Journal of Pan-Orthodox Christian Opinion

• AXIOS - Eastern and Orthodox Gay and Lesbian Christians
• Founding and Experience of Axios in Los Angeles California
• Light-n-Life Orthodox Catalog The largest source of pan-Orthodox books
• TheTransfiguredCosmos Understanding Eastern and Western Christian Differences.
• Orthodox Marriage Today: Love, Trust & Equality or is it something lesser?
• Sacred Treasures (Vol. 1): Choral Masterworks From Russia My favorite Russian Orthodox Music CD with audio samples.

This is the place where I am writing all of the things I want to share with you. So it is my blog but actually I am hoping that it will become a collaborative website for us all to share what we have learned over life either as worshiping Orthodox Christians or ones interested in Orthodox Christian thought and worship. I am currently in the process of learning Ruby, the programming language, to develop a dynamic framework for us to collaborate here easily.

This is to be fundamentally a “descriptive” website and not a “prescriptive” one. By that I mean I intend to reason logically about things and explore what we can trust about the history of the Church and its theology. How can young people be attracted to the ancient and Holy Tradition of Orthodoxy when they think Christianity is opposed to science, opposed to reason, opposed to women leaders in the Church and barring homosexuals and Orthodox Christians, who are married to non-Christians, from the Holy Sacramental life of the Church? To my way of thinking, this is wrong and soul-deadeningly wrong!

Some would say we must modernize our music, our theology, our liturgies and even scripture itself to be relevant to postmodern culture. I believe just the opposite is true. Young people today want to know that the Church stands for something that they can trust. They want to know that there is something to believe in of real value that is outside of themselves with a little beauty and mystery. What a concept! But as much as anything, people want stability in their life and in their Church. They want to know that it has a historical track record and will continue to be around for their kids, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They are aware that mainline church membership is getting older and many churches are empty and closing. But they still want a real church that has its history dating back to the apostles and not created yesterday. However young people are tired of having to defend their belief (trust) in science, in history, and they don't want “disappreciation” of their friends by those whom they share a “holy kiss” in church. Not everyone is an Orthodox Christian in America and they want to be able to marry whomever they fall in love with whether they are Jewish or Buddhist.

I am firmly convinced the problems so many young people have with the Church are not about theology and Holy Tradition but about its contorted Orthopraxy (ὀρθοπραξις). It took a millenium for the Church to work out its theology and liturgical life. But it never properly delt with the issue of Orthopraxy. Certainly we don't have to “change” the bible or Tradition to solve the problem of anti-semitism. It already is being done today in Orthodox churches by selectively “ignoring” and just not reading the Jew-blaming texts in services. The world has an increased understanding as we have experienced the results of anti-semitic texts under Hitler. But the world has not really faced up to the horror and bankruptcy of war itself for the benefit of the super rich. It is no wonder the Church has not effectively understood the basis of Orthopraxy.

Now is a time for dialog. It is obvious that the mainline orthodox churches will not dialog with us who are marginalized. We must initiate the dialog among ourselves. We must fight for our place in the Church among the other sinners. Immediately before the faithful recite the Symbol of Faith (the creed), the deacon chants: “The doors, the doors!” However the time is long past when the catechumens are actually ushered out of the church and into the vestibule. It is time we are not ushered out either! When the marginalized Greeks came to America, they sent back to their home country for Greek clergy to serve them and then built their own churches. So also the marginalized Russians, the Romanians, the Serbians, the Antiochians, the Armenians, the Copts and the rest sent for their clergy and built their own churches.

We should send for our own Orthodox clergy who will serve all of us and build our own churches as well. The mainline Orthodox churches are moving far right. The progressive clergy are silenced and threatened with loss of retirement and ability to support their families. We are not challenging any Orthodox Doctrines or theology here. We are challenging a selective, conservative Orthopraxy throughout the mainline Orthodox churches that panders to the anti-scientific, rigid and legalistic interpretations of scripture, to male dominance, to demanding social and class conformity in a pluralistic and egalitarian society. The historic and apostolic Orthodox Church is our Church too. We must be willing to support our own place in the Church because it will not be given to us free. The Greeks supported and paid for their own churches as did the Russians, the Romanians, the Serbians, the Antiochians, the Armenians, the Copts and the rest as well. We must “go and do likewise.”

Being canonical is objectively about having a Bishop in apostolic succession, correctly teaching of Orthodox Doctrine and Holy Scriptures, with respect for the ecumenical canons of the Church and a commonly shared liturgical Tradition with other Orthodox Churches. It is only western, legalistic thinking that treats being canonical as an all or nothing state. The western Church also speaks about something being a sin or not. The Orthodox speak about “missing the mark” or missing the sinless goal. It is not an all or nothing concept. Being canonical is a goal and we aim for our best even if two bishops are serving in one city. However we don't just change traditions to be more modern and appealing. We don't, as a diocese, invent shorter services so that most people will be able to enter on time and stay until the last blessing. Issues of doctrine have been established in ecumenical councils and the services of the Church as we have them today have been authorized by councils. Having an attitude of being canonical is part of what makes one Orthodox. This is the reason why we do not change these things for some perceived value of inclusiveness or modern appeal.

Would SCOBA go along with this liberal view? Of course not. Why, therefore, isn't any Orthodox Church that views Orthopraxy as you do non-canonical? Because membership in SCOBA, the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas, has nothing really to do with actually being canonical except for their name. Actually being canonical is an objective matter determined by the facts of history. The criteria for a Church and its Bishop being canonical or not does not change depending upon any decision of SCOBA. SCOBA is an ad hoc grouping of the largest and most powerful Orthodox jurisdictions in America. But not everything is decided by majority rules. Orthodox Christians as a whole are only one percent of the country and they expect to be respected by the National Council of Churches. If 'canonical' meant just being “in communion with SCOBA” then SCOBA could change the meaning of 'canonical' Orthodoxy with one decision which obviously it can not do. On the other hand, by a legalistic interpretation, all of SCOBA is non-canonical since they permit multiple bishops of different jurisdictions in one city. The Greek bishops have no authority over any Russian bishop and the Russian bishop has no authority over any Greek bishop. This is a clear violation of the ecumenical canons. Also none of the supposedly canonical bishops ride into town on a white donkey as they are supposed to do.

In my formation years soon after I was chrismated in the OCA, I was told to never attend ROCOR services because they were “without grace!” I trusted my community, assumed they knew what they were talking about and figured I would eventually understand why they insisted upon that. Then when ROCOR united with the Moscow Patriarchate I thought: “so one week they supposedly have NO grace and the next week they are all IN the Church?” What kind of sorcery is this?

So what is wrong with hanging together in unity? SCOBA is like a crypto-western entity designed to hide the non-canonical problems. But much worse in my mind is the overemphasis that stems from the way it is constructed. It serves as the arm of what St. Paul called the “soft” or conservative view of Orthopraxy. St. Paul's “hard” or liberal view of Orthopraxy that we are been speaking about on this website is censored. (ie. The notion of Marriage being about Love, Trust and Equality instead of male dominance etc. is muted.) The soft/conservative views are prominent on the mainline websites but many of the clergy in the trenches do not cosign them. However the hard/liberal voice is slowly being drowned out more and more as SCOBA is increasingly becoming an arm of the religious right as one can easily see where the new converts are coming from.

St. Paul's “hard” or liberal position provides a proper balance to the cold legalistic “soft” position. Both positions are necessary to balance Holy Tradition with modern circumstances. As I mentioned in the Founding and History of Axios that gay people get the soft/conservative treatment where they must “bear their life-long crosses” while straights are given the hard/liberal treatment that “it is better to marry than to burn.” Gay people, on the other hand, can transfigure “their crosses” through the coming-out process, no easy matter. Thus giving back to the Church a better sense of “honesty, transparancy and the non-tribal golden rule.”

By asserting our rightful place in the Church and serving mainline Orthodox Christians who come to us, we will not be in schism from the mainline churches. However being marginalized by this composite entity, SCOBA, means that the mainline churches may be in schism from us by some as ROCOR experienced. But if we are to remain truly Orthodox we must remain in fact canonical and continue to pass on the baton of Orthodoxy we received, not trying to “fix” it but through understanding change our hearts. Orthodoxy is not a religious right phenomenon and never was. It only appears that way to many because of this illusion of charisma that comes with the membership of SCOBA.

I am not going to preach about “Orthodoxy” but instead will share with you insights of many books from qualified scholars who teach Orthodoxy. I do not want to change any Orthodox Doctrine nor any of Holy Tradition. Indeed, I want to pass on what I have received. ie. Orthodox Tradition (παράδοσις) This website will concentrate upon Orthopraxy which only requires human intelligence and anyone can do this providing they are honest, transparent and accept the universal, non-tribal golden rule. “Orthopraxy is a term derived from Greek (ὀρθοπραξις) meaning “correct action/activity”, [an aspect of] religion that places emphasis on conduct, both ethical and liturgical, as opposed to faith or grace etc” Orthopraxy is like science: it belongs to everybody. While most of the faces of modern science may be indo-european, science belongs to all humans. Just any human at all could perform a scientific test and falsify a most cherished “european” scientific theory. In the same manner, Orthopraxy, as does the golden rule, applies to all humans, not just to one's own tribe.

Focusing on Orthopraxy is very freeing. It allows us to talk back and forth with anyone. But it is not without friction. We will see in this website how “saints” of the church have defended at times the right and duty to lie, to hate the Jews (and not just Judaizers in their midst as some would pretend), to manipulate and to champion a notion that God is on our side and not on the side of our enemies as well! Any Orthodox Christian with an unshakable faith knows where God's grace exists through the Sacraments, historic and apostolic Tradition and in the community of the faithful centered around their Bishop. But no Orthodox Christian knows where God does not operate whether in ROCOR, in the Synagogue, in Islam, in Buddhism or even in the secular universities. Orthodox Christians can not even pretend to know who is “without grace” lest they be guilty of the heresy of phyletism. As a matter of fact, God's rain falls on the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox alike. Saint Paul reminded us as well, Abraham was justified before God when he was still a gentile, 400 years before the Old Testament Law was even known to Moses.

Tracts On Orthopraxy

1. The Role of Honesty, Transparency and The Golden Rule in Orthodox Christianity
2. The Value of Being Out and Living A Devout Orthodox Christian Life
3. Understanding of the distinction between Orthodox Doctrine and Orthodox Orthopraxy
4. How St. Paul's “Soft” and “Hard” positions are both Key to Orthodox Orthopraxy
5. How Heterosexual Phyletism “Clobber's” Gays with Ludicrous Translations
6. The Error of “Proof Texting” Using the Church Fathers
7. Orthodox Examples of Hospitality for Some and Excommunication for Others
8. How Erotic Same-sex Affection Influenced the Orthodox Understanding Of Holy Marriage
9. What Is the Relevance of Christianity in the Postmodern World?
10. Differences Between Eastern and Western Christianity

by Father George (Battelle)

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By Father George (Battelle) who is interested in your take on these ideas.

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