The Saint Nicholas Day Snow, Charlotte Riggle (Marion IN: Phoenix Flair Press, 2017) 

Catherine’s Pascha, Charlotte Riggle (Marion IN: Phoenix Flair Press, 2015)

As an Orthodox mom of two young sons, I’m always eager to find new ways to engage their spiritual growth and development. I don’t know who was more excited to read The Saint Nicholas Day Snow and Catherine’s Pascha. Both are written by Charlotte Riggle and illustrated by R.J. Hughes.

Surprisingly, they were an easy addition to our bedtime routine. It’s normally the same books over and over, but these took little convincing. Maybe it was a movement of the Spirit, the colorful artwork, or my helpful 3-year old, but for reasons unknown these books have become new favorites for my sons and me. My 3-year old Elliot’s favorite parts of the books were the snowmen in The Saint Nicholas Day Snow and the celebratory feast (the part where they eat all of the food) in Catherine’s Pascha.

However, my favorite thing about The Saint Nicholas Day Snow is the inclusion of churches named after St. Nicholas, as well as popular depictions of the saint from around the world and throughout history. For example, a Byzantine icon of St. Nicholas is shown near a parish in Athens, Greece from the 9th century. A wooden church is nestled in the Norwegian forest, and a Baroque Russian cathedral sits covered in snow. Parish names are given in English as well as in the local vernacular—this seems to stress the universality of the message.  Read More

Dr. Lyndall Herman, who holds a PhD in Middle Eastern and North African studies from the University of Arizona, is preparing an article for Orthodoxy in Dialogue on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She hopes to have it ready some time this weekend. As a preface to her article she suggests that we draw our readers’ attention back to Murray Watson’s Jerusalem: A Helpful Decision? (12/7/17), Benjamin Amis’ The Promised Land? An Orthodox Response to Christian Zionism (1/12/18), and Giacomo Sanfilippo’s article below which appeared as an op ed in The Milwaukee Independent (12/13/17). 

American Evangelicals do not represent Christianity in America​. Much less do they represent Christianity in Israel. 

For 2,000 years, Christianity has had an uninterrupted presence in what is now Israel. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem traces its roots to the New Testament book of Acts. It has functioned as a patriarchate in fact from the 5th century, and in name from the 6th century until the present. Theophilus III serves as the current Patriarch of Jerusalem, and his Christian flock consists mainly of Palestinian Arabs.

Several decades before the birth of Christ, the Jews lost control of what we now call the Holy Land to the Romans. From the time that the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century, the region remained under Christian control until the Islamic conquest of the 7th century. Beginning in the 11th century, the Roman Catholic West launched a series of Crusades in a protracted attempt not only to wrest control of the Holy Land from Muslim hands, but even Constantinople from Orthodox Christian hands.

Muslim control of the Holy Land ended definitively with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the establishment of the British Mandate. Yet the Orthodox Church, and later other Christian Churches, had a continuous if uneasy existence in the Holy Land through 1,300 years of Islam. Only in 1948, a full 2,000 years after the Roman conquest, did Jews regain control of the Holy Land and name it the State of Israel. Read More

The following report is remarkable for the Georgian Patriarchate’s protection of a gay activist despite its rather stunning politicization of mass marriages to coincide with the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. This article also attests to the pressing need, not only in the West but also in historically Orthodox societies, to come to terms theologically with the fact of sexual and gender diversity in human nature and the possibilities for its sanctification in the life of the Church. 

On Thursday, May 17, while numerous organizations around the world celebrate the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOTB), launched in 2005, the Orthodox Church of Georgia is going to sanctify the day with a procession in the streets of Tbilisi in order to defend the sanctity of the family, and will celebrate a great number of weddings throughout the city.

This is also the Thursday when the Orthodox Church celebrates the great feast of the Ascension of the Lord. After the Divine Liturgy in the morning, members of the clergy of numerous parishes in Tbilisi gathered with their faithful at noon in Rose Revolution Square, from which the religious procession will depart.

The Orthodox Church forcefully affirms that marriage is the sacramental union of one man and one woman, that every other type of “marriage” is a sin, and that all sexual relations outside of the sacramental bonds of marriage are wrong.

(The Orthodox Church of Moldova recently asked the government to forbid an LGBT march in the capital, Chișinău.) Read More

Christ Breaking the Bonds of Animal Suffering (Aidan Hart)

Mr. Hart asked that we add the following brief preface: “An icon of a new subject such as this one depicts will inevitably have failings, and elicit some negative comments. If I did the icon again, for example, I would make the animals less naturalistic in order to integrate them better and thus attract less attention. It is offered, nonetheless, to stimulate thought about both its theme and the nature of the icon tradition.”

Sometimes I am commissioned to paint an icon of a saint for whom nothing yet exists, or at least no satisfactory icon. This is usually a pre-schism Western saint. But more rarely, the subject is a new theme, a new emphasis or combination. This was the case when Dr Christina Nellist approached me to create an icon that embodied some of the Orthodox Church’s teaching about our relationship with animals. The icon was to be used as flagship for her newly founded organisation “Pan-Orthodox Concern for Animals” and to illustrate her pending book on the subject. This article tells the story of its genesis and explains its design.

The brief was for the icon to affirm the need to love all creation, but especially to treat our fellow animals with the respect and kindness due to all God’s creatures. It had to show that Christ came not just to redeem humankind from the fall, but also, through our repentance, to deliver the animal kingdom from our oppressive and cruel treatment of them. As Saint Paul wrote to the Romans:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God . . . because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God’.   (Romans 8: 19, 21)

The icon you see illustrated is what we eventually created. It required both theological enquiry and research into past iconography, so I would like outline how these two came together. Read More