God has blessed me with a warm friendship between myself and a parish priest of the OCA in the US. He discovered me through Orthodoxy in Dialogue. He doesn’t agree with everything my theological work on sexuality and gender represents, yet we recognize in each other kindred spirits for whom Holy Tradition is paramount in the life of the Church.

Today he wrote to discuss developments subsequent to my response to the ordination of a female deacon two years ago in the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Some of his parishioners, catechumens, and inquirers are shaken. They question their own commitment to a Church that looks less and less like itself in their experience. “Progressives” might mock the discomfiture of these sincere Orthodox believers. I do not.

I take the liberty of sharing my response to my friend. Read More

St. George Serbian Orthodox Church, San Diego, California

I was born into a half Orthodox, half Roman Catholic, half Ukrainian-Lemko, half Sicilian family 71 years ago. I was raised Catholic by a mother who had been raised Orthodox. Her maternal grandparents, my great-grandparents, were founding signatories of Holy Trinity Church (now OCA) in Willimantic CT, part of the exodus led by St. Alexis Toth. Her father, my grandfather, was a priest. Her family counted St. Nikolai Velimirović as a dear friend, who twice intervened pastorally at a moment of crisis, once for my grandparents and once for my preteen aunt. My aunt was 59 in 2003, pleased but unsurprised, when I shared the news of his canonization. My family always knew they had a gentle saint in their midst.

I had my first exposure to the Liturgy at age 12 in 1967. Two or three dozen people huddled into a classroom while the church was being built across the parking lot, St. George Serbian Church in San Diego. Two old cantors warbled through the responses, psalms, and hymns. The experience left me with the impression that Orthodox worship was ugly, boring, and intolerably long. I burst from the room in a paroxysm of joy when it was over. Read More

We are pleased to announce the creation of the Orthodoxy in Dialogue YouTube channel. The description on the channel reads:

Orthodoxy in Dialogue explores the intersections of cultural, political, social, and religious life with the Orthodox faith in the 21st century. We approach our mandate in the spirit of dialectical engagement with the multivalent currents of the time and place we inhabit.

Giacomo Sanfilippo is an Orthodox Christian, founding editor of the Orthodoxy in Dialogue blog, and Canadian theologian known globally for his seminal contributions to Florensky scholarship and Orthodox discourses around sexuality and gender.

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This is the full text of a chapter from my book-in-progress, Our Life in Christ: Orthodox Spirituality for Gay Men. We published excerpts from this chapter in August of last year.

Born this Way! Not a Choice! Love is Love!

Rallying chants like these arise in reaction to the oppression we and our other LGBTQ siblings often endure from family, social circle, faith community, society, the state. They foster a bond of community among queer people by reaffirming the social and religious legitimacy of who we are. We know they convince no one within or outside the Church whose heart is hardened against us.   

For us Orthodox, the mystery of human sexuality is rooted in something deeper than catchphrases from either side of the affirmation vs. condemnation chasm. The sexual dimension of human nature falls within the scope of theological anthropology, that is, what it means theologically to be human. This, in turn, shapes our spirituality as Orthodox gay men. Read More