Fr_J-H

Thoughts on Orthodox Stewardship

George Strickland, Ph.D.
http://directionstoorthodoxy.org

Orthodox Christian stewardship is the free and joyous activity of the child of God and God’s family, the Church, in managing all of life and life’s resources for God’s purposes.

SEPTEMBER is a time of year when churches resume many of the activities that may have been put on hold during the summer months. It’s a time when planning turns into implementation. That makes it a perfect time to tap into the rich resources that are found in the talents of members and provide them opportunities to put their time and talents to work in the Lord’s kingdom.

As God’s caretakers, Orthodox stewards should care about the government God has entrusted to them. The Scriptures encourage Christians to respect government authority, obey laws, pay taxes, and be influential for good in the context of responsible citizenship [Matthew 22:21; Romans 13:1; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13].
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Understanding the religious roots of America

Francis Asbury.

300,000 miles on horseback, from the Atlantic to the Appalachians, from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, for forty-five years, he spread the gospel.

This was Francis Asbury, Methodist Circuit riding preacher who was born this day, August 20, 1745.

When the Revolution started, he refused to return to England:

“I can by no means agree to leave such a field for gathering souls to Christ as we have in America.”

He befriended Richard Bassett, a signer of the Constitution, who converted, freed his slaves and paid them as hired labor.
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Bar might tell judges to quit anti-gay groups (including the Boy Scouts)

Orlando Sentinel, Saturday, August 7, 2004, Gina Holland

Atlanta — Judges are on the front line of battles about legal rights for same-sex couples and should never belong to an organization that discriminates against gays, supporters of a proposed change to American Bar Association ethics rules argued Friday.

Judges are already prohibited from joining clubs that discriminate based on race or sex. An ABA panel is debating whether to make groups that discriminate against gays off limits as well.

The ABA, the nation’s largest lawyers’ group, with more than 400,000 members, writes conduct rules for judges and lawyers. States and federal courts generally adopt them, with some changes.
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Secularism and the moral tradition

I just finished an article for Again magazine on Orthodoxy Christianity and the public square. They asked four or five authors to contribute articles on this theme, and it promises to be an interesting issue. Again is repositioning itself for a larger audience and wants to move into examing current issues from an Orthodox Christian perspective. They’ve totally revamped the visuals as well. It looks very promising.

I met the new editor, Doug Cramer, in New York at Clergy Laity who was representing Conciliar Press in the exhibit area. He’s a bright and engaging person. We ended up leaving the Congress for an hour and had coffee on the street somewhere to talk about the magazine and more. Nothing like sitting on the sidewalk talking and drinking coffee. It’s great.

Anyway, you never really know where a piece will end when you start out, but I devoted over half of it to a discussion about secularism vs. the Christian moral tradition, ie: the culture war. As I was discussing that theme here, I was also working on the article. One feeds the other I think. My final conclusion, not definitively proven but explained well enough to be compelling I think, is that secularism in the end is a Christian heresy.

Unfortunately I can’t post it until it is published which will be in September sometime.

Overall the week has been great and also liturgically full. Paraklesis on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening. Vespers of the Transfiguration last night, and Liturgy this morning. I always like this day, particularly the relationship between the Transfiguration and the ancient Jewish Holy Day of the Feast of Booths. The Transfiguration of course occurred on the feast which is why Peter wanted to construct a booth.

By the way, the only place in Matthew where the Greek word describing the light of glory of Christ occurs again is in the description of the garment of the angel that sat on the stone after the resurrection.

I’m also busy working on building up the infrastructure of the parish. I am fortunate in that a professor of patristics just joined the parish who will be teaching at the new Catholic college (Ave Maria) being built nearby. He will help me with adult education. Today another family came by with four children from 5 to 16 years old. They moved here last week. I’m told that during “season” (the time when all northerners come back down south) attendance exceeds 400 people or so. It’s going to be busy.

We need a new web page. GOA internet services has a new program called web-builder, a point and click operation of sorts that lets you pull together a pretty decent looking site in half-a-day or so. I could build one, but I just don’t have enough time for it. I could get someone to build it, but it would take a whole lot of time explaining how I want it done. I just might try the point and click.

They also have a new service called bulletin builder. Basically you download a preformatted bulletin with all the relevant info already included — scripture readings, apolytikia, kontakia, everything . Nice. We’ll switch to that too.

It rained almost all week. Usually when it rains here is drives down hard but ends in an hour or two and then the sun comes back out. This week it rained for hours, and there were almost entire days with no sun. My car ended up getting soaked. It turns out a seal along the floor somewhere was never installed and will all the puddles water worker its way up. I ended up with almost a half inch of water on the floor. I took the car in Monday and got it back today. They ended up resealing the area in the body shop and replacing all the carpeting. Fortunately it was all on warranty. I even got a loaner. All in all, the hassle factor was minimal.

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Where We Begin

A reader submitted:

In protecting human life we must begin with a commitment never to intentionally kill, or collude in the killing, of any innocent human life.

Some today are fond of saying that we have to consider “a wide range of issues” when we vote — which is true as far as it goes — but then go farther and say that all the issues are of equal weight — which is not only false, but offensive to common sense.

Take, for example, the “scorecard” that that is periodically put together by lawmakers, summarizing their voting record on a variety of issues and then giving each a score. There’s no problem, of course, in reviewing and summarizing how public officials vote. In fact, the public deserves more of that information. The big problem with the scorecard, however, is that all the issues are assigned equal weight, so that no distinction is made between the importance of banning partial-birth abortion and the regulation of mercury levels in thermometers.
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Planned Parenthood Defends “I Had an Abortion” Shirts Despite Backlash

Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com
July 30, 2004

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Criticism from pro-life groups, women who have had abortions, and even from their own local affiliates hasn’t stopped the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from selling t-shirts with the slogan, “I Had an Abortion.”

In a statement responding to the national outrage, PPFA president Glora Feldt, says, “The shirt is not a cavalier statement, but a way to challenge the silence and shame around an experience many women have shared, however difficult that decision may have been.”

Feldt blames pro-life groups for making it necessary to sell the t-shirt.

“One in three American women will have an abortion before the age of 45, and anti-choice extremists are doing everything they can to turn that choice into a scarlet letter, and ultimately to criminalize this option,” Feldt explains.

“In that effort, some anti-choice activists have publicly disclosed that they had an abortion, only to cast this option in shame,” Feldt added.
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Sens. Sarbanes and Snowe vote against gay marriage amendment

John Nixon writes in his newletter:

Despite a clear statement that

Marriage is only conducted and recognized in the Orthodox Church as taking place between a man and a woman. Same-sex marriages are a contradiction in terms. The Orthodox Church does not allow for same-sex marriages (http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article8083.asp),

Greek Orthodox Senators Olympia Snowe and Paul Sarbanes (the latter having been named a “Model Greek Orthodox Christian” by H.A.H.E.P. Bartholomew I) have voted today against the constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

One wonders who is giving them pastoral guidance on how their faith should impact their public service. Click here for the roll call vote in the Senate.

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Worth Its Salt — Can the Church Still Impact American Culture?

Although written for an Evangelical audience, the autor makes important (and insightful) points relevant to Orthodox believers as well. Thank you to Orthodoxnet.com for bringing the piece to our attention.

(AgapePress) – For Christians in America who believe their faith can and should have an impact on their culture, it has not been a good year.

In less than a 12-month span: The Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws, in effect invalidating both natural law and the Judeo-Christian foundations of our nation as a sound basis for our society; The Episcopal Church consecrated an openly homosexual man as one of its bishops; The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized same-sex marriage; and a halftime show on the Super Bowl — in which a pop singer’s breast was exposed — shoved in nearly everyone’s face just how debauched our pop culture has become.

Nothing that Christians or pro-family groups have done has seemed to stop American society from rushing headlong down the tracks to moral oblivion. It appears that secularism and postmodern relativism have successfully teamed up to overthrow Judeo-Christianity as the dominant philosophical force in our culture.

Read the entire article on the Agape Press website.

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Can’t tell right from wrong

Rabbi Shumley Boteach
The Jerusalem Post
Free registration required.

The New York Times eviscerated Bill Clinton’s autobiography with a censure that would have finished off any other author…

BILL CLINTON is the product of a 1960s generation which believed authentically in love and goodness but whose intentions ultimately brought no permanent, positive change to the world. Virtually all of the great ’60s initiatives petered out with little to show for it. For all the talk about universal love and global peace, most of that generation’s idealism was jettisoned just as soon as they entered the workforce. Even Clinton ended up dismantling the welfare state once he became president, which went against the grain of the socialist idealism of his youth.
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