Earlier today Orthodox Christianity published a “report” entitled City of Toronto Bans Holy Communion, intending to outrage its readers into imagining that public health policy during the current pandemic singles out the Church for “persecution.” It includes a brief video clip in which a priest of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Canada announces to his congregation this past Sunday that they may not come forward for Communion. In an obviously emotional moment, he makes the unfortunate statement that “the persecution of the Church continues.”

This sheds new light on why Archbishop Sotirios felt compelled to ask the priests of the Archdiocese to exercise more restraint in their public comments about Holy Communion and the pandemic, as we reported here. His Eminence’s request now seems entirely reasonable.

The irresponsibility of Orthodox Christianity’s “reporting” consists in its failure to make a simple phone call to the Archdiocese for clarification: Read More

Beloved Masters, Fathers, Mothers, Brothers, Sisters, and Friends in Christ our Saviour:

Starting today I need to devote the next six weeks to nonstop reading for my doctoral exams, the penultimate step before I dive into writing my dissertation.

There are three exams: the specialist exam on August 3, on the topic of my dissertation (Father Pavel Florensky’s “Friendship” as his intentional theology of same-sex love); the cognate (“related”) exam on August 17, on modern Orthodox theology from the late 19th century to the present; and the oral exam on August 31, a kind of oral defense of the two written exams.

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About a year ago, someone asked me why I, an Orthodox Christian, decided to pursue a career in Islamic Studies—focusing in particular on Islam in Turkey. I couldn’t answer the question at the time. But a few days ago, I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I had been following stories in Turkish news over the past few weeks about a hearing at the Turkish high court that would occur that day, where the current Turkish administration was requesting that Hagia Sophia—currently a museum—be turned back into a mosque. I realized, when I got up later that morning and scanned Turkish news, that Hagia Sophia might already have become a mosque again. (At the time of writing, the court has not yet issued its decision.) I couldn’t get back to sleep until I began to write the words below. I also finally had the answer to the question posed to me the previous year. Read More

Colin Kaepernick

Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s readers will recall our chronicle of Rod Dreher’s hatred of Africans and African-Americans. 

He has done it again, this time by celebrating the 4th of July with an article bearing the libelous, violence-inciting title, Colin Kaepernick Hates America. In response to Kaepernick’s tweet, Read More