Orthodox Reflections

Dr. Aram G. Sarkisian, an Armenian postdoctoral fellow in the History Department at Northwestern University, has written two hit pieces aimed at Orthodox Christians who dissent from the standard leftist / progressive orthodoxy. The first is here. The second is here and is entitled What Happens When Scholars of Orthodoxy Write About White Christian Nationalism. In the article, Sarkisian attacked several people by name, including Fr John Whiteford. Fr John has ably responded on his own blog in this post. (Highly recommended.) Dissident Mama, also called out by name, responded with two posts here and here.

The named individuals can, and do, answer quite effectively for themselves. However, in Sarkisian’s post there was a whole group of people that he attacked anonymously:

These Twitter users present as young, devout Orthodox men, usually from the United States. Some list their jurisdictional affiliations (usually ROCOR or OCA), and occasionally the ecclesiastical ranks they hold. Their avatars frequently incorporate Pepe the Frog, which is recognized by the Anti-Defamation League as a hate symbol. To a man, they tweet COVID-19 denialism and anti-vaxxer conspiracies, brag of being “red-pilled,” voice displeasure with democracy, and broadcast explicit anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. They also post Orthodox icons, quote elders and saints, and sometimes express aspirations of becoming monks or priests. Their responses snowball quickly into a tangled web of tweets and retweets venting anger and hate. This is almost always done beneath the familiar purple-and-white emoji of an Orthodox cross.

Notice what is missing in the above quotation? Sarkisian is discussing Tweets. These young, Orthodox men are Tweeting these horrible things (in Sarkisian’s estimation) in full view of millions of Twitter users. Documenting what they are saying is no harder than doing a screen capture. However, Sarkisian feels absolutely no obligation to quote any of them to illustrate what he finds so objectionable.

This is a very common tactic among leftist / progressive “Orthodox” academics. When they praise sites such as Public Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy in Dialogue or Fordhamite-style academics in general, they rarely discuss details of what these people teach. They typically just praise them in vague terms as being “open to dialogue”, “not bounded by culture”, or “looking at things with a fresh perspective.” An example is this lecture from Fr. John Jillions, who demanded that we be open to dialogue with pro-homosexual bloggers – without once mentioning that they were pro-homosexual bloggers. When these same academics attack a perceived opponent, they rarely quote them or link to them. Instead, they attack them using loosely defined insults without giving any real specifics.

This pattern is quite telling. Orthodox Christians should never be afraid of the truth. Leftist academics, however, can’t confront the truth. If they were completely open and honest about what they support, and what they oppose, it would be quickly apparent that Sarkisian and his ilk are “Orthodox” in name only. The worst thing they could do for their movement is to quote their opponents fairly. The truth is just that obvious.

By necessity, such people as Sarkisian deal in obfuscation, vagueness and insults. To illustrate this clearly, let’s look at what Sarkisian has to say about this anonymous group of Orthodox Twitter users.

First, Sarkisian feels the need to use his academic talents to attack an Internet meme. Of a frog. Sarkisian writes, “Their avatars frequently incorporate Pepe the Frog, which is recognized by the Anti-Defamation League as a hate symbol.” Upon reading that, my first reaction was not, “Wow, this guy is hung up on an image of a frog?” After all, we aren’t talking about an image of Baphomet or a Swastika. It’s a frog. Actually, my first reaction was, “This guy is quoting a disgraced, left-wing pressure group as if it is authoritative?”

The ADL is the go-to for left-wing writers who would like to brand someone a hate criminal. The ADL was once widely touted as a non-partisan watchdog. However, whatever moral authority the ADL might have had in the past has long evaporated. Jewish writer Dov Fischer wrote about the decline of the ADL into a hyper-partisan, leftist organization:

…the organization named Jonathan Greenblatt to be its new national director. Greenblatt, a hardened “progressive,” had just served as special assistant to the president in the Obama White House. He is an Obama acolyte through and through. From the day that he arrived, he converted the ADL into a markedly left-focused organization. Under Greenblatt, ADL has focused almost exclusively on combating right-wing hate and also attacking conservative non-haters among Republicans, Fox News anchors, and the like — while giving virtually free passes to the Left.

 

The demise of ADL as a Jewish organization and its conversion into a mouthpiece for Obama acolytes has been mourned for the past five years. Seth Mandel has written about it in Commentary. Liel Leibovitz, another leading American Jewish commentator, wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal. Most recently, Jonathan Tobin has written about ADL’s pronouncedly left bias and “overhyped statistics” in several articles in JNS, a national Jewish news service.

During the Summer of 2020, at the height of the George Floyd riots, the ADL adopted a new definition of racism: ­“The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” Under this definition, heavily influenced by Critical Race Theory, only white people can be racist. Orthodox academics have an affinity for CRT, so the anti-White, left-wing bias of the ADL is a feature for them, not a bug. The ADL is so obsessively left-wing it even targets Jewish conservatives for attack campaigns. Middle-of-the-road Republicans such as Tucker Carlson also make the hitlist. Over 1,500 Orthodox Rabbis sent the ADL a protest letter complaining about the branding of Tucker as anti-Semitic for airing a program critical of George Soros.

The reliance on the ADL by an academic such as Sarkisian tells us much. In the mind of Sarkisian, leftist radicalism is not radicalism. The ADL is mainstream, whereas conservative Rabbis and moderate Republicans are dangerous extremists. There is one way, and one way only, to view any given topic. To be acceptable in polite discourse, one must embrace The Narrative as approved by the guardians of left-wing thought. Any dissent from Orthodox Leftist Dogma indicates you are a dangerous, right-wing extremist who must be branded as such and swiftly silenced.

Let’s look at a few more of the string of insults Sarkisian used, “To a man, they tweet COVID-19 denialism and anti-vaxxer conspiracies…” What is COVID-19 denialism and what are anti-vaxxer conspiracies? Sarkisian doesn’t say, of course. Based on past interactions with such “academics,” it is reasonable to assume that Sarkisian is criticizing deviations from Orthodox Faucism, a set of Leftist Dogmas covering medical care:

• The SARS-CoV-2 virus is extremely dangerous to everyone, not just the really old and/or really sick. Young healthy people died in large numbers too, even if all the evidence indicates otherwise.

• Prior to the “vaccines” and recently developed, extremely expensive drugs, there were no effective treatments. Getting COVID was a death sentence, so society had to be reordered to prevent anyone from getting the virus.
• Society can “slow” or “stop” the spread of a respiratory virus and save lives through draconian interventions such as masking two-year-old children, destroying the economy through lockdowns, printing vast sums of money, keeping healthy people isolated, and denying children a quality education.
• There is no need for cost-benefit analysis. All resources must be marshalled towards fighting a virus, no matter the collateral death and destruction of our preferred policies.
• Vaccines stop transmission. If you care about others, get vaxxed. Otherwise, you are an immoral person. There are no side effects. Experimental mRNA is completely safe, even if there are no long term studies. The thousands of doctors and medical researchers saying anything different are all lying. They should be censored for the good of everyone. In fact, doctors who question the vaccine narrative should have their licenses revoked.
• You can trust multi-billion Pharma, media, and investment companies, despite their past track records. The FDA is a public agency and is totally free of the corrupting influence of Big Pharma money.
• The vaxxes are so beneficial and so effective, that everyone must be forced to get them and keep getting them. Even people in age groups that are practically immune to the virus must get the vax or everyone will die and/or overwhelm the hospitals.
• Forcing 5 year-old kids to show evidence of a medical procedure to eat a hamburger in a restaurant is totally fine.

To say that there is ample room to question the Orthodox COVID narrative summarized above is, perhaps, the greatest understatement in history. We are drowning in evidence that most, if not all, of the tenets of Faucism are completely wrong. Which is why someone like Sarkisian, an apologist for secular power, cannot engage with actual facts. Unlike the young Twitter users he is criticizing, for whom facts are all-important. He could have easily posted examples of denialist or anti-vaxx ideas, but doing so would require a fact-based rebuttal. Sarkisian, like any COVIDIAN in today’s environment, can’t win a fact-based argument. Insults and censorship are all that the True Believers have left.

Sarkisian referring to “anti-vaxxer conspiracies” is particularly rich. In the past few days, in response to peaceful, largely Blue Collar protests, Canadian PM Trudeau has invoked the Federal Emergency Act to essentially give himself martial law powers. The scope of the new powers extend from arresting tow truck drivers who refuse to move big rigs to launching a crackdown on crowdfunding sites, traditional bank accounts and crypto-currency. The invocation of such sweeping powers has so far been rejected by the provinces of New Brunswick, Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

A few months ago, it was considered a “conspiracy theory” to warn about coming vax mandates. Well now they are here, but even the most paranoid would never have predicted that Canada would descend into dictatorship to protect them.

If you are reading this in the United States, please don’t believe your bank account and financial privacy are somehow safe. The U.S. government has been doing similar things to Canada, only for much longer. Tucker Carlson broke the story on his show of Bank of America colluding with the FBI, in the absence of a court order, to provide information on innocent customers of the bank in the wake of January 6th.

“This show has obtained, exclusively, evidence that Bank of America, the second largest bank in the country with more than 60 million customers, is actively, but secretly, engaged in the hunt for extremists in cooperation with the government,” Carlson said. “Bank of America is, without the knowledge or the consent of its customers, sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies. Bank of America, effectively, is acting as an intelligence agency. But they are not telling you about it.”

The Constitution of the United States is supposed to guard against such broad ranging “fishing expeditions” in which law enforcement trolls through data “searching for a crime.” However, like many of our other procedural safeguards, that one appears to be non-operative under the Biden Regime.

Criticize the wrong people, go to the wrong protests, make a nuisance of yourself to the ruling class, and you can end up with your assets frozen with no way to work, receive pay, or even buy food – on either side of the U.S.-Canadian border.

I seem to remember reading warnings about allowing that level of control over people. I can’t quite place it though, might have been some science fiction show or other…

Politicians, journalists, and academics love to insult “conspiracy theorists.” Unfortunately for them, the difference between a “conspiracy theory” and a “conspiracy fact” currently seems to be about 2 or 3 months. But in truth, there isn’t really any conspiracy here. It’s not a “conspiracy” if they tell you what they are doing. Way back in 2021, we were publishing articles about the various groups (Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Government, Big Media, Global Capital, the Democratic Party, etc.) that were using the “pandemic” for their own ends, including the pursuit of obscene amounts of power and profit. Most of the cooperation is not done in secret. Sure, some is. Fauci secretly conspired to “take down” scientists who broached the idea of a “lab leak” origin for the virus (among other things). But that is something of an anomaly. Most of the corruption has been on open display for the entire world to see. Even as the Powers That Be tell us to ignore it.

Most COVID players are in it for the money. Quite a few for the power, which is why so many politicians keep re-upping emergency orders even as 71k mask free people party at the Super Bowl on primetime TV. A number of megalomaniacal billionaires and scientists have dreams of overcoming death through scientific means, transforming the human race in the process. But there is more to all this than what meets the eye.

There are also supernatural forces involved. After the appearance of Dr. Robert Malone on Joe Rogan, the phrase “Mass Psychosis” has entered poplar discussion. This is not a new concept, but one that many people had not heard of before the current bout of it:

Mass psychosis is defined as “an epidemic of madness” that occurs when a “large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions.”

That is one explanation. But does it account for the sheer cruelty of so many people? Needless cruelty, particularly directed at the children? After all, the Biden Administration is even now trying to force perpetual masking of children in pre-Kindergarten. From old people dying alone, to special needs kids with masks forcibly tied to their faces – the tale of the Pandemic is one of man’s inhumanity to man. Perhaps a better phrase than “mass psychosis” would be “Demonic Delirium.” Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Pskov and Porkhov had this to say in 2020.

Man is always falling for these terrible influences, because the evil spirits, the devil, demons, the multitude of spirits who are at enmity with God, who hate man and hate God even more, act upon our souls and minds in ways that we don’t even suspect.

 

Sometimes whole nations become subservient to these spiritual beings, the demons. Demons move into people’s souls, which then unite in spirit with evil and madness, and then destroy themselves, their minds, and their country. They do things in a state of ecstasy, intoxication, and infernal joy that they are later ashamed of, and they don’t understand how they could have possibly done such things!

Sarkisian, like so many supposedly “Orthodox” academics, probably thinks of Satan and Demons more as literary symbols than as real entities. Men like him are usually totally blind to the influence of the spiritual world. Without the grounding of true supernatural belief, they are often unable to recognize actual evil, or their participation in it.

Sarkisian says his opponents on Twitter “brag of being red-pilled.” He presents this in a negative way, and for good reason. “Red-pilled” typically means a former liberal who is now more conservative. In other words, according to Sarkisian – an apostate. In the past two years as the Left has grown increasingly authoritarian, many former leftists such as writer Liel Leibovitz have moved center-right:

You don’t get to be “against the rich” if the richest people in the country fund your party in order to preserve their government-sponsored monopolies. You are not “a supporter of free speech” if you oppose free speech for people who disagree with you. You are not “for the people” if you pit most of them against each other based on the color of their skin, or force them out of their jobs because of personal choices related to their bodies. You are not “serious about economic inequality” when you happily order from Amazon without caring much for the devastating impact your purchases have on the small businesses that increasingly are either subjugated by Jeff Bezos’ behemoth or crushed by it altogether. You are not “for science” if you refuse to consider hypotheses that don’t conform to your political convictions and then try to ban critical thought and inquiry from the internet. You are not an “anti-racist” if you label—and sort!—people by race. You are not “against conformism” when you scare people out of voicing dissenting opinions.

 

When “the left” becomes the party of wealthy elites and state security agencies who preach racial division, state censorship, contempt for ordinary citizens and for the U.S. Constitution, and telling people what to do and think at every turn, then that’s the side you are on, if you are “on the left”—those are the policies and beliefs you stand for and have to defend.

Unfortunately for Sarkisian, his authoritarian instincts do not help his cause. Attacking “red-pilled” former liberals only further convinces them that leftism is antithetical to freedom.

According to Sarkisian, many evil Orthodox Twitter users “voice displeasure with democracy.” Ironically, one of the persons criticized in his article by name, Michael Sisco, was actually running for elected office at the time. Strange that someone from a group that eschews democracy would participate in the democratic process.

Normal people define democracy in procedural terms. If the voting is free and fair, then an election is considered democratic. Further, most people associate freedom with “democracy.” The average citizen assumes that the government works for the people and by their consent. They assume governments will honor the wishes of the voters, while also protecting human rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, security of private property, privacy, and freedom of movement within national boundaries. If you polled the young men Sarkisian finds so objectionable, you would find that most of them support this kind of “democracy.”

But Sarkisian does not define democracy the way normal people do. Rather, “democracy” is defined as a process yielding the correct outcome – a government which supports the leftist agenda of diversity, inclusion, and equity. No matter how free and fair the voting, an election resulting in a Trump presidency or an Orban Government is anti-democratic. No matter how tainted the process, an election that results in a Biden Presidency is democratic. Democracy requires, among other things, that borders be fully open to migrants, the pursuit of racial equity must be enshrined in law, protection of the “rights” of sexual deviants at home and abroad (even through military means) must be guaranteed, suppression of “hate speech” to protect the feelings of favored groups must be comprehensive, participation in globalist organizations must be prioritized, and the obligation of citizens to submit to government power in the name of the crisis du jour (Climate Change, COVID, gun violence, etc.) must be strictly enforced. For Sarkisian, curtailing and/or eliminating individual freedoms is not anti-democratic, as long as it is done by leftists pursuing proper societal outcomes.

When you put the boot down on the working and middle classes, all that matters is that you are on the correct team pursuing the correct goals for the “correct” people. 

Unfortunately, Sarkisian is not the only “Orthodox” thinker who ties the concept of “democracy” to social goals such as “diversity”, rather than to government accountability and preservation of the rights of citizens. The Greek Archdiocese published this in its Social Ethos document about democracy:

Neither, certainly, should Orthodox Christians fear the reality of cultural and social pluralism. Indeed, they should rejoice in the dynamic confluence of human cultures in the modern world, which is one of the special glories of our age, and take it as a blessing that all human cultures, in all their variety and beauty, are coming more and more to occupy the same civic and political spaces. The Church must in fact support those government policies and laws that best promote such pluralism. More than that, it must thank God for the riches of all the world’s many cultures, and for the gracious gift of their peaceful coexistence in modern societies.

One wonders if Sarkisian as an Armenian, or the many leftist Greek academics, would thank God for the “pluralism” a few million Turkish immigrants would bring to their ancestral homelands? Highly doubtful. The old countries usually get a pass on the whole “promoting pluralism” thing. On the other hand, more than a few Orthodox hierarchs and academics believe and teach that any attempt to control U.S. borders is immoral.

Sarkisian also accused the Twitter users of “broadcast explicit anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia” Coming from a leftist, anti-Semitism covers a lot of territory. Is it anti-Semitic to repost the fact that the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem issued a statement warning that, “Christians have become the target of frequent and sustained attacks by fringe radical groups”, referring to Israeli far-right activists? Is any criticism of Israel anti-Semitic by definition? What about questioning some aspect or other of the typical Holocaust narrative? What about criticizing a person over his / her politics (such as George Soros) who happens to be of Jewish origin? Is praying for the conversion of Jews to Orthodoxy an act of love, or an act of anti-Semitism?

Any and all of those things are “anti-Semitic” when done by anyone seen as “right-wing”, but perfectly acceptable when done by someone on Sarkisian’s “team.” As noted earlier, even Jews themselves are accused of being “anti-Semitic” if they get their politics wrong. Sort of like African American Trump supporters being labeled as “black White Supremacists.” Just like the term “racist,” the term “anti-Semitic” has been abused to the point of meaninglessness.

Misogyny? Really, Orthodox young men who pray daily to the Theotokos hate women? Of course they don’t. The only way to charge them with “misogyny” is to define that word as meaning opposition to feminism and abortion. Many Orthodox of all ages are guilty of that.

These young men are standing amid the wreckage of our society wrought by feminism. Many of them had childhoods ruined by divorce, the erosion of gender roles, and sexual anarchy. They are lucky to even be alive, as their mothers could have killed them had their existence proven inconvenient to career or educational goals. Opposing abortion, supporting the all-male priesthood, and seeking a pious, traditional wife with whom to have the blessing of children are not misogyny. Sarkisian may prefer the debauched society bequeathed us by decades of Cultural Marxism. He is free to argue in its favor, even as it collapses around him. But he should be not be free to insult his opposition which stands firmly within Orthodox Tradition.

It is precisely our stand within the unbroken Tradition of the Church that makes Orthodoxy so appealing to young men in the first place. And to young women as well, who seek out the kind of good husband material which Orthodoxy provides. All inconvenient facts which terrify leftists to no end. Particularly those in the Orthodox Church who wish to keep it small and “ethnic”.

Finally, we get to the crux of matter. Sarkisian is upset that young men are rejecting sexual deviancy. These men have the temerity to reject Holy Homosexuality, and that makes them guilty of “homophobia.” The suffix “phobia” indicates an irrational hatred. Nothing could be further from the truth. Orthodox Christians do not irrationally hate sexual sinners. We love them and call them to repentance. They are not okay. What they are doing is not okay. They need to stop and embrace Christ, in Whose service is perfect freedom. But for “Orthodox” academics, this attitude is tantamount to hating homosexuals. For Sarkisian-style “Orthodox,” our morals must change to redefine homosexuality as licit. Anyone opposing this mutilation of the Orthodox Faith is, in Sarkisian’s way of thinking, a hate-filled enemy of Christ.

Sarkisian accuses his Twitter enemies of “transphobia.” If you define “transphobia” as the belief in the reality of biological sex, then all Faithful Orthodox Christians are “transphobes.” God made them male and female. Males and females are inherently different in many ways. You cannot transcend or erase these differences without changing what it means to be human. Reality exists independently of the demented thoughts of a politically useful “victim” class. For Sarkisian, this way of thinking is unacceptable “hate.” For those of us who actually listen to Christ and His Church, trying to help mentally disturbed individuals recover from their mental illnesses (or demonic possession) is the very definition of love.

Nor is it “hate” to oppose the full scale indoctrination of children into gender confusion and homosexuality. See below for one example.

In this video, a teacher explains the “transition closet.” As he says, “The goal of the transition closet is for our students to wear the clothes that their parents approve of, come to school and then swap out into the clothes that fit who they truly are.” Schools are actively subverting the identity, moral formation, and even the very sanity of the children in their care. And we are supposed to meekly accept this state of affairs as compatible with Orthodoxy, lest some academic accuse us of having a “phobia?”

Why does all of the above matter? Sarkisian is not even canonically Orthodox, and he’s just some academic writing papers no one reads. It matters because he is not alone. He is just one of a collection of “Orthodox” hierarchs and academics who are committed to changing the Orthodox Faith. They present settled questions such as sexual morality as “open to further interpretation and dialogue.” At the same time, they present leftist dogma (Climate Change, diversity, equity, COVIDism) as if it were the dogma of the Church. They are seeking a world in which the only sins are those which transgress the commandments of leftism. Homosexuality, polyamory, kink, divorce, abortion, transhumanism, pedophilia, mandatory jabs – these things will be practically sacraments of their new Church. Whereas failing to take the jab, opposing open borders, or advocating traditional Orthodox sexual ethics will all be a rejection of the new Gospel.

We must condemn this now, and support others that do so, or we could find ourselves excommunicated from our own Churches. Our faithful local priest can be removed. Our local Church closed for defying the leftist hierarchs who listen intently to the counsel of the academics. Or the government closes the parish, with nary a protest or peep from any hierarch. Perhaps we finally try to work with our fellow Orthodox Christians to preserve what is left of our God-given freedoms, only to find they have all been persuaded by the Sarkisians of the world to bow down to government edicts. Same time, we need to make sure the lost sheep of this world, who are looking for the Orthodox Church, are not put off thinking we are the Episcopal Church with better liturgies.

Don’t think that can happen? Stop for a minute and think about all the things that have happened in the past two years that “could never happen.” Then go pray as hard as you can for the strength to endure the fight ahead.

Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America