The Orthodox Church in North America lags decades behind other faith communities in creating structured programs of preparation for couples planning to marry. From the time of my own marriage in 1981 to my studies at St. Vladimir’s Seminary from 1986 to 1989, and then my active years as a priest from 1988 to 1995, I was neither offered—as half of a couple engaged to be married—nor made aware of—as a seminarian and parish priest—any Orthodox resources equivalent to the Catholic Church’s Pre-Cana programs. To the best of my knowledge these programs date back to the 1960s. Now in the digital age Catholic marriage preparation can even be completed through online programs approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Read More

SS. Theodore of Tyre and Theodore Stratelates. 14th century. Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Zrze, Macedonia.

One of the more useful insights of postmodernism, so self-evident that it hardly needs to be said, is that reframing one’s fundamental question will produce a different answer. To the question, “Can two persons of the same gender ‘have sex’ with each other?” we hear from Holy Tradition a resounding no. Yet if we ask, “Can two persons of the same gender form a bond in which ‘the two become one?’” the scales begin to fall from our eyes. Holy Tradition possesses in germinal form everything necessary to articulate, thoughtfully and cautiously, an Orthodox theology and spirituality of what we now call same-sex love, adequate to the pastoral needs of the 21^st century and fully consistent with the ascetical ethos of Orthodox life for all. Read More

The whole earth is the living icon of the face of God.

(St. John of Damascus)

For nine months now, I’ve been making a film about the Orthodox Church and climate change. I have seventy hours of interviews with hierarchs, clergy, monks, lay leaders, and scientists in the can so far, and I have hundreds of hours of beautiful, impactful, and current footage of landscapes, churches, wildlife, and areas being affected now by climate change. The film has taken me to every corner of the natural and Orthodox world in North America, starting with remote Alaska, but also including many cities like New York, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. In truth, this whole crazy endeavour seems like an impossibility to me. I have no idea how we got this much and this far already—probably a combination of the Church’s prayers and our guardian angels working overtime. I don’t think something like this has been done before in modern Orthodox history. I have mad respect for the Orthodox Fellowship of the Transfiguration (OFT), and its advisory committee, for having the vision, and patience, to produce such an endeavour. In all honesty, however, the scope of their vision, which has been guiding the making of this film, is simply what the times we are living in call for anyway. We have entered the bare-knuckle round in an unfolding worldwide climate crisis, the magnitude of which is only now coming into focus. Read More

APRIL 2019

Male and Female He Created Them? Raising an Intersex Child

Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy

On Mental Health Referrals by Orthodox Clergy

A New Political Theology for 21st-Century Ukrainian Orthodoxy

Blessed and Most Holy Pascha Read More