On November 16 the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) website posted the minutes and reports from the September 19-22 meeting of the Metropolitan Council. The Council “consists of the Metropolitan as Chairman, the Chancellor, the Secretary, the Treasurer, two representatives from each diocese, one priest and one layman elected by the Diocesan Assemblies, three priests and three laymen elected by the All-American Council.” The membership of the Standing Synod in the Metropolitan Council, although not mentioned in this description, must be assumed because of the names of the hierarchs present and absent in the minutes.

The Chancellor’s Report by Father John Jillions shows, on his calendar since the previous meeting of the Metropolitan Council, that he attended the June 7-9 Symposium on Pastoral Care and Sexuality at the Amsterdam Centre for Orthodox Theology. (See page 9 of Officers’ Reports—page 12 of the PDF—here.) On the preceding page he notes that he gave a paper at this Symposium. His report is listed as item E on page 4 of the minutes.

Item I on page 6 has the heading, “Return to Father Jillions and the Chancellor’s Report.” The discussion seems to have revolved almost entirely around his participation in the Symposium on Pastoral Care and Sexuality, which had figured only as a minor entry in his report:

Fr. John Jillions was asked about the Amsterdam Conference, why he attended it, and what benefit was it to the OCA.

Met. Tikhon remarked that there are many complex sexual issues and proposed that a Bioethics Committee be established to provide answers to questions such as what is a person and how do we love God. He continued that we have to know what to say within the Tradition of the Church. Read More

Orthodoxy in Dialogue is republishing the following articles from the University of Toronto Press Journals Blog and Public Orthodoxy in order for them to be easily found by our readers who are interested in this topic.

Father Pavel Florensky (1882-1937)

Introducing “Conjugal Friendship” (UTP Journals: March 20, 2017)

Wendy VanderWal-Gritter’s Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church, which I was asked to review for the upcoming issue of the Toronto Journal of Theology (Volume 33, Issue 1), serves an important “pre-theological” purpose. She has written not a work of theology per se—as she herself acknowledges—but the raw material from real human lives out of which a living theology can take shape over against a lifeless casuistry.

She frames her book as an appeal to the leadership and laity of traditional and conservative churches to open their hearts to the testimony of Christian men, women, youths, and children who experience their attraction to their own gender as a natural, inalienable aspect of their God-given selves.

It comes as a surprise to my colleagues when I mention that the modern world’s first Christian theology of same-sex love appeared in Moscow in 1914. Read More

~

To paraphrase St. John Chrysostom:

If we do not meet Christ in the poor, neither will we meet Him in the manger.

~

St. Philip’s Fast, or the Nativity Fast, begins on November 15 and ends with the Divine Liturgy for the Nativity of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ on December 25.*

Holy Tradition teaches us that we derive no spiritual benefit from fasting voluntarily unless, at the same time, we feed those who are forced by circumstances to fast involuntarily. St. John Chrysostom teaches that, if we do not meet Christ in the poor, neither will we meet Him in the Chalice. St. Maximus the Confessor teaches that, if we do not give alms cheerfully every day, we have not even begun to become God.

The editors of Orthodoxy in Dialogue wish to propose Feeding the Hungry Together for the duration of the Fast. This provides an opportunity for our faithful readers around the world to come together virtually in a global community of Christian love for the purpose of almsgiving.

Read More

This abridged translation was made by Dr. Ioannis Lotsios of the University of Thessaloniki. The Greek original appeared on March 5 on the Panorthodox Synod blog.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue has introduced a few minor modifications to the translation for the sake of clarity and stylistic consistency. 

Dr. Petros Vassiliadis

The concept of identity, which is very often used today by scholars, is quite ambiguous. Previously, identity was considered a given. But today, due to the research of the social sciences—though their findings are still questioned by some—it is argued that all identities are “constructions.” This is why we talk about “shaping” the identity of a person or group in the sense of a dynamic process through which the identity of the individual or group is constantly formed by their environment, thereby developing a new ethos. Modern and postmodern ethics, in many ways, attempt to impose an inclusive ethos, while traditional societies—and especially religious ones—advocate an exclusive ethos. The inclusive ethos seeks to integrate a group into its social context, which it often attempts to shape. The exclusive ethos seeks [to maintain] the necessary distance through persistence in traditional values: this is because any “construction” has anthropocentric features, and sometimes it conflicts with eternal or changeless truths.

There are of course cases, even in the New Testament texts, where the ethos of one or another group is mixed, with its “exclusive” side tracing the “limits,” considering everything else as being on the outside, heretical, etc., while its “inclusive” side expresses the manifold, and constantly evolves.

Dr. D.S. Athanasopoulou-Kypriou in her book, To the Limits: Gendered Studies of Christian Presence, History, Crisis, and Hope (Athens 2016), deals with this issue from the point of view of Christian witness. I subscribe to her effort, since in my academic career I have also tried to introduce sociological and feminist interpretations, areas if not entirely unknown in the field of biblical exegesis, at least—for the Orthodox tradition—“to the limit.” Read More