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You cannot stop being a Christian if you love Christianity and Christ.

Olga Mark in “For I Am Wonderfully Made” (FIAWM)

This short essay contains some of my reflections on current debates over LGBT identity in Orthodoxy. I think that some criticisms of LGBT-affirming Orthodox thought miss some of these thinkers’ main arguments. I offer the following as a short analysis of these arguments.

Main Argument

One of the key theological insights of LGBT-affirming Orthodox theology is that the act of re-engaging with Holy Tradition is an act of love in imitation of the love of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Reconsidering what the Tradition might have to say about contemporary moral issues is neither an act of betrayal nor an act of malice toward Tradition. It is an act of love for Tradition that is patterned after the love that constitutes God’s very being. This, I argue, is what LGBT-affirming Orthodox theology has to teach us about Orthodoxy itself.  Read More

I was delighted to see Charlotte Riggle’s response [Disability in the Orthodox Parish: A Call to Love] to my response [One Woman’s Story: Mental Health, Autism, and Orthodox Pastoral Care] to Father Isaac Skidmore’s article [On Mental Health Referrals by Orthodox Clergy]. Again I wanted to respond. 

Riggle has done an outstanding job of pointing all of us toward the many areas in the Church where inclusion still needs some work, to put it mildly.

I’m on welfare with a disability in the Netherlands. Compared to the rest of the world, I’m not that badly off. There’s room for improvement—lots of room for improvement—but generally speaking, it could be worse. It is worse, in many places.

However, from what I see in various countries, some views hold true everywhere. My value as a citizen is judged by my production. Do I generate income, taxable income, to offset the costs of having me in this country? Read More

Conference Date

October 26, 2019

Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh (1914-2003)

The Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh Foundation is holding its eighth conference on the legacy of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, to take place at St Sava’s Church Hall, 89 Lancaster Road, London W11.

Entitled Chaos and Beauty, the conference will reflect on Metropolitan Anthony’s understanding of chaos as potentialities, and the ways in which this relates to our experience of life, of God, of one another, and the world. We include below his own words on chaos – words which remain vital and relevant to the challenges we face today. Read More

Bashar al-Assad (Photo credit: AP)

On April 15, 2018 Orthodoxy in Dialogue published the Joint Statement of the Patriarchs of Antioch on the civil war in Syria, and on April 27, 2018 the insightful Bashar al-Assad and Syrian Christians: What Should We Think? by Dr. Philip Dorroll and then associate editor Kari Edwards. From the vantage of their respective areas of study, Dorroll and Edwards separately address the widespread assumption that Bashar al-Assad is the protector of Syria’s Christians.

A year and a half later, on September 5, 2019, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has released a 21-page report entitled Targeting Christian Places of Worship in Syria Is a Threat to World Heritage; The Syrian [Assad] Regime Bears Primary Responsibility for 61% of the Targeting of Christian Places of Worship in Syria. The PDF of the report can be read and downloaded here.

For those who haven’t the time or inclination to read a 21-page report, Emily Jones has summarized it for CBN News, and included commentary from other sources, in her brief Assad Regime Named Number One Threat to Syria’s Christians After 120+ Churches Intentionally Attacked. Read More