This interview was conducted on August 4. It introduces our readers to Father Martin’s Building a Bridge, released earlier this year. The first part of his book expands upon a lecture that he delivered last year to New Ways Ministry in the wake of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando.

In publishing this interview the editors of Orthodoxy in Dialogue ask if such a conversation as Father Martin advocates is possible and necessary in the Orthodox Church. 

GIACOMO: Father Jim, thanks so much for making the time to discuss your new book with me. You and I share a concern that our respective Churches adopt a more pastorally responsive approach to questions of same-sex love. (See my recent articles here, here, and here.)

FATHER JIM: It’s my pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for giving me the chance to speak more about this outreach to our LGBT Catholic brothers and sisters.

GIACOMO: Let’s begin by talking about your long experience of priestly ministry with Catholics who are oriented spiritually, emotionally, and intimately to their own gender. Have any Orthodox ever approached you for pastoral care on this issue? Have they shared their experiences in the Orthodox Church with you? Read More

This article marks the official launch of Orthodoxy in Dialogue. 

St. Symeon the New Theologian’s First Vision of Uncreated Light

When we speak of doing theology in an Orthodox context, we are always presented with a difficulty. In the holy tradition of Orthodoxy, theologians are those who have seen God in the uncreated light, and have spoken from their experience of this union. All of these persons whom we recognise as theologians are now canonised saints, from whose writings we trace the forms of their vision of God. The rest of us, though we stand upon the shoulders of giants, merely engage in discourse about theology. Some are great academics, others are articulate people of strong opinions; but in the final analysis, none of us are genuinely theologians in an Orthodox sense.

This reality generates a sort of dissonance in the lives of those who engage in academic theology, and in their relation to those people of other Christian traditions who proudly wear the title of “theologian.” At the end of the day, Orthodox theology is fundamentally and inescapably mystical, which puts it at an odd and difficult relationship with other traditions of doing theology.

In many ways Orthodox faithful have an identity crisis, and none more so than those who engage in theology. Today in the West, Orthodox believers live in societies that are distinctly alien to an Orthodox ethos, while in traditional Orthodox nations of Eastern Europe believers are living in a post-communist era, in many ways little different than it was. In the rubble of fallen totalitarian systems the Orthodox Churches are striving to rebuild an Orthodox culture. Read More

The editors of Orthodoxy in Dialogue wish to commend the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America for its thoughtful, articulate response of August 18 to last week’s disturbing events in Charlottesville. (See the Assembly’s statement here). We see the statement as a significant moment in the Assembly’s history and, by extension, the history of the American Orthodox Church. It represents—let us hope and pray!—the modest beginning of a critical pivot in our institutional self-awareness as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ not only in, but of and for, America.

The Assembly has demonstrated that it possesses the mechanism, when it also has the will, to produce a reasonably timely response to emergent crises in national life. Certain things simply cannot wait until the Assembly’s next annual meeting. Read More

With joy we are posting this statement from the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America (see the original here). We would like to think that our Open Letter played some small role in this. We provided our Letter’s link to the Officers of the Assembly as soon as we published it.

Friday, August 18, 2017

The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America
Response to Racist Violence in Charlottesville, VA

The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America stands with all people of good will in condemning the hateful violence and lamenting the loss of life that resulted from the shameful efforts to promote racial bigotry and white supremacist ideology in Charlottesville, Virginia. Read More