Orthodox Reflections

This warning below from Seraphim is particularly well-timed as ecumenism is reaching a fever pitch within the Greek Archdiocese and the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Hellenic College Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology recently announced the establishment of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute. The mission of the Institute will be to “foster dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches through programs, events, and other channels”. According to the announcement,  “The establishment of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Hellenic College Holy Cross was made possible by the generosity of Michael Huffington, a noted philanthropist and faithful Greek Orthodox Christian, who donated $2.5 million toward the establishment of the Institute”.  His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, Chairman of HCHC’s Board of Trustees, announced that Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis will be the first Executive Director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute.

This is actually the second such institute that Michael Huffington has funded. The first was the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles (a Jesuit Roman Catholic institution). This institute was launched in 2005 with the participation of the Greek Archdiocese to accomplish the following (emphasis added):

The goals of the Institute are to help bring the Orthodox, Anglican and Catholic Churches into full communion; to provide opportunities for fraternal encounters between these three faith communities; to provide resources and forums for reflective and frank ecumenical discussion and dialogue at local, regional, national and international levels; to foster ecclesial and academic interest and leadership in constructive ecumenism; and to build a leading collection of library resources in the areas of ecumenism and Orthodox theology.

Huffington’s sponsored these institutes because, “My dream is that someday I’ll get to see members of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church be able to take communion in each other’s churches.”

So who is Michael Huffington, this “faithful Greek Orthodox Christian” whom the Church will honor with his name on his own institute at Holy Cross? Huffington is a rich man, former Congressman, former husband of Arianna Huffington, and a publicly-acknowledged bisexual. Since coming out in 1998, Huffington has been a noted LGBT activist. He provided the initial grant that launched SOIN (Sexual Orientation Issues in the News) at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. Then in 2005, Huffington helped to establish a summer fellowship program for LGBT students at Stanford University. He also spoke at the National Equality March rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on October 11, 2009. In 2013, Huffington was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief in support of same-sex marriage, submitted to the Supreme Court during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case

Huffington is also a film maker. He was an executive producer of For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary about homosexuality and its perceived conflict with Christianity, as well as various interpretations of what the Bible says about sexual orientation. Huffington was executive producer of We’re All Angels, a 2007 documentary about gay Christian pop singers Jason and deMarco. He was an executive producer of Bi the Way, a documentary about bisexuality in America.

This man, publicly unrepentant and having disavowed none of his previous pro-LGBT activism, will have his name on an institute at an Orthodox seminary whose purpose is to draw the Orthodox into communion with Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Please keep that in mind as you read what Seraphim, a former Episcopal priest, has to say below.

—OR Staff.

Orthodox Christians are under an obligation to share the Good News with others.  Christ commands us to do so.  We call it The Great Commission:  “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Sadly, we are falling short, myself included.  There are several reasons for this.  One is ethnic identity.  This can be a sore spot among Anglos like myself who are converts to the True Faith.  I’ll not go into this further, except to say that even the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of America defines his mission as serving the Greek “diaspora” in America.  If you don’t see a problem with this, then you are part of the problem.  And what is the problem?  An unwillingness to obey Christ’s commandment, which results in declining numbers.

When asked about by this fact—our declining numbers–clergy have a tendency to explain it away by saying that this is a phenomenon that is widespread and affects all of the Christian “denominations” in present-day America.  More and more people claim to be “spiritual” but not “religious.”  I have also heard clergy point to the “fact,” as published by the Pew Research Center and news sources, that there are 260 million Orthodox Christians in the world, as if to say, “we have nothing to worry about—there are plenty of Orthodox Christians.”

The facts say otherwise.  The only way we can get close to that 260 million figure is to combine the total populations of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.  That total is 223 million.  This conclusion is equivalent to saying that 100% of the population of Israel is Jewish!  OK, but how many of the Jews in Israel are thoroughly secularized?

In the case of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has seen remarkable growth over the past three decades since the fall of the USSR, regular church attendance is approximately 4% of the total population.  This represents a growth rate of 100% over the past decade, but hardly justifies including the entire Russian population as Orthodox.  To be sure, many Russians are baptized, wear crosses, and have icons in the home, but if the trend of being spiritual but not religious is a problem in the U.S., it is vastly more so in Russia.  There are complicated historical reasons for this of course.  Many Russians do not trust the Church.  But the fact remains that it is unethical to claim that 100% of the Russian population is Orthodox or anything close to it.

If we use a reasonable, common sense data point to define an Orthodox Christian, the bare minimum qualification ought to be regular church attendance.

According to the website of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America, there are 540 parishes, 800 clergy and 1.5 million faithful.  This number agrees with several estimates one can find of the total number of Greek Americans.  If this number were predicated on average, regular church attendance, we would expect to see an average of approximately 2,700 people attending each Divine Liturgy on any given Sunday!

Far more likely in terms of regular attendance would be the number in Wikipedia (which does not cite a source):  107,000.  This would equate to approximately 200 average attendees of Sunday Divine Liturgy.  This seems to be a much more plausible figure, since, when is the last time you attended a Greek Orthodox Sunday Divine Liturgy with more than 200 of the faithful?  One of the largest cathedral parishes in America, which makes the largest annual financial contribution to the Archdiocese, has “seating” for about 400-500 and is typically about two thirds full by the time of the eucharistic prayer.  The number of attendees for the Paschal Matins, with a full narthex and people standing in the outside isles, is probably close to double the average Sunday attendance.

The same Wikipedia article claims that the total number of Greek Orthodox adherents in the U.S. is 476,000, also a much more plausible number than the one claimed by the Archdiocese.

So there is a pridefulness, bordering on self-delusion, when we hear the kinds of numbers being thrown about as if they bear any relation whatsoever to the reality.  Almost as disturbing is the result of a recent survey of Orthodox and Oriental churches in the U.S. which claimed to have a 97% response rate.  Greek Orthodox parishes recorded a 22% decline in attendance over the last decade.  We don’t know how this number was arrived at, since I know of no parishes that count heads on Sunday morning.  The Episcopal Church, on the other hand, has an accurate count of everyone who receives communion because they offer the Eucharistic elements differently than we do as Orthodox.

Which brings us to some interesting data from the Episcopal Church.  Religion in Public is an academic research center focusing on “religion and public life.”  In a recent study, they focus on attendance in the Episcopal Church.  Greek Orthodox Christians can be proud of the fact that Episcopalian church attendance declined by 25% over the same pre-covid decade that attendance in the Greek Orthodox Church declined by ONLY 12%.  The long-term demographics are worse.  The article predicts that the Episcopal Church will decline by another 25-30% over the next decade due to the average age of members.  Current living baptized members are claimed to be 1.8 million, with 40% attending on a regular basis.

The Episcopalians do not seem to have a problem with money, reportedly giving $1.35 billion in 2019.  The article explains that there is no way to determine from their data how much more money the Episcopal Church has at its disposal as the result of bequests. Even so, Episcopal churches are notable for the number that have sizeable endowments.  After all, the Episcopal Church is a “mainline” denomination.  The term “mainline” does not describe its theology, as if somewhere in between Protestantism and Catholicism.  It comes from the designation of the commuter train line that connects Philadelphia with the wealthy suburbs.  In these wealthy communities, Episcopal, Presbyterian and Methodist churches predominated.  Hence, these became known as “mainline” Protestant denominations.

There was a time when most of the most influential people in government, industry, education and finance were Episcopalians.  There have been thirteen Episcopalian presidents, with George H.W. Bush being the last.  It’s unlikely there will be any more.

When I attended an Episcopal seminary in the mid-eighties, the Episcopal Church claimed a membership of 2.5 million.  At one time, the church represented 14% of the U.S. population.

Need we say more?  And yet, the leading lights in American Orthodoxy and elsewhere it seems as well, want us to become more like the Episcopalians?  Please consult recent articles in Orthodox Reflections on this point.  Based on a sociological analysis alone, this would seem to be a bad decision.  But what about a theological analysis?  To my knowledge, few if any have addressed this question.

The Experience of Episcopal Seminary

What follows is more in the form of a personal memoir of my seminary experience.  I have spoken little about this and written nothing to date.  However, with recent events in our own church making it painfully clear, it is time. Also, the people I am referring to, who will remain unnamed, have all passed on.  Today, I see no other way to inform, and hopefully warn, my Orthodox brothers and sisters than by offering this personal account.  I hope this personal account is not deemed to be in bad taste.  I can assure the reader that I have left out many graphic details.

The process of attending seminary begins with talking to your priest.  My last Episcopal parish priest was very quirky, and I like quirky.  Most people can’t handle quirky and so there was much opposition to him in the parish.  He was also an “Anglo-Catholic” and a very pro-life conservative, which suited me just fine.  He once proclaimed (not from the pulpit but in the privacy of his own home) that “God is going to drop a nuclear bomb on this country to punish us for abortion!”

Most Episcopalians define themselves as Protestants, some even as Evangelicals, and a few as Pentecostals (i.e. they speak in “tongues” in church services).  But there is also a small contingent of Anglo-Catholics.  As I was more and more beginning to question my Protestant upbringing, and more willing to embrace a kind of Catholic faith that would not require me to be a Roman Catholic, Anglo-Catholicism sounded like a good idea to me.  My thinking about it at the time was pretty shallow.

The Anglo-Catholic movement in Anglicanism began in the early 19^th Century, especially under the influence of John Henry Newman, a priest in the Church of England who worked to restore many of the Catholic beliefs and practices of the church in its earlier days under Henry VIII.  This movement, sometimes called the Oxford Movement, was also involved in the establishment of the first Anglican monasteries and convents since the Church of England’s founding.

Father Newman went on to become a Roman Catholic Cardinal, and having a deep intellectual and scholarly reputation, many Catholic parochial schools are named after him.  He is also the author of a memoir, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, which is one of the finest examples of English literature.

The problem was that my Bishop was decidedly not an Anglo-Catholic. My priest told me that his endorsement would likely hurt me more than help me.  So I was on my own.  I expressed my desire to the bishop to attend the lone Anglo-Catholic seminary in America—the name of which I will not mention—which was founded in the early days of the Anglo-Catholic movement in America as a mission to local Indians.

A problem, that no one bothered to tell me about at the time, was that Anglo-Catholicism is riddled with homosexual priests, and the Anglo-Catholic seminary was no exception.  My Bishop knew this, and assumed that I wanted to attend because I was homosexual.  I was required to see a psychologist, without being told the exact reasoning behind this requirement. The psychologist must have reassured the bishop that I was not a homosexual, so he permitted me to take the next step, which is an interview with a committee of laymen.

The primary purpose of this interview was to determine if I was a thinking person or a feeling person.  Every time I used the phrase, “I think that…”, they would laugh at me.  Literally laugh.  I did not understanding at the time what was going on.  But it is clear in hindsight that they don’t want clergy who think.  They want clergy who feel.

It was not clear to me whether the committee actually rejected me or not.  In my last interview with the bishop he was soft pedaling, in a mealy-mouthed sort of way, implying perhaps that I should reconsider.  At the end of the conversation, I said something to the effect, “OK, but when do I get to go to the seminary?”  At that point he jumped out of his seat, left his office, and told his secretary to permit my application to seminary, returned to his office, dutifully informed me of same, and made it clear that our meeting was over.

In all of this I was befuddled and disoriented, not in any way appreciating the political undercurrents in the Episcopal Church.  Nor was there any emphasis on my spiritual and moral development.  I was asked one interesting question by the seminary committee:  how often do I attend church?  I just assumed that every Sunday would be an expected minimum, so I mentioned the fact that I regularly attended a weekly mass.  The answer was, yes, but do you go to church on Sunday?  The thought that a seminarian would not have been attending church every Sunday never occurred to me.

Once the seminary receives the bishop’s approval, the decision rests with their academic committee, and that was no problem.  I had excellent test scores, a 700 GRE, and pretty good college grades; not Phi Beta Kappa but at least the “dean’s list.”

At seminary I immediately gravitated toward a couple of solid seminarians who were well versed in the faith and seemed to have a strong calling.  I believe I was attracted to them because they seemed so confident in who they were and why they were there, without being holier than thou.  What was the nature of that attraction?  I think it was because I did not know who I was, why I was there, or what I believed.  I was searching, which is not in itself a bad thing, but in my case I had no solid foundation in the Church for being in seminary.  I had simply concluded that in order to develop my Christian life, the parish was not going to be enough.  Sadly, I was not alone, for various reasons, which will shortly become clear.

The dean of the seminary was our New Testament professor.  As far as I could determine, he was an existentialist and interpreted the New Testament accordingly, although it was never explicit.  His lectures were not really about the Bible at all.  They were more like existentialist musings.

My “Systematic Theology” professor was an active, chronic alcoholic and a homosexual who was a Hegelian.  He had hit the trifecta!  His lectures had nothing to do with anything Christian that I could discern.  But for quite a while, I did not question my professors.  I thought I only lacked discernment.  One time I checked out his PhD thesis on Hegel to try to get a better handle on what he was talking about.  He was informed by the librarian and confronted me, wanting to know WHY I had checked out his thesis.  I honestly tried to explain that I was interested in trying to better understand him, an answer that he did not seem to accept.  It seemed clear to me that he suspected a conspiracy against him.

My ethics professor was also an active alcoholic with a full bloom on his face every day.  He admired situational ethics and his “discussion” of abortion was so pitifully and pathetically wrong on basic biology, that I felt compelled to correct him in class.  That was not a good political move.

My Old Testament professor was a former catholic monk who left the order to marry a former nun!  He made a point of telling us that his abbot had been a “tyrant.”  He was also a recovered alcoholic and an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous, but he had a surprisingly dark view of his alcoholism, telling the class that his sobriety date reminded him of the darkest day of his life.  Which is understandable, but one might think it was the most joyous day of his life when he was liberated from his alcoholic obsession.

My liturgics professor was a homosexual who was as anti-Anglo Catholic as one could imagine, because he argued against ritual in the liturgy.  He used as his justification for this the brief description of the eucharistic practices of the early church found in the Didache, which translates to “teaching,” as if every ritual practice developed by the church since is unnecessary and wrong.  His lectures were airy and breezy with little content that I could discern.

My church history and patristics professor also came to class with an alcoholic glow.  His wife divorced him while I was at seminary, and the gossip was that it was due to his drinking.  His lectures were excellent, well-crafted and informative, but lacking in context for me.  Why is this particular heresy important?  Why was the orthodox position formulated by the Ecumenical Councils necessary for our salvation?  The problem with almost all of my seminary lectures is that they were never contextualized.  I don’t recall one lecture that talked about my soul, or sin, or salvation, or my role in salvation as a believer, let alone as a priest.

My pastoral theology professor was more of a traditional believer but, oddly, all of his lectures covered the various schools of modern psychology.  The other professors hated him and said terrible things about him, trying to get him to quit or be fired.  When I confronted our liturgics professor about this, without anger, he did not deny it.  Instead he deflected, saying that he was suffering from “burnout.”

Regarding the student body, I would estimate that half of the 70-80 students were homosexuals.  The organist and choir director was a homosexual.  I was not entirely oblivious to all of this, yet I was naïve in the extreme, and partly could not allow myself to believe what I was seeing.

There were priests who would visit, mostly from large, wealthy urban parishes, like St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.  They would troll for homosexual students.  In exchange for sexual favors, they would promise positions in these wealthy parishes and a career track toward being a dean of a large, urban, wealthy cathedral or even being a bishop.

I came to notice different types of students that would fall into different categories.  One category was the seminarians who came from a blue-collar background who were in an Episcopal seminary in order to make a jump in social status.  Another comprised a few traditional minded Anglicans with a true calling, who were willing to ignore the problems in the seminary and the church at large. They were committed to defending the faith once delivered in whatever parish they landed in.  Another category was the more individualist evangelical or charismatic type, who simply saw seminary as a hoop to jump through to enable them to begin “their ministry.”  Another category was the homosexual type, as I’ve mentioned, but all of them conformed to a type of person who believed in radical, left-wing politics.  Having been involved in leftist politics in the sixties, they had arrived at the conclusion that they lacked the power to change society without the Holy Spirit in their back pockets.  Besides, what better way to bring about a “fundamental change in America” than by becoming leaders of one of the most culturally and politically influential institutions in America?

This was never an explicitly expressed agenda, but it was easy enough to piece together from snippets of comments they would make about why they were in seminary.  Never was it about the salvation of their souls or others.  It’s worth repeating:  never once did I hear a lecture on the nature of the soul, the problem of sin or salvation from sin.  Nor was this something discussed among seminarians that I was ever aware of.  What we were taught was something I would call pseudo-intellectual babble, designed to fulfill an underlying utopian political purpose.

We would occasionally have “retreats”, during which time we were expected to fast and maintain silence. These typically included a notable priest who would stay for several days and deliver a series of meditations. He was also available for counseling or spiritual direction.  The prevailing theology of the Episcopal Church was made a bit more explicit during these retreats, and from other guest preachers and lecturers.

I was able to eventually deduce the Eucharistic Theology of the Episcopal Church, which goes something like this.  There are no sinners.  The problem is something they called “brokenness,” which was, as far as I could tell, synonymous with alienation. This is understandable considering the generally Hegelian basis of our theological and Biblical lectures. So we gather together for the Eucharist out of a mutual recognition of our brokenness. When we receive the Eucharist, we are empowered to go out into the world and build a new world and a new society based on the apocalyptic symbols of the Bible. In which, for example, the lion will lie down with the lamb.  Only in this case, it will be an inclusive society that we are building which will serve as a sign of the fulfilment of an immanentized version of the Gospel image of the Kingdom of God.  Evidence of this, as presented by the priest at the Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, will be when a pew is filled with a white, straight person, a black lesbian, other “people of color,” a homeless person, and so on to include others on the approved list of marginalized people.

Bear in mind that the seminary raised a lot of money from the more traditionalist wealthy people in the church based on the promise, in its brochure, that it was “an Anglo-Catholic seminary in the Augustinian tradition”!  I have often thought that the seminary could have been sued for false advertising.  My conclusion, with the benefit of hindsight, is that it was not only NOT an Anglo-Catholic seminary in the Augustinian tradition, it was not even remotely Christian.

During my journey to Orthodoxy, I met a dean of one of the American Orthodox seminaries who participated in a number of ecumenical meetings with Episcopal clergy and bishops.  Some of these by this time were women.  He mentioned one woman bishop who, he said, was entirely orthodox in her theology.

I explained to him that they lie, that they use the same theological words but mean different things by them.  I’m not sure he was capable of comprehending this phenomenon.

In my second year at my seminary, a new Dean was appointed.  After a period of time observing his behavior, some of us went to an alcoholism counselor who then proceeded to conduct an intervention with him and his wife.  His wife was almost ecstatically relieved, saying “finally!”  He went into a treatment center which I believe was tailored specifically for ministers and priests, and then returned to his duties as Dean.  My subjective opinion is that, while he may not have been drinking, there was little evidence that he had changed.

After my ordination, I was celebrating the eucharist for some traditionalist families in rural Massachusetts when I was called to a meeting with the bishop in Boston.  He prohibited me from continuing this practice. The interesting thing he said was that there could not be a diocese if anybody disagreed.  The implication was that it’s entirely permissible to disagree with the Bible, the Church Fathers, the Ecumenical Councils, but, under no circumstances, were you to disagree with him.

This constitutes a fundamental rejection of the true Christian meaning of authority and obedience.  Every priest understands that if he is outspoken in preaching the Gospel, and if his preaching contradicts that of his heretical bishop, he is going to be fired or even defrocked.  The bishop has the authority to do that.  But is that how authority is supposed to be exercised?

I confess that I am more of an expert on the subject of totalitarianism than on patristics.  It is clear to me that the model of authority and obedience in the Episcopal Church stems from the totalitarian temptation, not from the Biblical.  St Paul clearly has a challenge establishing and exercising his authority over some of his flock.  His method of doing so is teaching and exhortation, not intimidation.

The false model of authority and obedience is that of the Pharisees.  Christ constantly picks fights with them over precisely that issue.  What is the unforgiveable sin?  It is when people in positions of religious authority over others misuse that authority to place a yoke around their necks rather than something that sets them free.  The Pharisees would not allow the Holy Spirit to heal without first meeting their conditions.

Some will respond to this by asking, who are you to criticize?  Let it be said that I am not without sin.  I’ve made plenty of mistakes.  I don’t sit in judgment of individual persons, no matter their faults.  My purpose is to demonstrate that the Episcopal Church suffers from systemic problems that are now bleeding over into Orthodoxy in America. The problems I encountered in the Episcopal Church can be summarized as follows:

• Rampant alcoholism
• Rampant and blatant homosexuality, which is taught as not only normal but a model of courageous and forward-looking behavior; as a vanguard of the revolution
• Heresies that aren’t even heresies any more, because the Episcopal Church has moved so far from anything remotely resembling the Christian faith
• Needless to say, there is no pro-life message from the Episcopal Church establishment

This is not to say that there aren’t traditionalist clergy and parishes holding fast.  Some of them remain my personal friends.  But if you wanted to define a marginalized class of people in the Episcopal Church, these traditionalist parishes would fit the definition.  Meanwhile, four dioceses have left the Episcopal Church in recent years over the decision to bless same sex “marriages.”  The same thing is very likely to happen in at least one Orthodox jurisdiction in America, and will likely lead to some kind of schism.

There are a number of different traditional Anglican bodies today in America comprising former Episcopalians.  There is significant tension in the Anglican Communion between the English and American churches and the African Anglican bishops, who refuse to yield and submit to the Church of England over its rejection of Biblical sexual morality.  This is courageous on their part because these are very poor churches, in very poor countries, who depend to some degree on financial support from the Church of England.

Why should any Orthodox Christian care about what happens in the Episcopal Church?  That’s them, this is us.  You might even have some Episcopalian friends.  The last thing you are going to do is pit your faith and belief and practices against theirs.  That’s not the American way.

Ten years ago I would have agreed with you.  Sadly, we are seeing the problems in the Episcopal Church beginning to bleed over into Orthodoxy.  In private correspondence, one of our Archbishops made it clear to me that I am in no position to question his authority over me as my spiritual father.  But the underlying problem was his tacit approval of the LGBT agenda, by attending a service at an explicitly pro-LGBT Episcopal parish, and not just by sitting in the pew but by standing by the altar.  How could I possibly question his commitment to traditional marriage?  How could I possibly not trust him, he asked.

Sadly, I have seen this movie before, and it never has a happy ending.  The tendency is to act and speak in favor of things like abortion and the LGBT agenda, and then vociferously deny that you have done so.  In so doing, some of our hierarchy are no different than politicians who promise us things like, “your social security number will never be used as an identity number,” or, “this law will never prevent you from choosing your own doctor,” or, “the income tax rate will never be over 2%”!  When all the while they are signaling their true agenda, if we would only pay attention.

The moral agenda is just the tip of the iceberg.  As I discovered in the Episcopal Church, you cannot reject Christian sexual morality without at the same time re-inventing Christian Theology.  The same terminology is used, but to different ends.  The Church becomes a politically motivated institution, designed to bring about heaven on earth by redefining all of our relationships, by redefining what it means to be human.

They all understand that bringing about a revolution requires forcing us to eat it in little bites, before we realize what we are really consuming, and then it’s too late.  Some have become very adept at speaking out of both sides of the mouth, counting on our natural desire to look up to our hierarchs and be obedient.  Our faith is not based on protest, it is based on our willingness to be obedient to Christ and His commandments, with the emphasis on willingness.  Christ does not force us to do anything.  He offers us choices.  Most of us choose to remain silent while we watch as the Church is being dismantled, brick by brick.

Before I became Orthodox, I wrote to my Episcopal bishop.  There is an established, formal process for giving up your priesthood.  I simply wrote the following:  “I quit.”  By that time, I had realized that I was a member of a church that was no longer Christian.  I have had Episcopal priests tell me I was “a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.”  But in my mind, I was part of a neo-pagan priesthood that worships the body, and some of its more depraved appetites, including the lust for power.

I was very happy to become Orthodox and put all of that behind me.  In preparation for my chrismation, I participated in a service renouncing my former heresies.  Even then it took some time to fully embrace Orthodoxy.  Today, if there is something that is an intrinsic part of the faith that I don’t understand, or might even have the temptation to disagree with, I take personal responsibility for my lack of spiritual discernment.  I don’t blame the Church for not keeping up with the times.  At the same time, there are activists in the Church who are applauded for advocating things that completely contradict Orthodox Christian teachings and practice.  They are motivated by the conviction that history is an inevitable process of evolution, and they are in the vanguard.  They claim that something called “inclusiveness” defines Christianity, when Christ was anything but inclusive if you rejected Him.

There is a lot of gaslighting going on.  Counting on our Biblical ignorance, some are telling us that the punishment visited on Sodom was not about homosexuality but about the refusal to offer hospitality!  Yes, Lot was very inhospitable to the mob that wanted to sexually ravage him and his family!

I’m sorry if it seems to you that I have a fixation over homosexuality, but I am not the one with the fixation—it’s the society in which we live.  In the face of the various fixations with which we are confronted, foremost being the lust for power and domination, we are going to have to be ever more diligent in keeping the True Faith in our hearts, in our parishes, and in developing our noetic understanding, lest the tide of the times drowns us.

Seraphim is a member of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America