At 16, I went through my first spiritual crisis. My faith in Christ came face to face with Darwin’s evolving monkeys. These two points of view clashed in what they told about who I was—an icon of the divine, or a hairy primate governed by natural selection and evolutionary chance.  

I had been taking AP Bio and was on track for a medical program. I had been very faithful all along the course. The vast diversity in the natural world, unified in its life functions, made me step back from the text and do my cross in the Orthodox way. “How magnified are Thy works, O Lord!” Even memorizing the Kreb cycle, looking at the complexity and fragility of ecological webs, only reinforced my faith in God the Great Poet Creator.  Read More

Open Invitation to Hierarchs, Priests, Deacons, Monastics,

Laymen, Laywomen, and Young People

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. We have beheld His glory, glory as of the Only-Begotten Son from the Father.

During this season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in preparation for the Nativity of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ, until the Feast of Theophany on January 6, we invite you to share with our readers around the world your reflections on the incarnation of God in human flesh.

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The following report appeared on November 14, 2019 at AsiaNews. Two points should be borne in mind: first, the Moscow Patriarchate’s move to assume jurisdiction over Turkey’s Russian-speaking Orthodox Christians constitutes the heresy of ethnophyletism writ large; and second, to move toward the Coptic Church instead of sister Chalcedonian Churches has nothing to do with legitimate Eastern Orthodox-Oriental Orthodox dialogue and constitutes an ecclesiological heresy of the highest magnitude. It comes as a stroke of supreme irony that the Moscow Patriarchate should resort to the false accusation that the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) has entered into communion—whether openly or clandestinely—with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).

Will Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (L) and Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk (R) go down in the annals of church history as the architects of the most absurdly unjustified schism of all time?

Moscow Increasingly against Greek Orthodox
by Vladimir Rozanskij

After the Church of Athens and the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria in Egypt aligned with Constantinople in recognizing the new autocephalous Church of Kyiv, a “Society of Orthodox Russian-Speaking Believers” was registered in the canonical territory of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Moscow Patriarchate said that the Russians from now on will intensify relations with the Coptic Church of Alexandria, given the inevitable break with the Greeks.

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I just had the privilege of seeing a film called Jojo Rabbit by Taika Waititi. Based on Christine Leunens’ novel, Caging Skies (The Overlook Press, 2004), the film looks at the absurdity of war through a child’s perspective. While broad themes in the movie include friendship, trust, and the loss of childhood innocence, Orthodox audiences may find particular resonance in other themes: the nature of obedience and obligation, white supremacy, and the oppressive consequences of mob mentality. If readers are familiar with an earlier Waititi film, Boy, there are some recognizable motifs between the two, particularly in the way that a child’s perspective is imagined and portrayed. Waititi’s style is not unlike that of Wes Anderson in his deliberate uses of color and artistic framing.

The movie follows 10-year old Jojo, a new initiate of Hitlerjugend, the Nazi version of Boy Scouts. The blurry lines of war are introduced early in the film when it becomes clear that Jojo’s enthusiasm for the group is not enough to protect him from bullying from older youth. The inconsistencies of the protagonist’s life deepen when he realizes that his own mother (played by an energetic Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl in their home. Jojo is torn between deep curiosity about her and the propaganda he has been hearing. We see his inner conflict personified by an imaginary friend—a cartoonish version of Adolf Hitler played expertly by Taika Waititi himself. It is important that this character is Jojo’s own creation more than the actual dictator (he eats a unicorn steak at one point). Read More