Governance & Unity Essays - Orthodox Christian Laity

Child of Governance

“OCA. We are a city on a hill” – Svetlana Vais interviews Mark Stokoe

By Webmaster on October 15, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Portal-Credo.Ru 1. With your permission, Mark, tell me, based solely on your personal experience, to what extent can the internal life of the church can be presented for public discussion? I do not mean the parish meetings and Council — the issue is specific to the press. Especially the Internet – with its almost instantaneous reaction. Do you personally have any criteria? St. Mark the Evangelist – not Mark Stokoe – said: “There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing secret that will not become known and come to light.” And St. Luke…

A Vision of A Unified Church In North America – Archbishop Nathaniel of Detroit [VIDEO]

By admin on July 23, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance Top Stories

As part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Orthodox Christian Laity, we present to you a two part video interview: A Vision of A Unified Church In North America – with Archbishop Nathaniel of Detroit. Recorded at the 20th Annual Meeting of OCL, November 2007. Part 1 Part 2

The Orthodox Church of Tomorrow – Revisited

By admin on June 7, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays

Source: American Orthodox Institute Blog Four years ago Fr. John Peck published the essay below and boy did he get hammered. Creativity, a characteristic you would want to see in priests, is feared because sometimes it gets too close to exposing the sheer paucity of substantive ideas and compelling engagement with the larger culture that the Church, in order to be Church, should cultivate in their leaders. The truth is we have got some very fine men serving as priests. The other truth is that those who bring the most to the table are often the first to get their…

Can a Fable of Pan-Orthodoxy in America Become Reality?

By admin on May 3, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays

Source: The National Herald My fable begins with four babies being born to four families, all Orthodox. Two live on one block, the others one block over. In fact, two were born on the same day, in the same hospital (this last part is true). Yet all four will be baptized in separate parishes and live their whole lives without ever taking Holy Communion together. Strangers at the Chalice. They will attend each other’s birthday parties; the same schools, sports teams, videogame groups, and school bands. They’ll double-date (or triple or quadruple date) and attend Homecoming and Prom dances together.…

Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver

A Hierarchal Reflection: Smaller Parishes Need More Outreach in Order to Grow

By admin on April 30, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays

Source: Greek Orthodox Observer Looking across our vast nation, we can say that our Orthodox Church has seen incremental growth, especially in the developing urban areas. On the other hand, we realize that some of the smaller parishes of our Archdiocese are either not growing or are losing numbers of parishioners. For example, the once-thriving Holy Trinity parish in Grand Island, Nebraska, is no longer in existence. While it is an exception, unfortunately, Holy Trinity is not unique. In regard to those parishes which are not increasing in membership, there has been very little, if any, outreach by the Church,…

Why Orthodox Hierarchs Should Not Get Involved With Politics

By admin on April 19, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays

On at least three occasions in recent years, hierarchs of various Orthodox Churches in the United States have publicly involved themselves in political discourse: first, in 2008 the California Orthodox Bishops issued a statement on Proposition 8 [i]; second, since 2009 Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America has officially participated in the annual March for Life in Washington DC [ii]; and third, in 2012 the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops published a statement of protest regarding the proposed mandatory insurance coverage of contraception by the Department of Health and Human Services. [iii] While individual Orthodox Christians most certainly…

Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse

Deconstructing the ‘Internal Contradiction’ in the GOA

By admin on March 27, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays

Source: American Orthodox Institute Blog The following essay was written in response to this question by a reader of the American Orthodox Institute Observer Question: The GOA has never addressed the moral and social underpinnings of the problems facing Greece. Is the GOA so captive to the fantasy narrative of the Greek Community in America that it is unable to engage on these issues? Athens burns but the party at the Ritz Carlton in Florida (Leadership 100) goes on. How do you celebrate Greek Independence day at the White House when your homeland is in the midst of a social…

Met. Jonah on Orthodox unity in America March, 2012 [VIDEO]

By admin on March 13, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance Top Stories

In March 2012, His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah spoke at Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Linthicum, MD on the topic of Orthodox unity in America.

The 1872 Council of Constantinople and Phyletism

By admin on February 23, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays

I. The Definition Phyletism is the name of an ecclesiological heresy which says that the Church can be territorially organized on an ethnic, racial, or cultural basis so that within a given geographic territory, there can exist several Church jurisdictions, directing their pastoral care only to the members of specific ethnic groups. A Church council in 1872 officially defined and condemned this heresy. It reacted to a proposition made by Bulgarians of the Patriarchate of Constantinople who wanted to establish a Church jurisdiction, sanctioned by the Turkish government, on the territory of the Patriarchate: The formation in the same place…

Searching for a Narrative for Eastern Orthodox in America

By admin on January 2, 2012 Governance & Unity Essays

Source: Daniel Stilliman Blog | Daniel Watch American Religious Studies and American Religious History for even a little while, and you’ll see a developing, evolving way of talking about different groups. Go back — not too far, even — and one finds almost all the attention given to denominational organizations, and everything framed in terms of continuity or discontinuity with Boston Puritanism. It’s not like that anymore. Just in recent years, the account of Islam in America is growing and changing. It’s now de riguer to note that the first Muslims came to America with the importation of slaves from…

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