Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow

When Vladimir Putin rose to the presidency of Russia in 2000, he inherited the remains of a once-fearsome communist-atheist imperial state.

In the intervening 19 years, he has transformed Russia back into an imperial power with global ambitions. One of his key tools in that transformation has been the Russian Orthodox Church.

Putin often invokes the Russian Orthodox Church in his public speeches, giving the church a much more prominent place in Russian political life than under his predecessors. But these invocations hardly seem sincere in the religious sense. Rather, he has used the church to justify Russian expansion and to try to discredit the West’s influence in Eastern Europe.

Many conservative figures in America, including Pat Buchanan and Franklin Graham, have been attracted to Putin’s rhetoric, with its heavy emphasis on traditional Western-Christian values and its seeming rejection of the culture of “degradation and primitivism,” which Putin says has produced “a moral crisis in the West.” Read More

FEBRUARY 2019

Enthronement of His Beatitude, EPIPHANIUS, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine

On Sexuality & Gender: Letter to an Inquirer

Do Not Trust the Moscow Patriarchate: A Russian Priest’s Testimony

Job Opening: All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS

Priest to Priest: An Open Letter to Fathers Damick, Farley, Jacobse, Parker, and Trenham

Teens under Attack by the Depravity in Our Culture & the Insanity of this Age!

Sign the Petition: Ten Theses for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine

Ukrainian Autocephaly: Mount Athos Stands by Ecumenical Patriarch

What Can Orthodox Christians Learn from Islamic Studies?

The Moral Bankruptcy of the OCA Synod of Bishops on Full Display Read More

Our decision to publish the present article does not imply our endorsement of the church referenced therein or its episcopate. Orthodoxy in Dialogue reiterates its commitment to the canonical Orthodox Church as currently represented in the diptychs of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The author and her conference co-presenter are known to our readers through On Being Orthodox & Genderqueer: An Interview with “Lindsey”.

I first learned about the Queer & Transgender Studies in Religion Conference at UC Riverside thanks to Orthodoxy in Dialogue. I’m so glad I attended. I co-presented some preliminary research with Lindsey about Mother Maeve Leroux, a transgendered nun, bishop, and founder of the Universalist Orthodox Church.

As a cisgendered, heterosexual woman myself, I came to this conference primarily to learn about the theories and literature that other folks were using in the burgeoning fields of Queer Theory and Transgender Studies. I was surprised to meet people from a wide range of fields, including biblical studies, theology, anthropology, sociology, Jewish studies, Buddhist studies, Catholic studies, Islamic studies, and art history, to name a few. Also in attendance were clergy from a variety of faith traditions. I met people all along the spectrum of gender expression. Read More

Orthodoxy in Dialogue urges our readers very strongly to read The Daily Signal‘s How Putin Uses Russian Orthodoxy to Grow His Empire and our Report: Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe Votes to Remain in Existence in conjunction with the present article.

Archbishop John of Charioupolis

Clergy and laity representatives of the Archdiocese of Russian Churches in Western Europe of the Patriarchate of Constantinople gathered in Paris on February 23, where they overwhelmingly voted not to dissolve the Archdiocese, despite the sudden and unexpected decision of Constantinople in late November to revoke the body’s status as an Exarchate and to direct that the parishes move under the local Greek Constantinople hierarchs. The Archdiocese will decide which jurisdiction to transfer to at a later Assembly.

A translation of the letter of His Eminence Archbishop Anthony of Vienna and Budapest, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for the Administration of Institutions Abroad, to His Eminence Archbishop John of Charioupolis concerning the Russian Church’s proposals for the Archdiocese of Russian Churches in Western Europe to reunite itself to the Russian Church has been published in French on Orthodoxie.

The letter was read out by Abp. John at the General Assembly after the participants voted against dissolution. Abp. John openly supports the option of the Archdiocese returning to the Moscow Patriarchate. [Emphasis ours.] In an interview given the day after the Assembly, Abp. John notes that while he is getting older, Constantinople has not allowed any new bishops to be consecrated, and thus, “They have denied us in the future.” Read More