There were these two guys in a lunatic asylum… and one night they decide they don’t like living in an asylum any more. They decide they’re going to escape! So they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moon light… stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend didn’t dare make the leap. Y’see, he’s afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea… He says “Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I’ll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!” But the second guy just shakes his head. He says “What do you think I am? Crazy? You’d turn it off when I was halfway across!” (The Joker in Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland)

Joker is nominally an origin story of Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Clown Prince of Crime. But it wasn’t originally conceived as such, and it shows. The names of Gotham City, Arkham Hospital, and the Wayne family feel shoehorned in, and the scene near the end showing the fateful moment that turned young Bruce Wayne into Batman could easily be removed without making an iota of difference to the plot. Read More

As Public Orthodoxy releases summaries of the papers presented at the recent Bridging Voices conference at Oxford, Orthodoxy in Dialogue wishes to offer a space where hierarchs, clergy, monastics, academics, non-academics, laypersons, and youth can publish their thoughts on the questions and issues raised.

You may wish to address one or more of the articles, the conference itself, the selection of invitees, or any other aspect of the proceedings and presentations.

If you take a position contrary to what Orthodoxy in Dialogue normally represents, you must do so in a fraternal manner which does no emotional or spiritual harm to LGBTQI persons.  Imagine yourself on the receiving end of your words. Read More

Eric J. Iliff

October 11, 1981 ~ March 13, 2007

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Orthodoxy in Dialogue and “A Bed Undefiled” are dedicated to Eric’s memory. We will not let our beloved brother and friend be forgotten.

His untimely death by his own hand remains an unhealed wound in the conscience of the Orthodox Church in America and St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. Read More

In Orthodoxy and Ecumenism: Towards an Active Metanoia (Peter Lang, 2019), my exploration focuses on the rapport between Orthodox tradition and identity and the ecumenical practice of engagement with other Christian traditions. This relationship has for a long time been compromised by an underlying tension, as the Orthodox have chosen to participate in ecumenical encounters while—often at the same time—denouncing the ecumenical movement as deficient and illegitimate. This relationship has proven to be all the more inconsistent since the core of Orthodoxy as professed by the Orthodox is precisely that of re-establishing the unity and catholicity of the Church of Christ.

Indeed, the Orthodox Church sees its role in the Christian world as special and prophetic, since it alone has remained the faithful carrier and witness of the plenary truth of faith, and so has the task of calling back all stranded Christian groups to the one original Church. Orthodoxy has not safeguarded the truth of Christ’s Church from the other Christians who are seen as having departed from it and chosen less perfect ways, but, in a sense, for them. Read More