In May 2006 Eric J. Iliff received his MDiv from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary with a thesis entitled, “Homosexuality and the Eastern Orthodox Christian Tradition” (available at Theological Research Exchange Network). In December of that year he posted the following message to the now defunct Homosexuality and Christianity Yahoo! Group. It rings authentic precisely because it is so unpolished, so obviously the spontaneous outpouring of a pure heart.

On March 13, 2007 he took his life in a motel room surrounded by his icons, Bible, and prayer book. October 11, 2017 would have been his 36th birthday. 

May the voice of this gentle and unobtrusive young man be heard even from the grave. May he not have lived and died in vain.

Memory eternal. Memory eternal. Memory eternal.

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This is the fifth article in our Reformation 500 Series.

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury 

Asking about the Anglican perspective on the Reformation is almost risible. This is so only because there are as many Anglican perspectives on the Reformation as there are Anglicans.

Perhaps I’ve put this too sharply. But it is fair to say that there is a plurality of perspectives on the Reformation within the Anglican Church. This is not something we should quickly overlook, either. For this very plurality is a distinctive feature of Anglicanism itself: it is diverse, comprehensive, and tolerant of varying viewpoints—though the limits of this breadth are continually being stretched, challenged, and recently redrawn.

Besides all of this, it is quite commonplace now to think that talk about various “reformations,” rather than “the Reformation,” is more appropriate. Careful scholarship has eschewed the notion that there was ever anything like a monolithic movement of church reform in any concrete sense. This is a narrative we have all bought into for too long, scholars say. Rather, we should look at concrete realities—measurable changes and movements within particular Churches, rather than grand universals. In other words, at least with respect to reformations in England, we should be reading more Eamon Duffy and watching less of the History Channel. So it goes.

Still—whether “the Reformation” in the abstract is a freighted term or not—it does figure into Anglican thought in many ways. We tell new pilgrims on the Canterbury Trail that we are “Reformed and Catholic” and that the Anglican way is a “via media” between the enthusiasm of the Roman Church and the dry-as-dust Protestantism that swept through Geneva. These are great oversimplifications, obviously, but we can’t get rid of them. I’ll leave it for others to decide if they are helpful enough to salvage as useful entry points into a tradition with a history that is far more complex. Read More

St. Mark’s Orthodox Fellowship

St. Mark’s Orthodox Fellowship (SMOF) was founded by a number of Coptic Orthodox laymen in August 1992 in Maryland. Its mission statement reads as follows:

1. Promote teaching, preaching, and study of the Bible and the teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Church.
2. Promote publication and distribution of articles and books to help understand the faith and dogma of the Orthodox Church.
3. Arrange and coordinate local and national meetings to study and discuss spiritual and religious issues.

SMOF’s Canadian chapter was founded in Toronto in November 1999.

For the past number of years, SMOF Canada has organized Orthodox Unity Conferences where Eastern and Oriental speakers have been invited to give talks on a wide spectrum of themes. The aim of these conferences has been to create a bond between the two families of Orthodoxy at a grassroots level.

Through the efforts of SMOF Canada’s founder, Dr. Raouf Edward, these gatherings ultimately resulted in the formation of the Annual Synaxis of Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Clergy of the Greater Toronto Area, which is hosted by the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Toronto. Read More

The Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and conservative Protestant Churches have two clear moral obligations with respect to abortion: the first, to do everything in our collective power to ensure that it remain legal, accessible, and performed only by properly trained medical professionals.

Internally I am dying a thousand deaths for bringing myself to write those terrible words—I, who have fathered five beloved children myself, whom I cannot imagine not-born; I, who will soon become a grandfather for the second time; I, who even as an aging man never fail to marvel with childlike wonder at the mystery of God knitting together a new child according to His image in its mother’s womb; I, who selected the photo accompanying this article so as not to fool myself or my readers about the tragically wounded conditions of our fallen human existence.

So I beg you to continue reading before you howl and shriek for me to be burnt at your stakes as a liberal and a heretic, for I am neither. I am a broken-hearted realist: if we believe that abortion kills a baby, back alley abortion kills a baby and a woman. It really does come down to this: if we cannot always save the lives of both, we must at least take every step possible to save the life of one. Whose mother, wife, daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter, friend, will we wish dead, or simply allow to die, because any number of complex factors—factors unknown to us—compel her to make an unfathomably difficult decision regarding life and death? Read More