Editorial Note: Reports from people in attendance at the Kirk memorial indicate that the Christian elements of the show were very well-received by the crowd. However, the “pro-government” speeches were not. The crowd was, according to these reports, highly suspicious of the government in general, and its Charlie Kirk assassination narrative in particular. This really tracks with what was so special about Kirk to begin with – he led with his commitment to Christ, and people responded to that. Many Americans, buffeted on all sides by broken promises and beset with financial difficulties, are eager to hear about Christ. They are decided less enthusiastic to hear more pro-MAGA stump speeches.
Walt below, among other topics, discusses revivalism. Many observers, some approvingly while others sarcastically, referred to the memorial as a ‘tent revival scripted by WWE.’ For those of us who grew up actually attending tent revivals, much of the show was cringe-inducing. The denomination I was raised in was born out of a long-lasting revival in California. The Kirk show triggered traumatic flashbacks to endless childhood hours spent in hot, smelly locales watching adults frantically jumping around to bad Gospel music, spewing nonsense vocalizations (Speaking in Tongues), which were supposedly the “language of Heaven.” Revivalism will have no more of a lasting impact this time, than it has had in the past. Hopefully most of the attendees and watchers will be motivated to find the Orthodox Church, or at least the Roman Catholic Church. What American Christians need is spiritual discipline and a real connection to God, not religiously induced hyper emotionalism with a side of largely meaningless political spin.
Click here for all of our posts on the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk tragedy.
—-Nicholas
By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.
We were curious what would be on offer at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service on Sunday (21 Sept.): an extravagant MAGA promotion or an attempt to honor and exalt Christ. It was both.
Vice President Vance and Erika Kirk offered some very clear and unapologetic statements about Charlie’s faith in Christ, and about the need of all of us to seek God and live life for God and with God.
President Trump, as expected, raised his voice for Americanism. Some of the key thoughts from his speech (rough transcription):
–‘Our greatest evangelist for American liberty became immortal’ when he was murdered.
–‘He is a martyr for American freedom.’
–He will live forever because he is now in the ‘eternal chronicle’ of America’s greatest patriots.
Trump also tied Americanism openly to the Enlightenment, saying that reason and open debate were the greatest legacy of the Enlightenment, and that America shows her greatness by harboring them within her. The Enlightenment, for those who may not be aware, was designed by its creators precisely to be a replacement for Christianity.
So we have these contrasting visions offered to us at Mr Kirk’s memorial, the Kingdom of God (Christianity) and the Kingdom of Man (Americanism). A lot of Christians, particularly the Evangelical Protestants, think that between these two there is no antagonism – indeed, that the United States are the Kingdom of God.
But we beg to differ. We will illustrate our reasoning through the opposing triads that define Americanism and Christianity.
Americanism is defined by the triad found in the Declaration of Independence: that man is given three chief inalienable rights by his ‘Creator’ (Jefferson doesn’t specify who that creator is. Is this Allah, the Gnostic demiurge, etc.?) – at any rate, the three main rights being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The triad of the Christian life is found amongst the Lord Jesus Christ’s final words to His Holy Apostles, that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Americanism begins with biological life, and by means of free individual choices, man arrives at temporal happiness (which many interpreters of the Declaration identify with earthly property). This is an inversion of the Christian Way.
Christianity begins with man’s crucifixion of himself, with his conformity to Christ’s Way. Through this rejection of his own will and the purification of his soul and body by keeping Christ’s commandments, the Truth is revealed to him; more than that, he is united to Truth Himself, Jesus Christ. This process of deification in Christ allows him to experience authentic life, which transcends the mere biological life and happiness of Americanism: the life in Christ, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost.
Once again we come to the point of agony for the followers of the religion of Americanism: the realization that Christianity is incompatible with their un-Christian Enlightenment project (or ‘experiment’ as they like to call it, which is true to form for the science-obsessed Enlightenment culture).
What options do the peoples of the States have, then? VP Vance gave them a clue. He mentioned in his memorial speech how Charlie Kirk built an organization out of nothing in the hot Arizona desert. So too did another remarkable man: Elder Ephraim of Arizona (+2019):
Elder Ephraim was born Ioannis Moraitis in Volos, Greece on June 24, 1927. He is known throughout the world and widely considered to have been a bearer and transmitter of the Patristic-hesychastic Tradition of the Orthodox faith, though the strict Athonite flavor of his monasteries has also proven controversial in America.
Elder Ephraim traveled to the Holy Mountain on September 26, 1947, at the age of 20, where he was met by Geronda Arsenios who announced that “The Honorable Forerunner appeared to Elder Joseph last night and said to him, ‘I am bringing you a little lamb. Put it in your sheepfold.’”
He remained under the obedience of Elder Joseph the Hesychast from that day until the elder’s repose in 1959, from whom he learned the art of salvation. Elder Ephraim then became the head of a group of 8 monks, which grew to 40 in less than a decade. In 1973, the Holy Community of Mt. Athos petitioned him to move his brotherhood to Philotheou Monastery to repopulate the struggling habitation. He later also repopulated the Xeropotamou, Konstamonitou, and Karakallou monasteries. He was also asked to repopulate the Great Lavra, though he declined. He remains the spiritual father of these four Athonite monasteries.
He stepped down as abbot of Philotheou in 1990 and moved to America, where he quickly founded an entire network of monasteries by the request of the faithful and invitation of the local hierarchs.
As Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos says, Elder Ephraim “received fire, and … has imparted this fire … to the Church in America that has great need of it.”
The miraculous story of how Elder Ephraim was led to the exact place where he established St Anthony’s Monastery in Arizona is recounted here.
Stelios Koukos once explained Elder Ephraim’s significance for the States:
A peaceful, spiritual conqueror of America, and even a Christ-bearer, a new Christopher* Columbus, Elder Ephraim of Arizona. Thus he began the “annexation” of America to Orthodoxy. And yes, once again the Hellenism of the mighty Romiosine will once again conquer its conquerors! At a time when American civilization has conquered the world. Even our land [Greece]. But this vacuousness does not give rest, does not console, does not embrace…
It covers the inner emptiness of men by placing garbage below the rug, if not showing trying to show the garbage as treasure!
How beautiful is the video that I had seen before, which showed Elder Ephraim loading food to hasten to feed the poor, homeless and drenched people, to offer to them from the overflowing of his heart.
And behold, once again, the unity of Hesychasm with action. Our Elders and Hesychasts have a burning heart for all of creation, and thus find the way to benefit and multiply for their fellow men even material gifts, not just those spiritual!
And the little Johnny from Volos, the Athonite Elder, Hieromonk Father Ephraim of Arizona and all America, and the former Abbot of the Monastery of Philotheou, he appears to spread out and unfolded Orthodox spirituality in the epicenter of the modern world in the USA. And thus, the Athonite huts have “conquered” the world, offering indelibly the Light of Christ, Who shines upon all!
May we have his blessing!
Elder Ephraim frequently visited Walmart to buy food to distribute to the poor in and around Tucson.
The adherents of Americanism are (unknowingly) desperate for saints like Elder Ephraim. As we have seen, they are clamoring to proclaim Charlie Kirk as a martyr of some kind, and a movement to honor him with images (statues in this case, but still an interesting parallel to holy Orthodox icons; note particularly the anti-desecration elements in the proposal) is now underway. Oklahoma is currently the leader in this regard:
Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma proposed a bill this week that would require all public colleges and universities in the state to build a “Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza” that includes a statue of the late conservative activist.
The bill was introduced by state Sens. Shane Jett and Dana Prieto.
It says that the memorial must be in “a prominent area” on the main campus of every public college and university in the state.
The bill says the memorial must include “a statue of Charlie Kirk sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him” or one of Kirk and his wife holding their children.
Designs for the statue must be approved by the legislature, the bill says.
The bill says that if schools do not comply with building a memorial, they will face monthly fines.
The bill also mandates that the schools take measures to protect their memorials from vandalism and automatically expel any students caught defacing them, the Guardian reports.
This reveals the shallowness of Americanism: It must borrow from authentic Christianity (Orthodoxy) what it lacks, in the form of both saints and cultural artefacts.
It is likely that this same shallowness will undermine the fervent hopes of the believers in Americanism that the death of Charlie Kirk is the beginning of a spiritual revival in the United States. US history has seen several of these so-called revivals come and go, without bringing forth any long-term changes for the better. From the Great Awakening in the colonial days to the Jesus Movement in the 1970s, these revivals begin with great fervor (and sometimes with strange manifestations amongst the participants), but they quickly fizzle out because there is no divinely established Tradition for them to take root in. They are mostly built on emotionalism and innovation. The same goes for other renowned non-Orthodox revivals in the world like those in Wales in 1859 and 1904.
On the left, fans at a rock concert. On the right, worshippers at a revival meeting. It’s the same picture.
One of the most tragic aspects of the Kirk memorial was the finality of Charlie’s absence. The prevailing sentiment, as expected amongst a largely Protestant gathering, was that no one on earth would have any contact with Charlie now that he is dead. If Mr Kirk were really a Christian martyr, this would not be the case. In the Orthodox Church, when a saint approaches death, he invites everyone to continue to speak to him once he leaves this world for Paradise just as they had been doing when he was still physically present with them. These words spoken by Fr Valentin Amfiteatrov (+1908) are common:
When I die, go to my grave and tell me everything you need, and I’ll hear you. And before you even manage to leave, I’ll fulfill everything and give it to you. If someone even a mile away from my grave turns to me, I’ll respond to him.
There were some short statements directed at Charlie Kirk by some of the speakers, but nothing like the Grace-bearing connection that is seen throughout Church history between Orthodox saints and those who pray to them for help in their struggle for salvation and for various other needs.
We expect the ‘revival’ begun by Charlie Kirk’s assassination will grow for a while because of the intensity of the emotions it evoked, but because of the foregoing, we also suspect that it will wither and fade away after not too many years have passed.
For any spiritual revival to be long-lasting it will need to be connected to the Orthodox Church, where there is Truth without error, where the Grace of God flows freely, without obstructions like the Roman Catholic popes or Protestant mistakes like sola Scriptura, or outright idolatry like Americanism, that come between the All-Holy Trinity and our dry, thirsty souls. (Nor are the saints impediments, as some Protestants might try to object, but rather close friends of God who help us to receive more of His Grace, rather than less of It. A former Protestant pastor who has recently begun his journey into the Orthodox Church provides testimony in support of that.)
Charlie Kirk by all accounts was a very good man. But he was not a saint, which means that he will need our help and prayers* (may we not be slow in giving them!) rather than being able to provide us with help from heaven.
That is why it is all the more essential that the peoples of the States follow the other Arizonan, the holy Elder Ephraim of Arizona, into the Orthodox Church. He will not leave us on our own; he will hear our pleas for help; he will help us persevere over adversities. He, a New Apostle of North America, will cause a true spiritual revival to well up in our hearts if we ask it of him.
O holy ascetic, father Ephraim, the abbot and guide of Philotheou’s cenobium, Arizona’s brilliant luminary, direct thy supplicants’ steps to salvation’s ways (Dr Haralampus Bousias, Supplicatory Canon to Our Venerable Father Ephraim of Philotheou and Arizona, Uncut Mountain Press, 2024, p. 15)
*The Akathist to St. Dismas the Good Thief on the Cross is especially appropriate to pray for the repentance and salvation of one who has reposed outside the Orthodox Church.
‘Charlie Kirk Memorial Offers the U.S. a Choice: Americanism or Christianity’…and, I would add, or ‘Commie-style Sharia.’ That is, if Christians and patriots fail, as the Brits have done, to push back against this Marxist/Muslim alliance that has infiltrated our nation, city councils, and colleges, to name a few. But don’t take my word for it. One week’s worth of daily visits at RAIR Foundation website and you can see for yourself the bitter fruit of Europe’s mass migrant invasion at the hands of elitist overlords, and just how not-so-far-behind are the US and Canada. Whether you are a Christian or an Americanist, the only thing preventing Commie style Sharia from replacing is the US Constitution. So, with that, yes, I am all in for fighting along side my fellow Americanist Christians to save what’s left of our freedoms, families and faith.
Most of the people in this comments section. You don’t worship Christ. You worship the ideal you made of the Church. Your faith is shallow and inauthentic, which is why you flipped out on me for saying things that were pretty mild, relatively speaking. What are you going to do if a real saint wanders in and tells you what you don’t want to hear? I tell you the truth, and you respond like the ancient Pharisees with your rocks and blasphemy codes. If we ever have a real saint, he will make me look like a moderate. The real saint will tell you that the command to the rich young ruler is incumbent on all Christians, and you will literally murder him for it.
Ignorant people with strong emotional opinions on things you haven’t researched and don’t understand. You can’t respond to anything I say. All you can do is scream and shift the moral burden.
For example, “people in the Church haven’t met your expectations.” That’s a really twisted thing to say. It puts the moral burden on me, as thoiugh it’s my fault for expecting too much out of people. But you have no idea the horror stories I’ve seen. If I told you them, you still wouldn’t believe me. You don’t have the ability to accept the disease lain within the Church.
This is not how we grow the Church. It’s shallow and inorganic. It makes Orthodoxy into yet another passing religious fad built on hype and emotions, like the Jesus Movement or Hara Krishna. All this new growth of converts, you’ll be amazed how it all withers away in a few decades.
OR Staff alluded to my theological education. I don’t talk about that on the internet because I think that ideas should stand on their own merit. I assure you that everything I say has been thoroughly researched. I don’t just make up lies and distort facts like your beloved internet priests. I don’t piety-signal like these vulgar tourist trap monasteries.
By today’s standards, Chrysostom and Basil would be defrocked. If you don’t believe that, then you have never read much of the Fathers and have no right to speak about them.
You can’t expect normal everyday people with jobs, families, and other responsibilities to undertake exhaustive research into the Fathers. As you have pointed out, we rely on our priests and on summarized versions for our education. If those transmission belts of authentic Tradition have broken down, then that is not the fault of the laity. It is also not the fault of sites such as OR which are willing to engage the truth, no matter how ugly it may be. You can hardly blame people for accepting what they were taught by Church authorities. What else would you expect them to do? There is no issue with challenging the current tends in American Orthodoxy. We have seen, for example, the extreme drift away from rigorousness in the Greek Archdiocese where we have reports of priests blatantly having mistresses with no consequences. Or other examples.
It is not at all that Orthodox laity are not open to challenge. Especially if they are coming here to read, because we do not run the shiniest, happiest blog on the Orthodox Internet. We are willing to go straight at issues. The problem is that you have the background to really contribute to improving the situation, but you are more inclined to attack people who, if they are misguided, are not intentionally so. It is called mercy. “Look, I get that was what you were told in catechism, but here’s why that idea has taken root, and here is the actual truth.” That is constructive, then he who has ears let him hear. “You ignorant pig! You don’t even worship Christ! You have made the Church an idol!” – that is not at all constructive and you should know better.
No one has intentionally made the Church an idol. The Church of Constantinople was in heresy for approximately 248 years of her existence. Most of us with any historical education know that. America is a small outpost of Orthodoxy that has had multiple negative influences. Now is a good time to start the process of correcting them, before we add a few more million converts and set bad practices in stone. Someone willing to challenge the status quo, willing to teach in a spirit of love and humility, would be a gift from God at this point. But you have to learn that people who are merely defending what they have been taught, right or wrong as it may be, are not your blood enemies. They are doing the best they can with what they have been given. The burden of your education was given to you to help others to a deeper understanding of the Faith, not wreck them.
As for horror stories, most of us have seen issues. OR was started to oppose our own bishops during COVID. We have never backed down from a fight. If you read the NT letters to the Churches, you will see that the history of the Church could be summed up as “one damn thing after another.” Same applies to the councils, or even to the Nation of Israel in the OT. To be honest, that is the entire history of mankind. One damn thing after another. Moves are in place now that could easily result in a global war whose consequences will be catastrophic. A war unleashed by the policies of a front man for global oligarchy who is actually conducting a PR campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize. The irony is too thick to penetrate with a diamond tipped drill.
No one comes to the Orthodox Church looking for easy answers. No one sticks with the Orthodox Church for decades, raising a whole new generation of cradle Orthodox with no ethnic ties, looking for easy answers. You may think that we have ingested the wrong ones, but again, why is that our fault? We are doing the best with what we have been given. So check the personal bitterness at the door if you want to be part of the solution. You say we would crucify an actual saint? Would we? Why? Because he told us that we are swamped in consumerism? The love of wealth has blinded us? Yeah, actually, we all know that. We all know that our society is sick. We all know that we could be praying more, giving more of our time and talent. We are all blindingly aware of how far we are from the ideals of Christ, and how much work needs to be done on ourselves.
A real saint preaching such as message won’t be crucified by most of the Orthodox, though he might be put in jail for re-education by an economic system that is based on usury and financial engineering, rather than on production focused on meeting the basic needs of real people. Are there rich, or at least comfortable, Orthodox Christians in prosperous parishes who are absolute blatant hypocrites who really don’t want the authentic message of Christ? Yep. Absolutely. Cultural Orthodox abound, even among converts, some of whom do not want the actual things of Christ. Why would you assume practically everyone you interact with here falls into that category? Outside of the rich areas, many Orthodox parishes are stuffed with working class folks who are just trying to get by.
Orthodoxy is not just for Greek doctors or academics with six figure sinecures. In the parishes with which we interact most, the median income is probably 50K. Plumbers, construction workers, electricians, welders, AC techs, a few IT types getting hammered by H1B visa competition, retirees on fixed incomes, land surveyors, tow truck drivers, local PD officers, etc. Just as was said to Ronda, you can’t take your own personal experiences (broad though they may be) and expand that to generalizations across 50 states, multiple jurisdictions, and what is rapidly becoming millions of people of diverse backgrounds, most of whom are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck.
Do not judge others, says our Lord and every Father ever. Apparently, you missed that in your theological training. When you presume to know my relationship with Christ, with His Church, the state of my faith, what I would or wouldn’t do in your imagination, you step over a very clear line, brother. It sounds to me that you idolize yourself. Hell is other people is Sartre not Christ. God bless and help you.
Well, what would you expect Americans will choose?
Why would they choose the Church? What do most Americans know of true Christianity?
There is a good bit of chatter online among Evangelicals. It shook people to see how easily typical megachurch slop could be co-opted as a political rally. Trump’s speech at the end upset people. The way a memorial could take the worst of Evangelicalism and dial it up to 11 was not popular with everyone. If you already had doubts about entertainment-style Christianity and its lack of spiritual depth, then the Kirk Memorial set those doubts in concrete.
That doesn’t answer my question.
Why would they come to the Church now?
4 new couples visited for the first time last week. One couple were exasperated Roman Catholics who are at their breaking point. 2 couples were coming from non-denominational backgrounds. They have been reading up on Orthodoxy, and both are interested in finding the authentic church. One couple I didn’t get a chance to talk to. People have just had enough with pretend church. They want authenticity. They want a deep, meaningful worship experience. They want clarity. The fact that people were willing to help them during liturgy to follow the service, and that we were welcoming of them and their children was good. But what was impressive for at least one of the Protestant couples was that getting visitors in the door is not our primary focus. We were there to worship, first and foremost. Americans have noticed all this, and they are coming in. Aren’t you seeing an influx of new people at your parish?
Yes, lots of new catechumens.
I am a convert myself. For over 30 years I have been Orthodox.
But here in Minnesota, we have one jurisdiction that is infected with progressive politics. We have two jurisdictions that are focused on their ethnicity and on affluence and are, consequently, secular if not progressive. And the one jurisdiction that isn’t infected with progressivism is so insular and so focused on their own ethnicity that they don’t even serve the Liturgy in English.
That’s how it is here.
I don’t know how it is where you are.
Of course we find the Church and the Eucharist in these churches. But in my experience all these catechumens will have to float around on the edges of all the other flotsam and jetsam that is American Orthodoxy.
Very different experience elsewhere. A lot of areas have multiple parishes using English, and the ethnic focus is fading quickly even in those parishes where it is still highly present. We have to be extremely careful about generalizing from our local situation. Orthodoxy is not yet geographically evenly distributed.
Elder Ephraim was no saint. He was a dangerous false teacher who set up an externalized Orthodoxy that led people into spiritual delusion. I don’t know how that’s not obvious to everyone.
Walt also quotes Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, one of the worst prostitutes for the Vaccine and the EP’s ecclesiology, the spiritual heir of arch-hereitic Fr John Romanides.
If we ever have a true American saint, the Orthodox Church will crucify him. He won’t be popular with wealthy donors, and he won’t build a Disneyland monastery in the desert.
Austin, we do have true American saints.
The closest to an American saint is Fr Seraphim Rose, and you can see how bitterly slandered he still is. The OCA is especially still bitter that he out-Orthodox-ied the professionals.
Matushka Olga is from the far frozen north. St John Maximovitch just happened to spend his last few years here. American Orthodoxy does not produce saints.
Orthodoxy is only genuinely, indigenously American in Alaska.
You are exceedingly ignorant, sir.
St. John was canonized in 1994.
St. Raphael of Brooklyn? St. Alexis Toth?
Not enough room here to list them all
https://orthodoxwiki.org/List_of_American_Orthodox_saints
Sts John, Raphael and Alexis were all immigrants. None of them were made by American culture. The only maybe exception is St Sebastain Dabovich.
Total respect for indigenous Alaskan Indian Orthodoxy. But they aren’t American in the sense that you and I are. They are fully American, but it’s a very different kind of American.
Really, Alaska and Hawaii should have never become states. We should have stayed 48.
You are a mess.
Well I certainly rejoice at the influx of new converts so that they can become like the ideologues on this forum. Clearly the system is working.
Ideologues stop by from time to time, but very few of the people you are infuriating at the moment are actually idealogues. You know a lot. You have read widely, but you are not at all putting that knowledge to constructive use. You are condemning Orthodox because they don’t know what you think they should know, and because they accept things you think they should reject. Things no one ever taught them, but you could if you could master your own negativity. It’s reaching a point to where no comments from you are better than the ones you are typing.
You are a mess, Mr. Martin. A bigot.
Appalachian Orthodoxy is arguably what you are wishing for.
Hogwash. It’s easy to call “hereitic’ (misspelled by yourself so ready to spit venom) online.
Apparently, your graceless schismatic hole-in-the-wall group can’t grasp the likes of St Olga (for example of an American Saint) or that Elder Ephraim isn’t uniformly liked by wealthy donors in GOARCH either.
Forgive my boldness, brother, but perhaps it behooves you to spend a little less time denouncing others lie a jihadist, those you, in all probability, never met, much less knew, personally, and more time reviewing your own life in the presence of Christ, because much of what you post comes across as a half-informed hateful screed bereft of any sense of agape or even a benefit of the doubt toward those others. I believe you could benefit from praying St. Nicholai Velimirovich’s blessing of one’s enemies. Here ya go:
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Enemies have driven me into Your embrace more than friends have. Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.
Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have flagellated me, whenever I have hesitated to flagellate myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish. Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf. Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background. Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand. Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep. Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out. Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of Your garment.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me—so that my fleeing to You may have no return; so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs; so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; so that my heart may become the grave of my two evils twins: arrogance and anger; so that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.
Enemies have taught me to know—what hardly anyone knows—that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.
It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands. For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
-St Nikolai Velimirovich
Oh, and by all means, pin the tail on my own typo. But, the gist still gists! 🙂
Sorry, I was typing that on my phone. Forgive me for being human.
That’s quite some projection you’ve got going there. You’re genuinely offended at me being offended. You judgmentally accuse me of being judgmental. You ignorantly accuse me of ignorance.
Regarding St Olga, I already addressed that. Alaskan Indian culture is too far removed from the American culture of the lower 48. She has a continuity and a context that we don’t have. So she’s very much a real saint, and she’s very much an American, but she’s a very different kind of American than the rest of us.
“Elder Ephraim isn’t uniformly liked by wealthy donors in GOARCH either.”
You don’t build a gaudy tourist trap in the desert without big donor money. Sts Chrysostom and Basil said that any excess personal wealth is robbery from the poor, but you’ll never hear that sermon from the monasteries. St Nil of Sora, quoting St Pachomius the Great, taught that the church building should be so simple to the point of imperfection. But this isn’t what St Anthony’s or Holy Cross have done. For them, the bigger the visual, the more holy.
Ironic that Elder Ephraim named his monastery after a desert hermit who lived in a cave. The only commonality is the desert. When you bring in massive irrigation to build an orchard, you can’t really call yourself a desert monk.
A novice killed himself at St Anthony’s. That’s entirely Elder Ephraim’s fault. He built the place and invited others to learn from him. He set a high threshold of obedience and authority. So whatever goes wrong falls on him.
He also taught corrective baptism and, as I understand it, would not allow those received by chrismation to enter the church. Like most Athonites, he leaned strongly into the teachings of St Nikodemos — a very righteous man who taught very wrongly. He was closely associated with apostate schismatic Peter Heers.
His monastery was very focused on food production. Externals were a big deal, as though you prove Orthodoxy by being beautiful.
He taught a sort of populist hesychasm where the Jesus Prayer is an end in itself. Just say as much Jesus Prayer as you can for the sake of it. I think that this is very spiritually abusive. Most people should not be saying the Jesus Prayer in repetition.
While not Elder Ephraim himself, his successor Fr Paisios gave a married man on death row the Great Schema hours before execution. This is an abuse of monastic tonsure (not quite a sacrament) and shows a superstitious view of it. It’s also a sort of adultery, because the man was still married. And it cheapens it to give it freely to anyone on their deathbed who has had no monastic formation and no intention of living monastically beyond his last few hours.
The monastery produced a documentary bragging about how impressive their buildings are. Is that monastic? You see this beautiful old country church, and the camera goes down the hallway, and immediately you’re in a massive commercial kitchen.
The monastery has effectively declared him to be a saint, even making an icon with a halo. By what authority do they declare him to be a saint? That’s done by synods, not monasteries or individual elders. This is an act of disobedience. These monasteries do whatever they want and consider is dispassion. It’s spiritual delusion.
Anything you could say about Elder Ephraim, you could also say about Fr Panteleimon of Boston. It’s an important lesson we will never learn.
Augustine –
We’ve had these the discussions before. You have had a lot of experience with monks. Most American Orthodox have not. In fact, many of us have been to at most 1 monastery. The sum total of what most Americans know about Elder Ephraim is what is in this article. That’s it. He seems to be somewhat well known among Greeks. But for the rest of us? Yeah, not so much.
So slinging terms around like heretic doesn’t help. You actually asked how the average Orthodox can’t see the problems with Elder Ephraim? Because other than seeing some memes here or there, most of us don’t know anything about Elder Ephraim. Why would we? And those who do know something about Elder Ephraim are not going to approach him the same as someone who was actually inside a monastery and who clearly did not profit from the process.
To say we don’t have the same perspective is a massive understatement. Yesterday the President of the United States awarded 70 billion to a company that is guilty of mass poisoning the world. Millions died. Even more tens of millions were injured. Betrayal is just a daily thing for people who actually had faith that someone in our political system cared. We don’t compare monastics and monasteries, what little most of truly know of them, to great spiritual giants of the past. We compare them to the absolute wreckage of the world around us in our daily lives. From that perspective, reading every criticism you just published of St. Ephraim leads a typical lay Orthodox to go, “So? What else you got?”
Now that may tick you off, but compassion is a virtue. You want to see deep spiritual regeneration. That is apparent, and that is laudable. But most Orthodox don’t have any where close to your frame of reference. We usually haven’t read a lot of deep Theology. We go to Church, say our prayers, and raise our kids. One Saturday a month we do yardwork at the parish. We help people who need it.
Most of us are struggling to have a simple life with a sincere connection to God in an increasingly complex world full of severe threats on all sides. Having the guy with the Theological education constantly yelling at us isn’t helping. Yeah, we know there are problems. We get it. We’d love to do something about them. From a practical perspective, what would that be?
Austin, yours is a confusing paradigm, one seemingly frustrated with the perceived imperfectness and compromising ways of the Church, yet simultaneously condemning the most prominent voices of faithful Orthodoxy today as rigorists and schismatic heretics. Can no one please you? One second you sound like a “true orthodox”, decrying the ecclesiology of the EP and calling Metropolitans “prostitutes for the vaccine”, then you turn around and start talking as if you write for Public Orthodoxy, stating ridiculously that St. Nikodemus was “a holy man taught wrongly” on the issue of baptism, or echoing their oft-made claims that Fr. Peter Heers is apostate and schismatic.
You bemoan that the Church slanders Blessed Fr. Seraphim in spite of his holiness but take at face value every rumor about Elder Ephraim and St. Paisios ever uttered. If you cannot discern the contradiction there, perhaps you are better off not critiquing the practices of monastic communities, or diagnosing their actions as evidence of prelest, or judging the architectural standards of their church buildings. Or even beyond that, making definitive declarations such as “American Orthodoxy does not produce Saints”, a comment coated with such despair and faithlessness as to be practically demonic. God forbid!
You talk as if the Church has failed you, therefore you lash out bitterly at the Church for not living up to your expectations. No one is worthy in your eyes, at least not in these modern times. It’s all worldliness and hypocrisy — there are no more saints! Nothing left but jewish-masonic influence attached to big paychecks coming from liberal donors with subversive aims. Forgive me for my bluntness, but do you suppose this is the first time the Church has been under attack? That the enemies of the Church will be successful in destroying the Body of Christ? Our Lord says, “in the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” That’s an invitation to cough up that black pill you’ve been choking on. Accept it for your own sake!
Ignorant people on the internet with strong, emotional opinions about things they have no understanding of. People like you, dolan, don’t worship Christ — you worship the ideal you’ve made out of the Church. You lash out at me for telling you the truth because you lack authentic faith. You have no arguments — only anger.
I’ve actually studied everything I talk about. I make a point to never be wrong, so I do all my research in advance. I don’t just absorb internet priests.
I also write everything with my real name on it. When I call out the Jews, I want them to know who did it.
Acts 27 is an image of the Church shattering in the last times. Those who lack faith to walk on water will drown. We learned this during COVID.
It is the last times. There are no more saints. If someone becomes a saint anyway, we’ll just crucify him. The Orthodox Church has only a superficial continuity with the Church Fathers. I know this because I’ve actually read them.
-“People like you don’t worship Christ, you worship the ideal you’ve made out of the church.”
-“You lash out at me for telling the truth because you lack authentic faith.”
-“You have no arguments, only anger.”
Are you talking to me or to a mirror?
First, if you hold that Blessed Seraphim Rose is a saint, then you and I are in agreement. That said, no synod of which I’m aware has convened to glorify him officially. I pray that someday he will be! That said, given your stated opinion regarding icons of Elder Ephraim, the parish I attended until recently has an just an icon of Blessed Seraphim, so perhaps it should be removed?
Oddly, you and the priest who took over, and who was trained at the same Holy Cross you denigrate, converge in weird ways. You both believe saints who aren’t officially canonized shouldn’t be written into icons (although I’m unclear if your stance on this includes Blessed Seraphim for the sake of consistency on your part) although you do it from slightly divergent perspectives. He literally told me that Blessed Seraphim is not canonized and shouldn’t be depicted, although this had to do with his ‘divisiveness’ in some communities. He’s in full agreement with you also regarding Elder Ephraim, and even labelled parishioners who attempt to live a more ascetical life in the world “Ephraimites,” as well as dissuading people from visiting monasteries! This priest came with a more or less liberal formation and pretty much finds common ground with you!
I have to admit to some distaste in your insinuation that Elder Ephraim is to blame for what St Anthony has become, especially since other monasteries he founded aren’t that way! This should be glaringly obvious. Also, to stick him with the blame for someone’s (alleged) suicide gets into some serious waters if we take this tack to Holy Scripture and our Lord’s betrayal in particular. I will not even mention the blaspheme one could trace out using your logic here.
To end, I want to mention that I actually love the priest who took over the parish mentioned above, even while I cannot remain in there, for the reasons I stated and those unstated. I pray he comes to a deeper view than that afforded by East Coast liberals and seeks a more ascetical trajectory in the coming years. Alas, I’m too old to wait around. I feel the same about you, since you are in the same boat with him, although perhaps one at stern, one at bow. It’s still the same boat. I’m telling you from experience, please pray the St. Nicholai prayer I sent earlier. It will change your life and lead you away from making the kind of statements critiqued by myself and others and focus your eye back where it needs be: yourself. I believe this! God bless you!
None of you understand anything of what I was trying to say. All you can do is emote.
I agree with you, Austin.
People don’t want truth. They don’t want the tradition of the Fathers. They just want a feelgood liturgy where they hold hands and clap and sing. They murdered Jesus for the same reason.
Who has told you, “I don’t want the truth.” No one. You talk about how people have been mislead by academic theologians. There is truth in that, and the new generation of academics are trying to blatantly mislead people even further. Fine, so we’ve been misled in your estimation. But then you blame us for that by making comments like above. At the one hand we don’t want the truth of the Fathers, on the other hand you tell us we don’t actually know the truth of the Fathers, because too few of us have undertaken rigorous study of them and what we have been taught and believed is erroneous.
So if we don’t really understand the truth of the Fathers, then how in the name of God could we have rejected it? How in the name of God can you conclude we don’t want it? As for feel good liturgies, no one is asking for that. Certainly not clapping and speaking in tongues. Who is asking for such things?
Well, it didn’t take long for our “tough-minded” interlocutor to become the victim, poor little miss-understood, did it? You’re not confessing the faith at the hands of Saracens here, brother, but from the comfort of your keyboard. Look, you come on here acting not only as synod-unto-yourself, but as if YOU are the authority of the Church IN itself, declaring who is and who is not a saint, who is and who is not a heretic, who is and is not worthy of our veneration. And now loving admonishment is equitable to our own inward desire for ‘feelgood’ hand-holding. Wow! You sound here like the LGBTQ psychobabble that declares the ‘autonomy’ of one’s own feelings…as well as over those of others in calling out the ‘hatred’ of those who don’t agree! Once again, you hold the proverbial hands of the lefties more than you seem to realize.
In all honesty, you come across as having zero faith in the Church, its processes and, as such, little faith in Christ given His clear declaration that the forces of death will not overtake the Church. Yes, the times are dark, but you demonstrate simply another strand of the world-weary cynical hopelessness pretentiously clothed in Orthodox apparel. You’ve shown zero sense of agape toward your brothers and sisters on here, only anger and bitterness toward them for basically not being you.
Frankly, the failure to communicate here is none but your own. Orthodoxy without asceticism is anemic, that’s true, but asceticism without the love and humility Christ commanded us on more than one occasion simply opens itself to a major error to the right of the Royal Path. Again, brother, perhaps your time is better spent not bellyaching your lot among us or pointing out the sins of others, whether actual or perceived on your part. Externalizing our gaze in this manner, and judging others, is not Orthodoxy, says every Father I’ve read. I pray these words will be ‘hard’ enough for your Valhallic taste. God bless you!
I do love it when someone resorts to a personal attack rather than double down on clarifying the point.
I think what I have said upthread to Alex is akin to what you are saying.
That doesn’t mean everything you have said is on point. We’re allowed to disagree with you. That doesn’t mean all we are doing is emoting. In fact I would argue that that your little snark was just that.