Orthodoxy in Dialogue is republishing this article from Huffington Post as part of our commitment to the well-being of transgender people. You may wish to refer to our “‘Transgenderism’ Isn’t a Thing” and “Intersex vs. Transgender” for background.

Please share this article as widely as possible. There are more transgender Orthodox and other Christians than we realize. By showing our love for them with this simple gesture we may be blessed to save even a single life known only to God.

Image courtesy of Trans Lifeline ~ Facebook

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Eric Iliff took his life eleven years ago today. I wrote this tribute under my previous name a month after his death. Until now it has only been shared on my now defunct Yahoo! group, of which he had been a member, and my now defunct personal blog. His mother left a heart-rending note of thanks on the blog at that time.

In Memoriam 

Eric J. Iliff 

October 11, 1981 ~ March 13, 2007 

by 

Peter J. SanFilippo

On March 13 of this year, Eric J. Iliff took his life at the age of twenty-five. 

Not until a month later did the news reach me like a thunderclap. Eric’s mother wrote on April 7—the day before Easter [Pascha], paradoxically, the Christian celebration of the victory of life over death—to the Homosexuality and Christianity Yahoo! Group that I moderate. She asked that her son’s name be removed from our distribution list because he was dead. 

A week later, my mind still reels through a fog of incomprehension, my heart paralyzed by disbelief. A beautiful young man, enormously gifted, with a love of God and of the Orthodox Church that he had hoped to serve one day as a priest, at one time Eric must have foreseen his future shining brilliantly with promise. How can the Church have lost such a priceless son? How can the world have lost Eric?  Read More

Yesterday Orthodoxy in Dialogue published Johnson’s “A Response to the Orthodox Clergy Condemnation of Nationalism,” which links to his podcast on the same topic.

Johnson’s article contains many other links as well. Since our click-through rate is typically not very high, we felt that it was especially important to draw attention to his disturbing ideas on the superiority of the white race and the wrongness of interracial marriage, even in cases where both parties are Orthodox. As a “priest” he would refuse marriage to an interracial Orthodox couple.

The PDF from which the following excerpts are taken runs to nine pages. Here we republish only a few of Johnson’s more salient points, without any typographical or grammatical corrections on our part.

As we stated to our bishops and seminaries in the Editorial Foreword of yesterday’s article: 

Please do not take comfort in Johnson’s uncanonical status. The cancer of white supremacy and neo-Nazism respects no such boundaries as “canonical” and “uncanonical.” This is our problem—a very public problem—which must be handled in a very public and transparent manner. It is only a matter of time before the mainstream media connect the dots that lead straight to us.

Interracial marriage is not a sin, its just wrong, irrational and destructive. […] By itself, though, race is not a theological issue, at least at the present moment. Read More

EDITORIAL FOREWORD

Matthew Raphael Johnson has a short biographical sketch on Metapedia, “the alternative encyclopedia.” Wikipedia describes Metapedia as follows:

Metapedia is an electronic encyclopedia which contains far-right, identitarian, white nationalist, white supremacist, white separatist, antisemitic, Holocaust denial, and neo-Nazi points of view.

In his Metapedia article Johnson claims to hold a PhD from the University of Nebraska, with a dissertation on Michael Oakeshott‘s critique of modernity, and to be an Orthodox priest. He seems to have drifted from one uncanonical jurisdiction to another. His priesthood does not seem to deter him from being a member of the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party (an SPLC-designated hate group), or from sporting his Orthodoxy and Death black teeshirt at public neo-Nazi events.

Nor does it deter him from producing “The Orthodox Nationalist” podcast on Radio Aryan: Fighting for a White Revival, Partners in the Movement of National Salvation.

TO THE ASSEMBLY OF CANONICAL ORTHODOX BISHOPS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND TO THE ADMINISTRATORS OF OUR SEMINARIES:

Please do not take comfort in Johnson’s uncanonical status. The cancer of white supremacy and neo-Nazism respects no such boundaries as “canonical” and “uncanonical.” This is our problem—a very public problem—which must be handled in a very public and transparent manner. It is only a matter of time before the mainstream media connect the dots that lead straight to us. Read More