John Chryssavgis - Orthodox Christian Laity

Browsing: John Chryssavgis

Greek Parliament Building, Athens, Greece

The Things That Are God’s and the Things That Are Caesar’s: On the Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage in Greece

By Webmaster on February 22, 2024 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Public Orthodoxy Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis Director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at HCHC One of the temptations invariably plaguing priests and preachers as they proffer declarations and proclamations is the tendency to offer solutions to non-existent dilemmas, providing answers to questions nobody is asking or addressing the wrong audience. Which is why it is hardly surprising that various Orthodox hierarchs and circles feel the need to express disproportionate fervor and excessive alarm on the current debate around the same-sex marriage bill that just passed in the Greek parliament. With the legalization of same-sex marriage, Greece becomes the first…

As It Was in the Beginning: In Cyprus, the laity have a vote

By Webmaster on December 3, 2022 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Commonweal By John Chryssavgis As the bishop’s role has grown in stature through the centuries, with bishops becoming the ultimate arbiter of things doctrinal and canonical, the way we elect bishops has changed and evolved. The participation of the laity in the electoral process has waned. In his late fourth-century treatise On the Priesthood, St. John Chrysostom was already lamenting how bishops were promoted: Tell me, then, where do you think these great disturbances in the church come from? Personally, I think that they transpire from the ill-considered and random manner in which bishops are chosen. (Book III, 10) The…

St. Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos in northern Greece. Photo by Kremlin.ru/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

Do the Gospels really worry about supporting the nuclear family? — Response to public announcement on the nature of family by Mount Athos

By Webmaster on August 9, 2022 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Religion News Service Why those removed from the world should refrain from declarations on marriage and family. By John Chryssavgis (RNS) — In the Orthodox Christian world, few places are better known or more lovingly venerated than Mount Athos, the 10th-century Greek monastery legendarily dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Composed of 20 citadels scattered over a peninsula of exceptional beauty in northern Greece, boasting magnificent manuscripts and icons, Athos is home to some 2,000 monks. Among them, as in every society, there are saints and sinners, sane and strange. I have visited countless times and have been blessed to engage…

Uh-oh, the Greek Orthodox archbishop of America is a liberal

By Webmaster on July 26, 2022 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Religion News Service His baptizing of a gay couple’s children is only the most recent case in point. By Mark Silk (RNS) — A couple of weeks ago, Elpidophoros, the Greek Orthodox archbishop of America, showed up in a seaside resort near Athens and baptized the son and daughter of a prominent gay couple, actor Evangelo Bousis and fashion designer Peter Dundas. The baptism, which was followed by a meal and “wild party,” was widely publicized. And it created a bit of a furor in the Church of Greece. As Orthodox protocol requires, Elpidophoros had informed the local metropolitan bishop that he…

Image: Orthodox World Council of Churches pre-assembly meeting (Russian Orthodox Church Department for External Church Relations)

HAVE WE HIT ROCK BOTTOM? REFLECTIONS OF A NOT-SO-INNOCENT BYSTANDER [witnessing the present decline of the Orthodox Church as an institution]

By Webmaster on May 11, 2022 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Public Orthodoxy by Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis There are very few occasions in our lives—critical, pivotal events—that are truly life-shattering. We Orthodox describe them as kairos moments. World War II was one of these. In my lifetime, there was 9/11. Institutions and individuals are defined by such moments. We might recall how the Roman Catholic Church failed to stand up to Mussolini and Hitler; thankfully there was the selflessness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his staunch resistance to Nazi dictatorship. Or we might remember the hostility and conspiracy spawned by the attack on the Twin Towers; thankfully there was the selflessness of first…

THE CRISIS OF ORTHODOXY: Restoring the image

By Webmaster on March 26, 2022 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: The Tablet The Orthodox world is being shattered by the war in Ukraine. A close adviser to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew reflects frankly on the state of Orthodoxy before the invasion, and imagines how it needs to change if it is to have a future. By JOHN CHRYSSAVGIS On the Sunday of the first week of Great Lent, which this year began on 7 March, the Eastern liturgical cycle celebrates the Feast of Orthodoxy. Sometimes conceitedly called the “Triumph of Orthodoxy” it would be more accurate to describe it as the celebration of the “restoration of images”, for on this…

Putin kissing icon in presence of bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church

AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STANDING WITH UKRAINE

By Webmaster on February 27, 2022 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: Public Othodoxy PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON RUSSIA’S WAR ON UKRAINE by Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis | ελληνικά | Română Few, if any, would go so far as to claim that Patriarch Kirill, as head of the Orthodox Church in Russia (or “the Russias,” as he likes to say), could be charged with crimes against humanity or war crimes for not preventing unwarranted and unjustifiable military aggression that has cost innocent lives in just the last few days. At the same time, many, if not most, would concur that President Putin should be charged with such atrocities. Even with his egregious violations of conventional law, however,…

Book Review of Creation as Sacrament by John Chryssavgis

By Webmaster on May 21, 2020 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories, Uncategorized

Source: Academia Creation as Sacrament: Reflections on Ecology and Spirituality by John Chryssavgis (London: T&T Clark, 2018), xi + 220 pp. When speaking once in a discussion on climate change about the sacramentality of creation, a priest of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America responded to me, “I know there are seven sacraments, but I’ve never heard of creation as a sacrament.” This is exactly the kind of attitude that has itself contributed to an exploitative relationship to the cosmos and which John Chryssavgis hopes to correct with his aptly-titled book, Creation as Sacrament: Reflections on Ecology and Spirituality.…

Patriarch Bartholomew I (right) and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in Istanbul in 2009

The Case for Constantinople

By Webmaster on October 24, 2018 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: The Tablet by John Chryssavgis Orthodox disunity It is tempting to consign the rift between Constantinople and Moscow – this time over autocephaly in Ukraine – to competition within the Orthodox world over power and jurisdiction. The reality is more complex. Beyond the multifaceted religious intrigue lie murky geopolitical ramifications. The matter transcends any exercise of right or even the simple exhibition of might. The issue of the autocephaly (literally, “self-headed”, or self-governing) of the Church in Ukraine, along with questions of the validity of orders and sacraments, are vital to Orthodox unity, but they pale before the isolationism and…

On the Great Council of the Orthodox Church

By Webmaster on February 3, 2016 Governance & Unity Essays, Governance & Unity News

Source: First Things by John Chryssavgis Already there is much talk about the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. Between now and June 19, 2016, when the council officially opens on the island of Crete, there will be many rumors and much spin. Some will be justified; like other patriarchal institutions, Orthodox Churches are not normally known for their transparency. However, other chatter will be less than helpful. What follow are some brief clarifications on basic questions surrounding the council. Is the Great Council an Ecumenical Council? For Orthodox Christians, there hasn’t been an Ecumenical Council since 787,…

A divinely written icon: Orthodox theology can lead to new Christian thinking on creation

By Webmaster on September 19, 2013 Orthodox News, Orthodox News Top Stories

Source: National Catholic Reporter By Melissa Jones TOWARD AN ECOLOGY OF TRANSFIGURATION: ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES ON ENVIRONMENT, NATURE, AND CREATION Edited by John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz Published by Fordham University Press, $125 hardback, $35 paperback Every year on or around Epiphany, a group of Eastern Orthodox Christian faithful from Denver forms a carpool caravan and drives three hours to the Continental Divide at Monarch Pass, Colo. They make this trek to bless the snowpack because they know that the spring melt will flow east and west down the Rockies to feed the life-giving streams and rivers of the…

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Browsing: John Chryssavgis