Vice-President Biden and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (2011)

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Dearest Mr. President-elect,

Since you are well aware of my sentiments for you throughout the years of our friendship, you can only imagine my great delight and pride for your successful election as 46th President of your prominent nation, the United States of America.

The joy and enthusiasm for your electoral success are not merely personal sentiments. They are also shared by our Ecumenical Patriarchate and its eparchies across the world, and above all by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America with its commendable Shepherd, Archbishop Elpidophoros – and I remain grateful for the love and esteem with which you have embraced him. But beyond our Patriarchate, there are millions of Americans, as well as citizens of the entire free world, to whom you now offer hope (I could say conviction) for a better future, where the eternal values and ideals of a civilized humanity may prevail.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate has for many years been preoccupied with protecting the natural environment and addressing climate change, and so it especially celebrates the initiatives that you are prepared to assume on this urgent matter, as you have already declared, with regard to adhering to the Paris Agreement and assuring a cleaner environment.

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GOAL: $5000

COLLECTED TO DATE: $1,115

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Greetings to all our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world on this, the first day of our ascetical journey to the spiritual Bethlehem of our hearts, there to welcome anew the Birth of Our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ in the flesh.

The Holy Fathers are unanimous, and Orthodox Tradition unambiguous, on almsgiving as an essential dimension of the daily ascesis of our life in Christ, and of the intensified ascesis of the Church’s four lenten seasons.

We invite you to join us in our fourth annual mercy walk on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to deliver cash into the hands of the homeless on the frigid streets of downtown Toronto. We have set as this year’s goal to give fifty individuals a gift of $100.

When we consider our Christmas budget for home decorations, festive meals, new clothes, and gifts for one another, let us ask ourselves how much we can give to those who don’t know whether or not they will eat on Christmas or where they will sleep that night.

Send your cheerful gift to editors@orthodoxyindialogue.com via PayPal and put “Christmas” in your message. We will update the amount collected and donors’ names in alphabetical order with every contribution received. Check back often to see how we’re doing.

Please pray for the success of our appeal, and for the homeless and the hungry everywhere. Christ Himself comes disguised as each and every one of them.

May He who comes to be born of the Most-Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary bless you all with a spiritually fruitful and joyful Nativity Fast.

AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER 2020

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Review: Edge of the Abyss: The Usefulness of Antichrist Terminology in the Era of Donald Trump Read More

Edge of the Abyss: The Usefulness of Antichrist Terminology in the Era of Donald Trump
Robert Isaac Skidmore, PhD, MDiv (Archpriest Isaac Skidmore)
Asheville, NC: Chiron Publications, 2020

If you’re like me and find yourself baffled by the cult-like sway of the current president over his most fervent supporters, you may also find yourself just days out from the election harboring no small amount of apocalyptic dread. Of course, time will tell whether such a grand scale of angst is truly warranted at this historic juncture, or whether the rhetoric and divisiveness of the 2020 election, in retrospect, will prove to have been yet another instance of so much political hyperbole. Nevertheless, it can be difficult to disentangle ourselves from the visceral immediacy of the moment and attain that coveted degree of passionless objectivity that makes our vision of reality so much more reliable. And yet, there are times when such clinical passivity can be morally disorienting. For all the modest virtues of sober judgment, are we not at some point obligated, despite the risks of losing or being wrong, to take a side? Such is the existential problematic looming in the background of Edge of the Abyss: The Usefulness of Antichrist Terminology in the Era of Donald Trump by Father Isaac Skidmore.

To clarify right away: this is not a book about Donald Trump as the Antichrist. Indeed, early on in the book Skidmore is careful to distinguish his understanding of the concept from that of popular evangelical American mythology. Instead, this brief book [88 pages including bibliography] serves as a preliminary deconstruction of the antichrist idea, sandwiched between an introduction and conclusion that refer to Trump as little more than a heuristic for understanding the idea of antichrist in our own time. It would be fair, therefore, despite the title, to describe this book as far more concerned with the phenomenon of antichrist in its varied dimensions than with Donald Trump per se.

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