Orthodoxy in Dialogue shares the following report with joy, cautious hope for the Orthodox Church’s evolving pastoral praxis, and thanksgiving to God and the hierarchy of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

A note of encouragement to our LGBTQI brothers and sisters: A lot of the articles that we republish from other sources on sexuality and gender (including the present one) are sent to us by the pastor of a very prominent parish in the US. (Thank you, beloved Father and friend. You know who you are.) Although it’s sometimes hard to see in the Orthodox Church, we do have bishops, priests, deacons, and brothers and sisters who love us, listen to us, and care about us.

Newly illumined servant of God, Vuk Adzic

The Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro has given a quiet and seemingly grudging nod to change this week with the baptism of a 19-year-old transgender man.

It appears to be a landmark first for the dominant religious institution in the tiny, conservative Balkan nation of some 600,000 people.

“For me, religion is love,” the man, who was christened under his adopted name of Vuk Adzic at the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Podgorica on November 3, told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service.

Adzic said his “secret” covenant with the church followed years of faith that was tested most recently by a brutal late-night beating at the hands of intruders at his family’s mountain cottage, hinting at the violent disdain that some Montenegrins show for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

“After the attack on me outside the threshold of the family home, I definitely feel that church is my only safe harbor, where I know I can always come and be accepted as a man,” said Adzic, who grew up in the capital but spent summers with his late father and other family members in Matesevo, about 40 kilometers from Podgorica. Read More

Father Aaron Warwick

One of the most pressing issues facing the Orthodox Church today is dealing pastorally with LGBTQ individuals. This issue has risen to the forefront as people who identify on this spectrum have been able, for the first time in history, to organize to form a community and to advocate for their human and civil rights. For most of history, publicly and openly identifying as LGBTQ simply was not possible, or at least not advisable. It’s not as though people did not have these attractions or identifications; it was simply something “kept in the closet.” So, for the first time in history, the Church is openly confronted not just with individuals identifying as LGBTQ, but also with a “movement.”

In many ways, like other movements that began in the modern Western world, the LGBTQ movement has accomplished many good things. Specifically, for example, employers are no longer legally allowed to discriminate against employees based on sexual orientation. That is to say, someone identifying on the LGBTQ spectrum has a legal right to make a basic and decent living without fear of retribution for their sexual orientation. This is undoubtedly a positive development for society. On the other hand, as with many other movements, the Church cannot accept all attitudes and demands of the broader LGBTQ movement. Some of these presuppositions are based in secular, selfish, and/or non-Christian attitudes. Read More

The following report appeared on December 17, 2019 at Orthodox Christianity. We share it with Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s readers for purposes of information and discussion, with the following caveats: Orthodox Christianity’s content is reliably pro-Moscow Patriarchate, anti-Ecumenical Patriarchate, anti-Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and anti-Orthodoxy in Dialogue/Public Orthodoxy/The Wheel; we cannot confirm this report’s accuracy or lack thereof, in whole or in part; and finally—like it or not—state involvement in ecclesiastical affairs is as old as the Edict of Milan and the First Ecumenical Council. Proceed to read the following circumspectly. Ask questions before forming an opinion. 

The Orthodox Times team with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. Photo: orthodoxtimes.com

The Orthodox Times outlet began as the English edition of the widely-read Greek Orthodox outlet Romfea in late December last year, with its official launch in January of this year, with the backing of the U.S. government.

In February, the outlet reported that U.S. Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt met with its editorial team, after which the Ambassador tweeted: “Enjoyed meeting the @RomfeaNews team. We are excited @StateDept provided support for the launch of this meaningful effort to strengthen the free press, fight disinformation, & highlight the values we share with Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical Patriarch.” Read More

Metropolitan John’s new white hat.

As Orthodoxy in Dialogue reported previously, subsequent to the self-inflicted disaster of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s incomprehensible decision of November 2018 to dissolve its Exarchate of Russian Parishes in Western Europe, and to absorb these parishes into the Phanar’s existing Greek metropolises, Archbishop John (Renneteau) and the parishes willing to follow him were received into the increasingly schismatic Moscow Patriarchate.

(For background see Alexandra de Moffarts’ Quo Vadis, rue Daru?, the articles listed under Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe (AROCWE) in our Archives, Antoine Arjakovsky’s A Way Out of the Orthodox Church’s Present Crisis, and Victor Alexandrov’s The Choice Facing the Archdiocese of Russian Churches in Western Europe.)

Renneteau was rewarded with the white klobuk (hat and veil) of a Russian metropolitan—an episcopal rank higher than archbishop in the tradition of the Moscow Patriarchate—and styled Metropolitan of Dubna. Dubna is an artificial “science-town” (наукоград, naukograd) of 72,000 inhabitants, founded in 1956 on the banks of the Volga 78 miles (125 kilometres) north of Moscow. It is unclear to us whether Dubna ever was, or has been recently designated, a diocesan see, and whether Metropolitan John has a cathedral and residence there, and any sort of actual administrative and pastoral duties in Dubna and its environs. (One suspects not.) Read More