8th Annual Assembly, October 2017, Garfield NJ

On January 30 the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America announced the release of a study entitled “Orthodox Christian Churches in 21st Century America: A Parish Life Study” by Alexei Krindatch, the Assembly’s research coordinator. The announcement includes the link for both the 4-page Executive Summary and the 163-page Full Report.

Yesterday I had a look to see if the report had a). anything to say about the growing spectre of white supremacy in the American Church (it doesn’t), and b). information useful for a conference paper that I might propose, tentatively entitled “Orthodox Ecclesiology vs. Lived Experience: Some Thoughts on the Ethnic Fragmentation of the Orthodox Church in North America.” What I found on the latter topic was frankly shocking. 

On page 2 of the Executive Summary my eyes fastened on this sentence:

A significantly higher percentage of American Orthodox priests (71%) than bishops (58%) envision the future of Orthodoxy in America in the form of an administratively united Church.

On page 45 of the Full Report we read the following statement: Read More

The January 17 report of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism, entitled “White Supremacist Murders More than Doubled in 2017,” has just now come to our attention at Orthodoxy in Dialogue. We ask each and every Orthodox hierarch, priest, deacon, monastic, theologian, seminary faculty member and staff member, and layperson to read it carefully.

In this report we learn:

In its annual assessment of extremist-related killings, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found white supremacists and other far-right extremists were responsible for 59 percent of all extremist-related fatalities in the U.S. in 2017, up dramatically from 20 percent in 2016.

…[A] majority of the 2017 [domestic extremist-related] murders were committed by right-wing extremists, primarily white supremacists [emphasis ours], as has typically been the case most years.

These statistics matter urgently to us because white supremacists continue to spread the word amongst themselves that they can find a spiritual home in the Orthodox Church. Read More

In response to the author’s “Islamophobia and Orthodox Tradition” of January 5, a Canadian member of Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s Facebook group asked for a definition of terms. The question’s relevance in a Canadian context stems from a controversial anti-Islamophobia motion which passed in the House of Commons in March 2017. (See CBC’s report.) Critics of the motion argued that it left the term poorly defined. 

Based on very helpful reader feedback, this short post is meant to provide a concise discussion of the term Islamophobia, which was the focus of my first piece. Given the harmful role that prejudiced conceptions of Islam and Islamic history have often played in modern Orthodox Christian ethno-nationalisms and fundamentalist movements, I believe a clear discussion of this topic could be helpful for the development of contemporary Orthodox theology. I will briefly discuss two definitions of this term, one commonly used by scholars in Islamic Studies, and one that I use in my own teaching and research.

• Todd Green (associate professor of religion at Luther College in Decorah IA) defines Islamophobia as “dread or hatred of Islam” and “fear or dislike of all or most Muslims,” following language used in the Runnymede Trust’s 1997 report on relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain (The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West [Fortress Press, 2015: 32]). Green’s book is widely considered the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of this topic.
• In my teaching and research I describe Islamophobia as a double standard of critique applied to Islam or Muslims that leads to prejudice or discrimination.

Read More

The latter part of Matthew 25, read on the Sunday of the Last Judgment, is certainly among the most sobering, even frightening prescriptions in the lectionary of the Church. The answer to fundamental questions, How can one be saved? How will I be judged? How shall I live? are answered, with stark clarity, by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It’s not a difficult teaching to understand. By this, I mean, it is not a riddle to solve, or a mental or spiritual exercise. It’s brutally simple and practical: Did you visit the sick and the prisoner? Did you feed the hungry? Did you give drink to the thirsty? Did you clothe the naked? 

Perhaps this Scripture’s directness and finality are what also make it polarizing. This makes sense: the image itself is literally about separating, dividing. But the polarization I’m referring to is about interpretation. There is discomfort in knowing what one is to do, how literally one is to take what seems clearly presented—we will be judged by our Creator based almost solely on how we cared for those in need.

One response is to “spiritualize” the text. This happens to other teachings from Jesus, usually about the rich and poor, attachment to things of the world (including nation and family), and the severity of effort one should exert to flee sin. Love your enemy is a beautiful ideal as an abstract, overarching principle; but if someone steals your coat, offer your shirt as well is a little more concrete and unsettling.  Read More