Dear Mr. Lanier:

Please convey to Metropolitan Tikhon, as well as the other members of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America, our astonishment that they would have you contact us about the harmless use of a church camp photo, late on a Saturday night from your personal email account, when our repeated requests for a pastoral response to white supremacy and racism in the American Church, the plight of the LGBTQ children, youths, women, and men of their flock, and even a priest to accompany a man on his path to repentance from adultery, continue to go completely unheeded.

It’s hard to imagine that the Synod’s collective conscience found it so offensive that we used the photo to illustrate a letter of love and support from Orthodox grandparents to their gay grandson, who might very well be subjected to emotional and spiritual harm at an Orthodox church camp. 

We take this opportunity to ask that the Holy Synod reassure the parents, grandparents, and young people among our readers that Father John Parker of St. Tikhon’s Seminary, and other priests and lay adults who consider anyone in the Church to be better off drowned and fed to sharks, be kept as far away from our children as possible.

Yours in Christ,

Giacomo Sanfilippo, Editor
Orthodoxy in Dialogue

This letter was emailed to Mr. Lanier at 11:35 a.m. on Sunday, July 21, 2019.

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