Foreword

Most of the following editorial was written before an observant reader alerted me to the fact that Rod Dreher—on what I mistakenly assumed was a serious online journal (The American Conservative)—had christened me a bitchy queen, demonstrating yet again his extraordinary intellect, debating skills, and theological and spiritual depth.

Rod Dreher models the new “heterosexuality”

(I should remind Mr. Dreher where he heard the expression bitchy queen: it’s gay bar lingo. He might want to readjust his mask. It’s slipping.)

It’s unclear what has earned me this honour. Was it my Benedict’s Option? A Priest Forever? Rod Dreher Glorifies Colonialism, Adds African Barbarians to List of People who Terrify Him?  Helping Our Brother on Pentecost? Two Letters to a Struggling Monk? Another Day, the Same Old Rod Dreher? Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s steady stream of fundraising appeals for child cancer patients, homeless people with nothing to eat and nowhere to come in from the cold, displaced children and families in the war-torn Middle East, children and families detained by the US government at the Mexican border in some of the most inhumane conditions of the modern era? My untiring advocacy for queer children, teens, women, and men driven to despair by the likes of him and like-minded priests and their poisonous claptrap? 

A commenter in the same thread at The American Conservative where Mr. Dreher called me a bitchy queen characterized me as “a deadbeat dad who abandoned his wife and kids to start a sex website.” Aside from the fact that my wife left me for unclear reasons in 1995, and I was deposed from the priesthood in 2002—also for unclear reasons—and I started Orthodoxy in Dialogue in 2017, name-calling, fantasies about my personal life, and calling Orthodoxy in Dialogue a sex website typify the only level of discourse that Mr. Dreher’s aforementioned intellect, debating skills, and theological and spiritual depth are capable of generating. Read More

There are many parallels between recent upheavals in the Orthodox Church in Europe and the ongoing saga of Brexit. Both paths of events raise fundamental questions about our fidelity to truth and the rule of law, and reveal the existential crises that affect the United Kingdom and other nations on the one hand and the Orthodox Church on the other. What sort of a world do we want to live in? What kind of Church does God intend us to be?

In my Culture Wars and the Orthodox Church I draw parallels between the rise in the right wing and nationalist populism that produced Trump and Brexit, as well as a debased form of Orthodoxy that raises national or ethnic identity to an absolute and tolerates the kind of fusion between church and state that has been taking place in Russia. I concluded that the culture wars surrounding Brexit/Trump and those within the Orthodox Church are functionally related, in that not only is Russia the site of this church-state fusion, but it also has in Vladimir Putin a leader who has made no secret of his support for Brexit.   Read More

On July 3, 2019 we published A Special Kind of Orthodox Clergy Directory, and on July 15, an Update. 

To date, our directory includes about a dozen canonical hierarchs and priests ministering on three continents. Our commitment to protect the identities of our participating pastors is so absolute that even they don’t know who else is on the list.

By the grace of God, we have made several successful referrals of LGBTQ Orthodox Christians, catechumens, inquirers, and seekers to the pastors in our directory. One transgender person is soon to be received into the Orthodox Church through Holy Chrismation. 

If you’re a bishop or priest of a canonical Orthodox juridiction anywhere in the world, and you minister—or you feel spiritually and emotionally equipped to begin ministering—to LGBTQ persons and their families, please read the two articles linked above and contact me by email. Read More

Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv and All Ukraine

Some 600 parishes in Ukraine belonging to the Orthodox Church aligned with the Moscow Patriarchate have in one year switched over to the newly formed Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the latter Church’s leader says.

The new Church’s first Primate, Metropolitan Epiphanius, told RFE/RL in an interview over the weekend that he foresaw another “wave” in the future of “such massive transfers.”

However, “we want them to continue to be peaceful, calm, and voluntary…we do not need confrontation,” he said. Read More