Father Theophan Whitfield

I am a parish priest of the Orthodox Church in America and DMin candidate at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. 

To fulfil the research requirement for the DMin, I am conducting a study entitled The Servant Parish Project, concerned with strengthening our commitment as Orthodox Christians to compassionate ministry to the poor and suffering. 

My project contributes to the literature of encouragement. Jesus for certain said, “Come and see!” But He also said, “Go and do likewise!” At the heart of the Servant Parish Project is the conviction that our faith in Jesus Christ does not just flower into right worship (doxologia), it also flowers into loving service (diakonia).   

In 1965 Father Alexander Schmemann wrote about the need to replace the false ideal of “serving the parish” with the concept of “the parish as servant.”  The two key research questions guiding my study grow from Father Alexander’s diagnosis: 

1. How should Orthodox Christians think about the commandment found throughout Holy Scripture to honor “justice” (Isaiah 1:17, Amos 5:24, Micah 6:8, Luke 18:1-8)? 

2. What strategies can Orthodox parishes pursue to create “servant parishes” actively engaged in ministry to the poor and suffering in particular? 

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This statement by the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the United States of America was published on June 20. We were notified of it today. We are grateful to Metropolitan Antony and Archbishop Daniel for speaking out on the issues raised in our Open Letter to the Church: The Humanitarian Crisis at the US-Mexico Border.

STATEMENT ON THE SEPARATION OF CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS AT THE USA-MEXICO BORDER

Recently, in reference to the ongoing controversy of separating children from their parents who have illegally crossed the border into the United States of America, our government officials on several levels quoted from Holy Scripture the following:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. (Romans 13:1)

This quote has, as far as we have been able to determine, been utilized only twice before in the history of our United States of America—by the defenders of the British Crown during the Revolutionary War and then by the defenders of slavery during the Civil War. Neither in the present instance nor in the previous two instances will one hear other quotes from Scripture that declare that submission to civil authorities is mandatory only as long as those authorities promote good works rather than acting in opposition to God. When the civil authorities are in direct opposition to God, the believer must follow God. (Acts 4:19 and 5:29)

At the outset, we wish to declare that we believe it extremely important to protect the borders of our nation and to do everything possible to make entry into our great nation as peaceful, legal and beneficial to all. It is the history of our nation to be welcoming of immigrants who may wish to come to us for a great variety of reasons. We are, however, moved to tears when we witness what has been taking place at our southern border where over 2000 children, including infants, have been taken away from their parents and housed in cold abandoned super store warehouses with only the minimum of comfort and none of the affection and love of their parents. Read More

I started to write this article in March or April, but became sidetracked by other matters. What compels me to finish it now is a conversation that I had last night at a barbecue for Trinity College’s theology students. My interlocutor was a 24-year old man whose family emigrated to Canada from Nigeria when he was 3.

My new friend related to me that, when he was 10, he was out riding his bike. Form a picture of that in your mind’s eye: a boy from Africa, seven years in his new home in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area), in grade 5 at school, out riding his bike.

 A cop stops him. Where did you get that bike? 

I started shaking inside. I could hardly hold back my tears for that 10-year old boy, and for the young man sharing his story with me—to his amazing credit, with sadness but no malice in his eyes.

We talked a little about Desmond Cole. Of course my friend knew the name well. A local activist, freelance journalist, and blogger at Cole’s Notes, he has been stopped by the cops fifty time—fifty times!—for the suspicious activity of Walking While Black in Toronto.

If you’re white and don’t know what “white privilege” means, or you deny that it exists, I’ll give you a pass until the end of this article. I was that white man myself, seven years ago.

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Don’t let my name fool you. With my Ukrainian and Lemko ancestry on my mother’s side, I’m as white as any Eastern European. I’ve been mistaken for Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and German. Apparently, speech therapy in early childhood left me with an accent—undetected by myself, of course—that many people over the years have guessed as Northern European, even people in my own hometown of Jamestown NY and a Canadian immigration officer who prided himself on his unfailing ability to identify foreign accents. 

Which is to say, I’m both possessor and beneficiary of white privilege, just because of how I look and speak. Read More

While it is indeed refreshing and heartening to see Orthodox hierarchs publicly engage with issues unrelated to abortion or homosexuality, the Open Letter to President Trump by Bishop David (Mahaffey) in response to the manufactured migrant crisis at our southern border leaves much to be desired. Not only that, it contains historical analogies and certain harmful right-wing tropes that, left uncorrected, are disconcerting when one considers the role that a bishop plays in shepherding his flock.  

In the letter, Bishop David writes:

Our current president has done many good things for churches, but you wouldn’t know it if you listen to those on the extreme left.

Who, I wonder, constitutes the “extreme left?” What are these “many good things for the churches” that President Trump has done? Has he aided the poor, the afflicted, and the marginalized? Has he welcomed the refugee? Has he created a tax policy that benefits the many? Has he de-escalated American militarism? Has he extended healthcare to the sick? By any objective measure, President Trump has done nothing for those kinds of people so central to the biblical narrative; and thus, I’d suggest, has done no “good things for churches.” One must then wonder if, instead, His Grace has in mind Trump’s fanning the flames of the culture wars, with their myopic emphases on sexuality, abortion, and “traditional morality” as his touchstone for what’s good for the churches—issues that most objective observers would recognize are used as tools of the administration to rile its political base.

In his letter His Grace uses the historical analogy of the Civil War to make a point about our current national disunity. In doing so, he frames the war as an episode in American history that, it seems, could have and should have been solved through compromise. One must wonder if the perspective of the enslaved is at all relevant to this analogy. He writes: Read More