Father Alexander and Matushka Juliana Schmemann Ordination day, 1946

Monday, January 29, is the first anniversary of the passing of my mother, Juliana Schmemann, in the 94^th year of her extraordinary life. To many in the Orthodox Church in America she is known best as the wife of Father Alexander Schmemann, the “L.” (for “Liana”) he so lovingly and so often refers to in his Journals. Many have also read her own remarkable story in two modest books she wrote, My Journey with Father Alexander and The Joy to Serve. On this anniversary, I would like to tell a little more about her life.

My parents were indeed a remarkable couple, drawn to each other from their first meeting, playing opposing roles in a household production of a musical staged in the Paris suburb of Clamart in the winter of 1940-41. He was 19 and she 17. Soon after they met again at the St. Sergius Institute, where my father was a seminarian. He told her he was studying for the priesthood—then slyly added, “but I do not intend to be a monk.”

It may seem self-evident that two such young Russians in Paris would find each other. Yet in that émigré world they came from very different circles. My father came from a family of high-ranking civil servants in St. Petersburg, and through his entire youth attended the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, the heart of the Russian emigration in Paris, where he served as altar boy, reader, and subdeacon, and was ordained priest. Read More

Today, the first Sunday of the Lenten Triodion, is dedicated to our Lord’s parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. This story is, among other things, a lesson on prayer. And Jesus’ point here is something contrary to most modern spiritual or religious advice: that there is a right way and a wrong way to pray. These are challenging words, but if our families and our church communities are to benefit at all from the holy season of Lent, we have to allow ourselves to be challenged by the Word of God! 

Today we come to the temple, and we meet a Publican—a tax collector—who knows he has been a terrible person; he knows he has wasted his life doing terrible things to people. For some reason he feels the need to come talk to God, but he can barely do it at all. He cannot even raise up his eyes. He cries out to God: “Have mercy on me, a sinner!”

Meanwhile the Pharisee, the religious scholar and teacher, comes to the temple and brags to God about all the great things he has done. 

One of these prayers ends up being pleasing to God’s ears; the other one, not so much. One of these men goes back home “justified” (righteous in God’s eyes), and the other one does not. So we have to ask ourselves: Is my prayer pleasing to God? How can I learn to pray the way God wants me to pray? Today Jesus invites us to accept this sinful tax collector as our teacher in the school of prayer.  Read More

This screen shot was taken from Matt Parrott’s GAB page on the evening of January 26. Assuming the accuracy of “20 hours,” he posted his comments the night of January 25. In case his meaning is unclear for our readers, he refers to Dreamers—young, undocumented Latinos and Latinas whose parents brought them into the US as infants and toddlers, who know no other homeland but the United States and speak no other language but English—as DACA beaners,* and to their fear of deportation under the current White House as comedy gold.

(*For our readers unfamiliar with this Americanism, beaner is a derogatory term for a Mexican person almost as offensive as the N-word for an African person.)

Other gems of Christian charity from Mr. Parrott’s GAB page include—unless he deletes them—an explanation of the superiority of the white race and potshots at Jews.

What relevance does this have for the Orthodox Church? Read More

Our open letter of January 22 to the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, entitled “White Supremacy in the American Orthodox Church,” seems to have struck a nerve. In eliciting a swift response from Matt Parrott of the Traditional Worker Party—a man who calls Dreamers DACA beaners and their fear of deportation comedy gold in social media—our letter has served to reveal just how dark is the underbelly of Orthodox Christianity in America.

The Traditional Worker Party—TWP on the rock in the photo above—has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an “SPLC Designated Hate Group.” The Center describes it as follows:

The Traditionalist Worker Party is a white nationalist group that advocates for racially pure nations and communities and blames Jews for many of the world’s problems. Even as it claims to oppose racism, saying every race deserves its own lands and culture, the group is intimately allied with neo-Nazi and other hardline racist organizations that espouse unvarnished white supremacist views.

See the Center’s full report here. Note that it acknowledges TWP’s connection with the Orthodox Church.

Mr. Parrott’s response needs to be read carefully. As the SPLC warns, TWP’s self-presentation intertwines what seems reasonable and even true with much more sinister motives. Note especially how he flaunts the secret complicity of growing numbers of priests and seminarians in TWP’s agenda. Read More