Orthodox Reflections

Churches are in trouble. A new Gallup poll estimates that only 47% of U.S. adults say they belong to a religious congregation. This is down from 70% in 1999. Leadership and financial issues have contributed to this precipitous drop. Scandals of one kind or another have become so common that few even bat an eye anymore. Lack of transparency in many religious bodies leaves members uneasy as they wonder – what else is happening we don’t know about?

For all that, one cause for declining membership stands out above all others – the horrible response of churches to Covid.

Most churches closed down willingly in obedience to the dictates of Pope Fauci. That shocked millions of Christians. Especially Orthodox and Roman Catholics, as the Eucharist can’t be livestreamed to our homes. None of us ever expected the Church to surrender so quickly and effortlessly. We fumbled through it, doing our best to pray at home and watch services from our couches. We prayed for the parishes to open. When they did, we cowered in our masks, “socially distanced” and felt like total frauds. The icons of the martyrs on the walls judged us as we changed or abandoned practices of our faith that had been considered essential just months before.

Had the clergy quietly, minimally complied with the insane Covid dictates, we might have eventually forgiven the whole thing. Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened. From the beginning, most Christian leaders were all on-board the Fauci train. Clergy went to absurd lengths to bolster the narrative that this was the new Black Death. Clergy lectured us about our moral obligation to comply with every government directive as if it were the Word of God. Failing to obediently follow the “rules” would kill innocent people. If you love your neighbor, you will shut up and wear the mask. Instead of inspiring us to overcome the fear of death, clergy preached bland sermons that sounded more like CDC public service announcements than the Gospel. Bible verses were constantly thrown at us to justify clerical cheerleading for rank authoritarianism.

Christians with any critical thinking skills have known since last May that: Covid is only dangerous to the very sick / very old, asymptomatic spread is not a thing, and quarantining the healthy is only good for destroying our economy.  Millions of Christians knew we were getting played even as our pastors kept denying that fact to our faces.

In most churches, Christians who openly questioned the government narrative were ignored, belittled as “fanatics,” and/or threatened with reprisals. Of course, the senior leadership made sure to unleash the Karens to assist in the effort of suppressing any crimethink. As a snitch culture took hold, pastors and members who failed to diligently comply with the new state religion, or who merely held unapproved opinions, found themselves: barred from services, stripped of offices, or (in the case of recalcitrant local clergy) suspended. The message was clear: your opinions don’t matter (even if you are an MD or otherwise knowledgeable), you will obey the bishops / leadership, and it is your Christian obligation to do everything you are told no matter how asinine or counter productive.

A year later, most churches are still masked-up and “socially” distanced with no end in sight. In fact, even in states / areas where those things aren’t required, too many local churches are still doing them voluntarily. Those who protest are still getting shush-letters and threats from the leadership.  Even as vaccine-passports and eternal masking loom in our future, too few Christian leaders have raised their voices in protest. Truth be told, many thinking Christians are terrified of what our leadership will surrender to next. 

Millions of Christians are no longer in church on Sundays. We need to be very, very clear about what is and what is not happening to cause that sorry state of affairs. Some people who quit church no longer believe in God. That is quite sad, but those lost souls are a minority. The majority of “missing” Christians still have faith. At Orthodox Reflections, we know of many Orthodox Christians who barely attend liturgy under current conditions, but still contend earnestly for the Faith as podcasters, authors, bloggers, and evangelists. They love God, but reject the “new normal.” Unfortunately, many churches are more obsessive about enforcing the “new normal” than most secular businesses.

So to all the clergy, do not blame mass apostasy for your diminished flock. The vast majority of people skipping church services continue to believe in God. It’s you they don’t believe in, and that is your fault.

This was an unforced error, by the way, as we know how Christians are supposed to behave in a real “pandemic” and how clergy should lead. Our clergy failed to live up to the examples of the Saints or even to that of faithful foreign clerics. But that failure is not the biggest problem.

Tragically, the biggest problem is that they didn’t even try.

Way back in September of 2020, we wrote this as a response to a priest who had chastised us for criticizing the “leadership” of the bishops:

It may comfort this GOA priest and/or some of the bishops to believe that only a few bad apples are complaining. That is a false comfort. For every criticism you manage to read, there are so many, many more unhappy Faithful who are simply suffering in silence. They are at risk of leaving the Church, and they are exactly the kind of people the Church needs most.

And leave they have.

This article was contributed by a nice lady who chanted for her GOA parish. She is no longer attending services. This article was written by a gentlemen who switched parishes to avoid the masks and the “new normal.” This article was written by a lovely Greek lady who now communes in a Georgian parish, having lost all patience with the Greek Archdiocese. This article explains how many contributors to this site switched to a Western Rite parish to find the real “normal.” This article reminds us that if you don’t defend the Faith, you will go broke.

To further illustrate the current crisis, we have gotten permission to run the letter below. It was written by a man who has (hopefully) temporarily left the Orthodox Church. He was very active in his parish, serving as president of the parish council and even planning to attend seminary. This man’s story should be a wake-up call. As Christ often said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

– Orthodox Reflections Staff

Good evening,

To all of you that have reached out to my family and me after we left our Orthodox Church here in Tyler, thank you. My family and I genuinely miss you.

Many are wondering why we left. We did not leave over the mask mandates alone. There is a great deal more to our decision. Just before leaving, I was serving as your Parish Council President and had been fully approved by the OCA into the Diaconate Vocational Program with an aim at attending seminary. I cite those facts only to illustrate my involvement in church life and the church’s trust in me at the time. I approached our parish priest early last year with different data regarding Covid 19 and the Orthodox Church’s willingness to comply with “governmental expert advice.” Our priest made little effort at dialogue and held the line of opinion that is now unraveling daily in reports from reputable experts the world over.

When a person, organization, or entity makes efforts to suppress and control information that could lead to opposing opinions, there is a problem. Unfortunately, this is the soup of the day in our culture, and it never seems to come from good intentions. For instance, taking approved Orthodox books from the church library placed there by the previous priest or passive-aggressive comments given in homilies to malign those holding different views are just two small efforts implemented. Not to mention what you can read in this article and on the website from which it originated. Of course, some are discrediting those speaking out to instill bias in the broader church. If you choose to research further, you will find an opinion held that those of us without higher “credentials” need protecting from our inability to think for ourselves.

Virtue shaming those of different opinions is a sure method of suppressing information and ideas and reveals more control efforts. Control is the real aim here. Let’s not kid ourselves. If you have different opinions about what you and your family are enduring at the hands of the Orthodox Church leadership or our elected officials, know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

There is much more that is and will continue to come to light. Unfortunately, The Orthodox Church worldwide is complicit. My family and I have prepared for the typical discrediting strategy to suppress our opinions. That is the primary playbook of those that wish to silence and control. We choose to stand with the thousands, if not millions, that agree with this article’s content as it pertains to church and civic life. If disagreement with mask protocols were all there is to this story, it wouldn’t seem challenging to work through. Masks alone are not the entire problem. Archived information can reveal a dark underbelly of both past and present concerns.

If you are one hundred percent on board with submitting to the Orthodox Church, its Bishops, those that control them, and what they intend to do next, then we are not the same. I will wish you well, and I will gladly do so. If I must respond to discrediting or maligning my family, I will do so with other information, articles, data, and, if needed, legal action.

2020 to the present has genuinely been the best year of my life. Truth is not always easy to hear, but it will certainly set you free. My family here in Tyler chooses to stand with others who refuse to be controlled and silenced. We stand with those that choose to exercise their God-given freedoms of open discussion. We choose to have the humility it takes to listen to other perspectives, process the information, and decide for ourselves what we will think and how we will live. We choose to be free.

If you wish to know more, I am easily contacted and found.

Respectfully,
Jason Milliken
Formerly known as Haralambos