Culture war

Facebook “Listening” Group Drags Culture Wars into the Orthodox Church

August 22, 2011November 14, 2018 by Orthodox Editors

Culture Wars Orthodox Church facebook by Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse –
Progressive fads sweep through the culture like clockwork. Remember the impending global ice age in the 1970s that morphed into global warming today? How about the fight about abortion where anyone who dared criticize it was branded as a hater of women? Remember the Equal Rights Amendment and how convinced its supporters were that it was absolutely necessary for a just society?

None of these movements should be taken lightly of course but that doesn’t disqualify them as fads. There is always a strong strain of self-justification among Progressive Culture Warriors; a posturing that creates a facade of virtue and labels the critic as ignorant. Fellow travelers bask in that warm glow of imputed righteousness that they generously confer on each other. The rest of us can return to our caves.

That kind of arrogance informs the new Facebook group “Listening: Breaking the Silence on Sexuality with the Orthodox Church.” The tendentious title is the first clue something is seriously skewed. What silence needs to be “broken”? Who are the people breaking it? Is the Orthodox Church really silent on sexuality? [Read more…]

Silence of the Shepherds

August 16, 2011August 17, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

American Thinker logo conservatives by Fay Voshell –

As early as 1867, Matthew Arnold warned that the ebbing of Christianity in England would disturb the societal order and usher in waves of violence. His famous poem, “Dover Beach,” noted the result of the weakening of Christianity would mean “we are here as on a darkling plain, Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

Years later, in 1919, surveying the aftermath of World War I, William Butler Yeats would write his equally famous poem “The Second Coming.” Like Arnold, the poet saw that the dissolution of the ideals foundational to Great Britain’s moral order, plus the dissolution of the global societal order imposed by the British Empire, would result in “anarchy loosed upon the world.” [Read more…]

British Degeneracy on Parade

August 11, 2011August 12, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

British Violence Moral Failure by Theodore Dalrymple

The ferocious criminality exhibited by an uncomfortably large section of the English population during the current riots has not surprised me in the least. I have been writing about it, in its slightly less acute manifestations, for the past 20 years. To have spotted it required no great perspicacity on my part; rather, it took a peculiar cowardly blindness, one regularly displayed by the British intelligentsia and political class, not to see it and not to realize its significance. There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.

Three men were run over and killed as they tried to protect their property in the very area of Birmingham in which I used to work, and through which I walked daily; the large town that I live near when I’m in England has also seen rioting. Only someone who never looked around him and never drew any conclusions from the faces and manner of the young men he saw would have been surprised. [Read more…]

Bishop Matthias Reaffirms Orthodox Teaching on Homosexuality

August 3, 2011August 6, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Beloved Clergy and Faithful of the Diocese of the Midwest,
Christ is in our midst!

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.” (Romans 1:24-27)

In light of the ongoing discussions and debates about “same sex marriage”, I felt the need to address our faithful concerning this issue. Although it would appear to me that the Church doctrine and Scripture has been clear about this issue, there are those who “twist” the Scriptures and the Canons of the Church to fit their own needs. We have always believed that the interpretation of Scripture lies within the framework of “Holy Tradition” and the experience and interpretation of the Holy Fathers before us. Who are we to interpret the Scripture outside of this Sacred Tradition? Only those, who do not have the light of Christ, will interpret Scripture to their own ends.

In the above passage from Romans, St. Paul writes that because of the “lusts of their hearts,” they exchanged the truth of God for the lie. [Read more…]

Why It’s Time to Speak about God Again

August 1, 2011August 1, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

God Trinity Light of World by Jay Haug –
America is living under an illusion: the idea that we can expunge God (broadly understood) from our national and public belief system and still operate a moral and accountable government.

C.S. Lewis summed up the problem in The Abolition of Man. “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful.” John Adams asserted, “Our Constitution was made for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Our founding fathers laid down a system that demanded conscientious, self-restrained implementation — a government dependent on the character of the people. Ben Franklin, perhaps the most deistic of the founding fathers, famously assured one curious bystander that the Constitutional Conventions had engendered “a Republic, if you can keep it.” How many people today truly understand that America’s health depends on the moral character of its citizens, of their personal “keeping” of our nation? [Read more…]

Met. Jonah: On Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and Moral Living

July 31, 2011July 31, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Beloved Fathers, brothers and sisters in Christ,

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:6-10)

In our own lifetimes we were blessed by an act of prophetic witness in July 1992, when the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America issued the magnificent “Affirmations on Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and the Sanctity of Life.” Two decades later we Orthodox who live in the diocese that includes our nation’s capital city need to be reminded of some of the moral verities contained in the Affirmations. It should be obvious to any attentive observer that those verities are under increasing assault by the intellectual, social, and cultural elites in this country—and even by many of our public officials, particularly in the federal government headquartered here in Washington, DC. More alarming is the erosion of those moral verities within some of our Orthodox congregations. [Read more…]

Beyond the Dictatorship of Relativism

July 26, 2011July 28, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Pope Benedict Moral Relativism by Robert Royal –
Almost everyone who pays attention to religion and public affairs knows of Joseph Ratzinger’s famous homily shortly before he was elected pope denouncing the modern “dictatorship of relativism.” The future Benedict XVI rightly drew the connection between, on the one hand, the alleged tolerance and openness professed by many people opposed to the old faith and morals, and, on the other hand, the highhanded public means by which they now force their views on everyone else.

All quite true and profound. But it’s become quite clear that what now most threatens traditional religious belief and behavior is not exactly relativism. Or openness. Or tolerance. Not by a long shot. It’s a substantial set of alternative beliefs and teachings. And claiming that this new faith is fairness or neutrality simply won’t survive a moment’s thought.

Take the gay marriage measures passed in New York State. The ground had been prepared for this and a whole host of other public policy shifts by claiming, for instance, that for all of us sexuality is fluid and “socially constructed.” A kind of relativism, if you will. [Read more…]

A Fling with the Welfare State

July 25, 2011July 26, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Welfare State Democrats Obama by Noemie Emery –
From the best of intentions to bankruptcy and recriminations

The intentions of Democrats are only the best. They want all of the old to have lavish retirements, all of the young to have scholarships, verse-penning cowboys to have festivals funded by government, and everyone to have access to all the best health care, at no cost to himself. In the face of a huge wave of debt swamping all western nations, this is the core of their argument: They want a fair society, and their critics do not; they want to help, and their opponents like to see people suffer; they want a world filled with love and caring, and their opponents want one of callous indifference, in which the helpless must fend for themselves. (“We must reject both extremes, those who say we shouldn’t help the old and the sick and those who say that we should,” quips the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg.) But in fact, everyone thinks that we “should” do this; the problem, in the face of the debt crisis, is finding a way that we can. It is about the “can” part that the left is now in denial: daintily picking its way through canaries six deep on the floor of the coal mine, and conflating a “good” with a “right.” [Read more…]

Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society’s Moral Character

July 19, 2011July 20, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Dennis Prager –

While liberals are certain about the moral superiority of liberal policies, the truth is that those policies actually diminish a society’s moral character. Many individual liberals are fine people, but the policies they advocate tend to make a people worse. Here are 10 reasons:

1. The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status.

The greatest description of American civilization was written in the early 19th century by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. One of the differences distinguishing Americans from Europeans that he most marveled at was how much Americans — through myriad associations — took care of one another. Until President Franklin Roosevelt began the seemingly inexorable movement of America toward the European welfare state — vastly expanded later by other Democratic presidents — Americans took responsibility for one another and for themselves far more than they do today. Churches, Rotary Clubs, free-loan societies and other voluntary associations were ubiquitous. As the state grew, however, all these associations declined. In Western Europe, they have virtually all disappeared. [Read more…]

Time For Once Upon A Time In America

July 17, 2011July 17, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Obama Fraud Liar Fairy Tales by Richard F. Miniter –
For many years now America has been profoundly altering its culture, reordering its economy, and shedding individual liberties in response to inventive short stories told by liberal left-wing theorists. Yet, whenever one of these stories turns out to be a fairytale, as they all invariably do, we rarely back up and repair the damage.

In part because the practical result of any one fairy tale takes a while to fall to earth and poison the drinking water and by the time it does our attention has long since been focused on marshalling the facts in the debate about some new law, regulation, ordinance, code, or international agreement demanded by those who believe the next fairy tale. Or say they do.

And as often as not, we lose because we tend to ignore the fact that the real power, in this ongoing struggle between individual freedom and those who fear and revile it lies not in the facts of the matter, but with the other foot in this two step dance: the story. [Read more…]