangelicals have an outsized love for Israel and a great deal of respect for Judaism. So much so, that Evangelicals have been known to borrow Jewish customs to be “more authentic”. A number of Evangelicals even teach “dual covenant” salvation. This is the belief that Jews can be saved because of the covenant God made with Abraham, without their having to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. Evangelical beliefs concerning Judaism create a problem for two reasons. First, the number of Evangelicals in the US is rather large, so their beliefs matter. Second, Evangelicals don’t really know anything about Rabbinic Judaism, so their beliefs are more grounded in myth than reality. They are not alone in this, as most American Christians of any variety are just as ignorant.

Believing in myths about Judaism has led America into more than one costly war, harmed our moral standing in the world, and silenced opposition to the ever-increasing Christian persecution within Israel itself. These myths harm us socially, as our very freedom of speech is increasingly constrained to prevent utterances labeled as “anti-Semitic”.

The religion of Judaism is a big topic, and covering all aspects of it is way beyond the scope of a single article. Rather, this is a focused attempt to correct what I perceive as the top three most harmful myths a majority of American Christians believe about Judaism. https://orthodoxreflections.com/3-harmful-myths-most-christians-believe-about-judaism/

What follows is more in the form of a personal memoir of my seminary experience. I have spoken little about this and written nothing to date. However, with recent events in our own church making it painfully clear, it is time. Also, the people I am referring to, who will remain unnamed, have all passed on. Today, I see no other way to inform, and hopefully warn, my Orthodox brothers and sisters than by offering this personal account. I hope this personal account is not deemed to be in bad taste. I can assure the reader that I have left out many graphic details. https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-episcopal-church-a-cautionary-tale/

In the excellent film The Sound of Freedom, actor Jim Caviezel, starring as former special agent Tim Ballard, delivers one of the greatest lines ever spoken on film. Asked by another character why he fights against child sex trafficking, Caviezel replies, “God’s children are not for sale.” It was a devasting line. You could hear dozens of people in the theater start crying when he said it. People cried because it is absolutely true. Every child that goes missing. The ones we hear about, and the ones we don’t. The ones kidnapped by strangers, and the ones sold by their own families. The ones raped and violated. The ones harvested for organs. The ones forced to labor in awful conditions. All of these precious ones are God’s Children.

It’s a great line and a noble sentiment – God’s children are not for sale. Only, it isn’t true. As the movie and the world around us make very clear – God’s children are for sale, and we are doing nothing about it. https://orthodoxreflections.com/gods-children-shouldnt-be-for-sale-but-they-are/

As currently structured, what is happening to Bishop Joseph Strickland is not possible within the Orthodox Church. Bishop Strickland is not being investigated by his local synod of Roman Catholic Bishops for credible accusations of an actual crime, heresy, or a misuse of his office. Rather, his investigation was ordered by a remote, unaccountable, supreme pontiff who can officially be judged by no one.

Nothing like the Papacy exists within Orthodoxy. There is no “universal bishop”, though there are efforts underway to create one. Despite those efforts, however, the Orthodox Church is still organized into local synods which govern themselves. The Patriarch of Romania cannot investigate and discipline a Serbian Bishop. The Patriarch of Serbia cannot investigate and depose a Russian bishop. The same demarcation occurs between “jurisdictions” in the West. The Orthodox Church in America synod (which is self-governing) cannot investigate and depose a bishop in the Antiochian Archdiocese, for example. https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-persecution-of-roman-catholic-bishop-strickland-is-a-warning-to-the-orthodox/

I think most Americans are “asleep at the wheel”. They have no idea how close we are to “sawing our prophets in two”. Late last night, I posted a video of a pastor giving a simple 9-minute sermon in his church on the horror called “Pride Month”. He simply stated the obvious: that “Pride Month” is demonically-inspired. When we BOAST about our SIN, the devil and his demons are most definitely involved! The feedback was alarming.
https://orthodoxreflections.com/is-preaching-against-sin-a-hate-crime/

Christianity is estimated to be the world’s most persecuted religion. Globally, hundreds of millions of Christians face varying levels of violence and discrimination. 1 in 5 Christians are persecuted in Africa and 2 in 5 Christians are persecuted in Asia. Christian persecution is usually greatest in areas considered to be “remote” in terms of Western media attention. Lack of coverage leads to the suffering of Christians being largely ignored. Consequently, Christian martyrdom is usually seen by comfortable Western Christians and secularists as a thing of the past – something from Roman or Soviet times, but certainly not a concern today.

In contrast to much of the Christian persecution in the world, what is happening to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is taking place in the middle of Europe, during a war that will doubtless be a major issue in the 2024 US Presidential election. No matter how hard the media try to cover up the persecution, the truth will be increasingly known. How will the examples of the new Saints and Martyrs of Ukraine impact the world?

More than you think, and in ways few can scarcely imagine. https://orthodoxreflections.com/how-will-the-martyrdom-of-the-ukrainian-orthodox-church-impact-the-world/

Estimates of Pagans in the US range north of 1.5 million. There are more active Pagans than Presbyterians, and probably more than Orthodox Christians as well. Paganism is thought to be the fastest growing religion in the US. https://orthodoxreflections.com/return-of-the-pagans/

Elpidophoros, the one and only Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, is back at St. Bart’s. Yes, it’s true. Elpi is returning to the grand byzantine structure to officiate at Great Vespers on Saturday, June 10.

Symbolism and virtue signaling are part of the clerical syllabary. Without speaking a word, a bishop uses familiar non-verbal communication to indicate the authority of his office and the policies that he plans to execute. Nothing else need be said in addition to the obvious symbols displayed at the juxtaposition of Abp. Elpidophoros, St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church and the Feast of St. Bartholomew. https://orthodoxreflections.com/oh-no-your-eminence-not-again/

The clear tradition of the Church is that the Jews hold collective guilt for the death of Jesus and will bring about the Antichrist as their preferred Messiah. But what are we to make of this? Can there be such a thing as collective or ancestral guilt? If Jesus and the apostles were all Jews, then do they also bear this guilt? What about our Orthodox Christian brothers with Jewish ancestry?

An important principle in the New Testament is that ancestry is based on faith. In Galatians and Romans, St. Paul lays out clearly that “that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” [Galatians 3.7] and that “he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.” [Romans 3.28-29]. https://orthodoxreflections.com/collective-guilt-a-theology-of-the-jewish-culture-as-continuous-deicide/

Orthodoxy on the internet… it’s good, it’s bad, it’s ugly, it’s irrelevant, it’s groundbreaking! So which is it really? Depending on who you ask and their experiences with online Orthodoxy, you’ll get a different answer every time. And the responses are not as neatly organized into the aforementioned categories as you might hope. As the Centurion said, “For I myself am a man under authority”. Because I understand the value of hierarchical authority, I avoid asking the question of laity and defer to leaders in the Church. In this instance, three priests and a bishop.

https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-online-orthodox-christianity/

The biggest problem with the rainbow elephant inhabiting our parishes today is that both clergy and laity have yet to admit such an elephant even exists, because shepherds and laity don’t want to talk about it, much less deal with it.

Until then:

Our churches will remain filled with unaware, unprepared, and unequipped parishioners against an increasingly hostile pagan cancel culture, will continue to come under the culture’s influence (rather than the other way around) and be at ever greater risk to submitting to it. This is the way of apostasy.

Such blinders will continue to undermine your credibility as capable shepherds that parishioners can turn to for leadership, or as trustworthy role models of faith and courage under fire, capable of publicly proclaiming the truth in love.

You will be seen as preferring to sit on the sidelines of comfort and safety, as people pleasers, or simply indifferent to the destruction happening outside your parish doors. https://orthodoxreflections.com/an-open-letter-to-our-shepherds/

For those who do not know, a Divine Liturgy is defined as: “the primary worship service of the Church”. Studying the texts of liturgies is an excellent way to understand the beliefs of the Orthodox Church. Why? Because of the ancient Christian teaching known as Lex orandi, lex credendi (Latin: “the law of what is prayed [is] the law of what is believed”). Worship and belief are integral to each other in the historic Christian Faith. The sentiment is sometimes paraphrased as, “Show me how you pray (and what you pray for), and I’ll show you what you believe.” This may be shocking to some reading this, but the Church’s worship preceded the creeds, the canon of scripture, and the Church Councils. In truth, the Church’s liturgical traditions provided the theological (and doctrinal) framework for later establishing the creeds and the Biblical canon. Books circulating in the 1st Century were judged to be authentically Christian based on their adherence to established practices and beliefs as preserved through prayer and other Traditions. Not the other way around. https://orthodoxreflections.com/orthodox-prayer-to-the-saints-explained-for-protestants/

The United States and NATO constantly cast the War in Ukraine as a battle for Ukrainian Democracy and freedom versus Russian authoritarianism. However, Ukrainian Christian bishops are arrested on flimsy charges, and at least one is warning that all protesting voices could soon be silenced. How can anyone reconcile such flagrant violations of human rights with “freedom” and “Democracy” as understood by the average citizen of a NATO country? An average citizen who is forced, at gunpoint, to cough up the taxes necessary to pay for these injustices? https://orthodoxreflections.com/8-reasons-why-global-orthodox-hierarchs-back-the-uoc-without-condemning-russia/

But if I have accepted Darwinian evolution as science, then I cannot understand Adam as a type. He is created, not evolved. According to the prevailing orthodoxy, we have to go to an evolutionary typology to understand ourselves. And herein lies a fundamental problem: evolutionary doctrine tells us we are not created in the image and likeness of God; we are the result of random collisions of molecules over time. Nor is rebellion against God our problem. Man’s problems, according to evolutionary theory, stem from the fact that we still operate on instincts that were evolved mechanisms necessary for survival, but no longer function in the same way in advanced civilized society. https://orthodoxreflections.com/evolution-and-the-abolition-of-christian-mankind/

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Unfortunately for him, Fr Peter is both popular and extremely dedicated to Christian Orthodoxy, which the anti-Christ fools running the “West” desperately want to control and even transform into a prettier Episcopal Church. That is why the canonical status of a regular priest like Fr Peter is suddenly such a hot topic. It’s not really about his canonical status, or lack thereof. If Fr Peter were Woke, or at least pro-Zelenskyy and pro-Joe Biden, then neither the banishment from ROCOR nor the unexpected communiqué would have ever happened.

Woke, pro-Deep State clergy never suffer for their politics, their heresies, their actions, or their crimes against Orthodoxy.

https://orthodoxreflections.com/fr-peter-heers-why-him-why-now-is-the-american-deep-state-involved/

Agriculture in important parts of the American West is in deep trouble. Topsoil erosion, aquifers depleting. Dangerous times seem to lay ahead. Are you spiritually and physically prepared? https://orthodoxreflections.com/preparing-for-hard-times-part-2/