Challenges
HEGE Series
The Dark Side of Orthodoxy
Oh but it's so much better now than in the past, and remember it's The Church, Christ's Body, so stop the criticism. — Typical Orthodox excuse You Christians need to learn how to be a creative minority. — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Baptisms from hell OMG!
Orthodox Church under fire in Romania after baby dies during baptism
Viral Baptism video receiving huge backlash
Well, that's unorthodox!
Russian Orthodox Church Clamps Down on DIY Exorcisms After Multiple Deaths
Exorcism in Romania ends in death
An Increasingly Unorthodox World
Around 260 million people in the world today identify themselves as Christian Orthodox, double the number registered a century ago, according to a report from the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank. Russia alone has more than 100 million followers, while more than 95 percent of people in predominantly Orthodox countries such as Moldova, Georgia, Romania and Greece report keeping icons at home.
Yet, as popular as Orthodoxy is in Eastern Europe, this branch of Christianity seems to be losing ground in the overall Christian population. Today, Orthodox Christians represent only 4 percent of the world’s population. Additionally, Orthodox followers account for 12 percent of Christians worldwide, down 8 percentage points from the levels in 1910, according to the Pew report.
The reasons for this decline are many, and experts say they have to do with history and a more rigid administrative structure of the overall Orthodox community.
Redeeming the Time —
Redeeming the time | Orthodox Church in Ameria
“Redeeming The Time...” The Epistle to the Ephesians 5: 15-16
Salt of the Earth — Christian Responsibility
Salt in the Bible | Orthodoxwiki
Salt
Salt of the Earth: An Orthodox Christian Approach to Peacemaking
Salt of the Earth (The Acquisition of the Holy Spirit in Russia Series, Vol. 2) — St. Paul Florensksy | Amazon
“The Salt of the Earth” in Covenantal Perspective
Developing CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY
Addressing the reasons for decline in Orthodoxy
Challenges to The Orthodox Church today as function of contemporary failings . . .
List of Irresponsibilities —
Ethnophyletism
Holy and Great pan-Orthodox Synod of 1872
[P]hyletism is the intrusion of chauvinism, even jingoism, in the administration or spiritual life of the Church within a given locale, when nationalistic pride trumps catholic humility and the Faithful, inappropriately, divide into ethnic ecclesiastical cliques. The contemporary situation of Orthodoxy in Western Europe and the Americas, where there exists a multitude of separate Orthodox Churches, each organized according to ethnic origin, and where numerous separate ethnically-defined Hierarchies overlap one another in their territorial jurisdictions, is precisely what the Fathers of the Synod of Constantinople of 1872 had in mind in their deliberations and precisely what they condemned.
The Temptation of Judas: Church and National Identities 2002 | Academia.edu — A "Must Read"!
Orthodox Theology Challenged by Balkan and East European Ethnotheologies 2022 | Academia.edu
Macedonia and Greece — John Shea 1997 pp.6-21, Excellent analysis of the Macedonian-Greek conflict
The Myth of Greek Ethnic 'Purity'— Macedonia and Greece, John Shea 1997 pp.77-96
What Race Were the Greeks and Romans? The evidence is clear — but often ignored
Condemned by the Holy and Great pan-Orthodox Synod of 1872 that met in Constantinople, Phyletism developed into a form of political civil religion when nations were created out of Orthodox Christian lands from the former Byzantine and latter Ottoman Empires. The effects of Phyletism might aptly be referred to as "National Churches" that have been carved out of Eastern Orthodoxy, The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and propagated among expatriates (from said nations carved out of Orthodoxy) in western lands foreign to Orthodoxy.
The traditional languages of Orthodox Christian liturgical worship (Koine Greek, Church Slavonic, Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, Georgian, Syrian, etc.) rank nowhere near the top of the list of world languages with most speakers or native speakers. Yet, those languages (from lands where Orthodox Christians have expatriated) are too often the liturgical languages of Eastern Orthodox Church worship instead of the native language of those extraterritorial lands (outside traditional Orthodox patriarchal jurisdictions) to which Orthodox Christians have expatriated and chosen to call home.
See — Language
No wonder, then, that Orthodox Christians comprise such a tiny percentage of the population in those lands to which they have expatriated, since Orthodox Christian expatriates have failed to connect Orthodox Christian theological Cosmology with place, and shirked any missionary responsibility, choosing instead to insularly serve themselves instead of others in spiritual need per the Church's own Great Commission.
To make matters worse, the Orthodox Church of Greece and Russia, in a symbolic superficial show of faithfulness to Church Tradition (like a drunk clinging to a street lamp), persist in use of Koine Greek and Church Slavonic, which are essentially dead languages that are no longer understood or spoken, even by most Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians, both being little more than liturgical anomalies.
As if that were not enough, expatriate Orthodox ethnophyletism adds to racism in Western countries by failing to bring the Gospel to lands historically riddled by racism, such as the USA. Ethnophyletism further frustrates the history of racism in places like the USA by emphasizing single ethnicity of foreign homelands rather than the multi-ethnic plurality of life in Western lands, the chosen new home of Orthodox expatriates.
The Church is the only place of True Multi-ethnicity (True Multi-culturalism), where hatred of ethnic and cultural differences can be healed. Political man-centered attempts at doing so are futile because racism requires a spiritual change of heart and mind that can only be accomplished by the grace of the Holy Spirit, one creature at a time. The failing of ethnophyletism is therefore perhaps the most eggregious of all the failings of the Orthodox Church in modern times, because pride of ingroup ethnicity raises a huge obstacle to sorely needed multi-cultural mission outreach.
Hellenism Today
Hellenism Can Be Inclusive, Not Exclusive
Hellenistic Christianity
Chapter 12 Christian Hellenism as Philosophia Perennis Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance
Hearth of Hellenism: Why Greeks are Leaving Christianity
Hearth of Hellenism: Separation of Church and State – Greece After Orthodoxy
Religious Fundamentalism (Legalism)
See — Elder Cultism
Orthodox Christian Fundamentalism and the Western Latinized Phronema
Orthodox Fundamentalists : A Critical View
Orthodox Fundamentalism: What is it and does it exist?
Orthodox Christian churches are drawing in far-right American converts
Enfants Terribles: The Challenge of Sectarian Converts to Ethnic Orthodox Churches in the United States
Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church — Chapter 4
Ben Lomond: When Antiochian Orthodoxy Drove Away its Converts
After Ethnophyletism, religious fundamentalism (legalism, politicization) is the most eggregious failure of the Orthodox Church in USA that is preventing spread of the Gospel. Over the years, numerous western converts to the Orthodox Church have brought their baggage with them into the Orthodox Church, adding to Ethnophyletism and making failure of Orthodox evangelism even worse.
It is primarily converts from a legalistic background by whom religious fundamentalism is tainting praxis and evangelization of the Orthodox Church. Rigidity of such Legalism, primarily a vice of Calvinistic, Puritan Reformed Protestantism and Roman Catholicism which have allied themselves in a culture war (when for centuries they were mortal enemies), prevents proper and adequate absorption of liturgical Orthodox Christian teaching.
The entry of that vice into Orthodoxy has initially come via the Evangelical Orthodox Church, yet another invention of Reformed Protestantism. The EOC was spawned by Campus Crusade for Christ, former leaders of which reacting against the freewheeling Jesus People movement of the early 70s, developed their own synthesis of Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Shepherding Movement principles, and began dialogues with the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1977. After dialogues with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America (GOArch), application for membership in GOArch was made in 1984, but it was tabled by the GOArch Executive Committee over the EOC’s teachings and practices. EOC request for an audience with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul was also declined.
The Orthodox Church is a target of western converts looking to escape from liberalized American society and churches (e.g. Anglicanism and “contemporary” Protestant worship venues), particularly Reformed Protestants who typically are ever always seeking original Christianity, which is how the EOC came into being. The social conservatism of Reformed Protestants superficially appears to be a good fit with Orthodoxy, but that conservatism stems from a legalistic mindset which does not jive with Orthodox teaching of submitting the mind to the heart.
With such legalistic social conservatism also comes a culture war mentality, which is becoming more and more prevalent in Orthodox circles. Every misstep is met with such legalism, seeking ever more vigilance in rooting out all vestiges of the liberal enemy. Orthodox Christian teaching that the only enemy of humanity is the Evil One (the father of lies, satan) and his demons is gradually being replaced with the enemy of liberalism as the threat to The Church.
The religious fundamentalist problem with western converts is highlighting the catechumenal weakness of the Orthdox Church and bringing it to the forefront. Eventually, the EOC was accepted into the Antiochian Archdiocese of America which has made a habit of accepting entire convert groups en masse. Such reception en masse further complicates the existing poor catechumenal teaching of the Orthodox Church, which historically has few adult converts, most all members being baptised as infants. The Orthodox Church has historically not had “Sunday Schools” which are a mainstay of Protestantism with its emphasis on scripture reading and study. Orthodoxy is weak when it comes to western systematics of dogma and doctrine, especially in lay context where a quickstart guide is needed, not voluminous in depth academic studies produced by seminarians for their degrees from Orthodox seminaries. Priests seem to be left on their own to determine how to catechize converts, some of whose methods are atrocious. There doesn't seem to be any standard catechal guides produced at the Archdiocese level of any of the jurisdictions, and the multi-jurisdictional situation resulting from Ethnophyletism only compounds the problem.
The catechumenal weakness is allowing religious fundamentalism to infect the Orthodox Church, and fester, grow, flower and flourish there in the Body of Christ, sickening and weakening it. Following in the footsteps of heterodoxy, Orthodoxy in the West is becoming politicized into "culture war" political categorizations of "left" and "right", "liberal" and "conservative". While much is made of liberalization, such appears to be the antics of a small minority within the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), academics at Fordham University, and a few online commentators and digital publishers. That minority is being greatly magnified as an impending great threat by internet blog and social media communication of knee-jerk reactionary response of the conservative majority within all the Orthodox Church jurisdictions, most of whom are converts from heterodoxy where such "culture war" is commmonplace. Recently, ROCOR parishes have seen some influx of far-right converts with an even more extreme strain of social conservatism.
Orthodox leadership is timid about addressing this situation, perhaps because there is a lack of desire stemming from a tradition of not mixing politics with Orthodoxy. But convert priests and laity alike have no such qualms and if the situation is ignored for long, the face of Orthdoxy in America will be radically altered.
Convert leaders typically are quick to denounce homosexuality and abortion, but rarely address other social issues. One such ROCOR priest who is consistently level-headed and rational in his demeanor, has argued against claims of fundamentalism by citing the historical definition of fundamentals when he should know full well that contemporary accusations of fundamentalism are made in response to an extreme black and white, rigid system of legalistic mentality and unflexible manner of approach. The priest has also stated that the modern capitalistic system is not usurious, that usury is something different from the interest rates of the modern day fiat banking system, in other words, implicitly providing support for the consumer capitalist system, a sacred cow of the political right. Whether intentional or not, in such ways he gives the impression of being yet another social conservative in support of nothing but right wing political issues.
In this way, convert Orthodoxy shows a bias towards right wing politicization of Christianity, the remedy for which is simple — unbiased balanced support of not only the right wing opposition to homosexuality, transgender, and abortion, but support simultaneously of opposition to consumer capitalist exploitation and degradation of humanity and all Creation (which unfortunately has been consigned to left wing issues when it's not political at all, but a spiritual issue applicable to everyone regardless of political stripe), opposition to demonization of other people and nations as “evil” (when the Evil One is the only enemy of humanity), making them out to be a threat to national security, opposition to militarization and war, and support of solidarity with the poor.
Such diplomacy is not rocket science that takes a PHd, virtuoso or genius to develop.
In July 2022 in response to the ongoing brouhaha over homosexuality, the OCA Synod of bishops came out of their prayer closets to unanimously reject same-sex unions and homosexual identity in support of Church Tradition. However, there is no memory or documentation of them or any other group of Orthodox leadership having ever come out in opposition to the Mammon worship of consumer capitalism et. al. This despite the fact that they live in the richest nation in human history at a level of luxury, convenience and comfort unknown to the Saints of The Church, a dole provided them by a laity enslaved to the consumer capitalist system.
Perhaps wisdom of leadership and diplomacy needs to be added to the list of Christian virtues that seem to be unattainable in these latter days of impending advent of The Antichrist.
See — Propaganda, Government, Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism
How Zwingli’s radicalism shaped Evangelical worship This attitude of sitting in judgment fundamentally underpins all of Evangelicalism.... [T]here is a huge disconnect between physical matter and the spiritual. This represents a radical rejection of traditional Christianity.... The on-going judgmentalism at the heart of Evangelicalism is rooted in Zwingli’s belief that every believer must judge for themselves what is true. This results in people constantly making judgments about doctrines and practises which have given rise to thousands of denominations all of which disagree with and disparage each other.... This attitude misses the virtues of humility, peace and love which sit at the heart of the orthodox Christian piety. How Calvin thought to reinvent God That God is sovereign is the doctrine that formed the basis of, and foundation for, all of Calvin’s doctrines. He filtered all his explanations of Scripture and development of doctrine through the lens of God’s sovereign action. If any formulation of doctrine impinged on God’s sovereignty, then it was reworded or rejected.... Why would God choose to save some and damn others? According to Calvin, God needs to be merciful to some people so that He can show His mercy; while He needs to be judging toward others to demonstrate His justice. You see, it’s about God, not about you. [Theology of Glory, not Theology of The Cross per Luther See — Lutheran vs. Reformed]... [F]or Calvin, “the source or spring of salvation” is not Christ Himself, but the covenant [which is misunderstood as legal contract not as marital relationship; see - Gender as Prophecy and Revelation]. So too, Calvin identifies the problem of fallen humanity, not as a separation from the life of God, but as a transgression of a Law [legality, legalism] which is a part of the created order. For Calvin, Law and Covenant are the twin constructs around which people’s condemnation or redemption revolves [Old Testament law and order]. Calvin’s teaching effectively demotes Christ’s role in salvation. Instead of people being saved through union with Christ, in Calvin’s thinking Christ is merely the satisfier of the demands of the Law and the means by which people access the Covenant of Grace, which is the true source of salvation.... [J]ust like the Greeks who unilaterally rejected the idea of the Incarnation, John Calvin rejected the idea that matter might convey grace.... [T]he Calvinist Puritans who traveled to New England ironically re-applied to their own society Old Covenant Law, which the Church has always taught that Christians are freed from.... Irony of ironies, the straight-jacket of “works-righteousness” that Luther and Calvin had so sought to escape were re-imposed on “Calvinists” within a generation. Religious Addiction The Iconoclasts While it's unlikely that the Orthodox Church—which, according to the best estimate, has only 1.2 million American members—will ever pose any sort of existential threat to evangelical Christianity in the United States, it is significant nonetheless that a growing number of Southern Baptists and Presbyterians and Assemblies of God members have left the evangelical fold, turning to a religion that is not only not American, but not even Western. Their flight signals a growing dissatisfaction among some evangelicals with the state of their churches and their complicated relationship with the modern world. Traditions are like street lamps. They show the way, but only a drunkard clings to them!
Religious Fundamentalism, in relation to Substance and Behavioral Addictions
Fundamentalism As An Addiction?
The God Drug: When Religion Becomes An Addiction
How Religious Fundamentalism Hijacks the Brain
Yes, Blame Christian Fundamentalism for the Atlanta Murders
Contrasting faith-based and traditional substance abuse treatment programs
Recovering From Evangelicalism: A 3 Step Program
A link between brain damage and religious fundamentalism has now been established by scientists
Community Superficiality
The destruction of community wrought by modern industrial urbanism is only exasperated by ethnophyletism and its multijurisdictional cacaphony in pluralistic societies of the West. Multijurisdictionalism allows expatriates to hold on to a symbolic mythos of ethnic identity (which erodes with each passing generation), instead of being transfigured to identify with the image and likeness of God in which all humanity is created (the New Adam, Christlikeness). Identification with materialistic ancestral human DNA (the sinful, fallen Old Adam) does nothing but confuse ethnicity (nationality) with Christianity.
Additionally, multijurisdictional ethnophyletism, by propagating parishes of different jurisdictions proximally within the same location, allows disaffected Orthodox Christians to simply jurisdiction hop around any and every time they take offense over something, rather than stay put in a particular parish to work through their spiritual issues.
Add the fracturing effect of urban industrialism to this fray and a perfect storm is created for aetheistic secularism. Urban industrialism is corrosive to family, community, and Christian faith. Yet Christian leadership in general, and Orthodox Christian leadership in particular are seemingly oblivious to that, and never seem willing to truck the conversation of what could creatively be done to resist such corrosion.
See — Family of Man, Community, Ethnophyletism, COVIDiocy
Bureaucratic Careerism
Holy and Great pan-Orthodox Synod of 1872
A dignitarian styled "leadership" and "rigid administrative structure" allows ethnophyletism to persist, among other failings. Heirarchal trajectory consists primarily of academic cerebrialism, with little to no actual address of life of laity in the world, or the world as it exists apart from God — undergraduate degree, MDiv, seminary, marital avoidance, ordination (as priestmonk), brief monastic stint (or aspiration to abbot), assignment as heirarchal staffer (much like bureaucratic governmental office staffers), elevation to various higher offices (abbot, archimandrite, etc. within monasteries, or others within heirarchal office), and finally, election to Episcopacy (Bishop).
The Church heirarchy (administration) being elevated from within monasticism, like monasticism exists in Parasitism. Like modern monastics from among whom the heirarchy arises, heirarchs would live in true poverty by modern standards (rather than in modern luxury, comfort and convenience) if it were not for the beneficence of the laity, whose financial riches that provide such beneficence are derived solely from the modern anthropocentric domination and exploitation of Creation. It is no wonder, then, that The Orthodox Church has never mounted an in depth, thorough, lasting criticism of modernity and it's effects, not only on humanity, but on All Creation which belongs to (is "owned" by) God alone, but which has been taken captive by a fallen humanity, that if turned back (repentant) towards God at all, is so turned but superficially.
Indifference
Cynacism (Indifference) Is An Illness — An Interview with Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) Thus do we arrive at cynicism, and essentially to the source of that same sickness of indifference with which Christians have been infected since the time of the Laodicean Church. The enemy power, which gathers momentum through spiritually tepid Christians within the Church, is infinitely more dangerous than any outward force, more dangerous than persecutions.
"It Is Our Fault That There Are People Who do Not Know Christ" We need to treat those who don’t believe in Christ with great love and great sorrow. In the Gospel, Christ tells us that we should “let our light so shine before men”, that they may know God. (Mt. 5:16). It is our fault that there are people who do not know Christ. We must feel a tremendous responsibility for the souls of such people. If we become saints, we will attract people to Christ. Our problem, however, is the lack of holiness within us. Therefore, we are unfair toward our brothers who don't see the holiness within us and as a result are not drawn closer to the Gospel. So, what we really need is holiness and saints in the Church.
Salt of the Earth
Salt in the Bible
Cerebralism
Studying, educating, schooling, degreeing, authoring, publishing, printing, blogging, recording, talking, lecturing, speaking . . . always retreating but hardly ever advancing the spiritual warfare front or evangelism.
Calendarism
The Calendar Controversy
Is There A Perfect Calendar?
Gregorian Calendar Reform: Why Are Some Dates Missing?
Use of the Old Calendar (Julian Calendar) instead of the New Calendar (Gregorian Calendar) for liturgical life in The Church causes burdensome confusion of having two different dating systems, one for The Church and another for the world. This may seem beneficial for bringing the difference between The Church and the world into sharp focus, but such is superficially symbolic and of no real consequence to Christian life. Not being of the world requires much, much more than simply following a liturgical calendar in The Church that is not in step with the world.
Such superficiality gives Orthodox Christians the impression that they need make no other adjustments to life in modern times than cleaving to the Old Calendar. Keeping the Old Calendar is akin to fighting racism by removing symbols deemed "racist" from public life, which does absolutely nothing to heal the wounds of racism or bring people together in understanding, peace, love and harmony.
Similar silly mentality can be witnessed in the Amish ban of moustaches and buttons (and often other clothing fasteners as well). The "reason" given for doing so is because the Amish were mercilessly persecuted by the military in Western Europe before immigrating to America in the mid 1700s. At that time, the military fashion was the wearing of moustaches by officers and uniforms with large, bold brass buttons. So even today all these centuries later, Amish men still sport chin strap beards sans moustaches in symbolic protest as a nose thumb to their past persecutors, and burden Amish women with having to pin together their clothing because buttons and zippers (and often times hooks and eye clasps and other fasteners as well) have been banned.
Use of the Old Calendar is likewise a form of symbolic protest against the introduction of the New Calendar, which is said to have been introduced in 1923 in an unorthodox manner for the purpose of Ecumenism, of promoting union with heterodox Roman Catholics and Protestants. Yet even a century later, such union has never occurred, and most Orthodox Christians are still not in favor of it.
Meanwhile, the confusion of two different calendars plagues any outreach to the world by The Church. New comers must not only sort through the differences of multijurisdictional Ethnophyletism, but must then also decipher the differences between individual parishes (sometimes even within the same jurisdiction) on the basis of the calendar.
The Julian Calendar falls behind the Gregorian Calendar by 1 day in every 128 years. In 2022, it is 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar. Nearly a century since the New Calendar was introduced into The Church, it's time to settle the Calendar issue by standardizing liturgical worship astronomically via the Gregorian Calendar in keeping with the Earth, solar system and Cosmos, which are all part of the Creation that is an icon of God, the work of His hand. The people of Stonehenge and any others from antiquity who used sundials would most likely agree. All it takes to set the date of the solar equinoxes and solstices is a modest pile of rocks. All other dates of the year can be interpolated from there with no danger of union with heterodoxy. If such does not satisfy, then lobbying governments for use of the Revised Julian Calendar instead (which is slightly more accurate than the Gregorian) is an alternative.
Date of Easter | Wikipedia
Reform of the date of Easter | Wikipedia
Monarchism
Schismaticism
Ecumenical Patriarchy
Meddling
To Recognize a "Church" Having Heirarchs Without Apostolic Succession is a Serious Challenge
Holy and Great pan-Orthodox Synod of 1872
COVIDiocy
COVIDiocy is the flip side of the "COVIDism" coin, a term coined by Orthodox Christians opposed to the boondoggle, bungled reponse by bureaucratic governments and global institutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, which they view as an ideological ("ism") totalitarian plan to institute one-world government and grid ID surveillance of everyone. When this POV (Point Of View, AKA - Also Known As - opinion) crosses over into the ridiculous it becomes COVIDiocy.
How COVID 19 Led to a Spiritual Pandemic
Elder Iulian of Prodromos Skete (Mount Athos) 13 Aug 2021 | YouTube
— tells Orthodox Christians they must repent of having been vaccinated against COVID (vaccines referenced as "Vword" and "little devil" apparently to avoid censure on YouTube).
This is related to a claim that was presumably made by Archimandrite Athanasios Mitilinaios, as supposedly translated by the Orthodox Ethos website.
Introduction to the website article includes the following:
"In anticipation of our article explaining that the question of vaccines is not only a medical question (despite many bishops and priests shamefully telling their flock this), we at Orthodox Ethos have translated a homily from Geronda Athanasios Mitilinaios that states demons do indeed inhabit places and things."
When is a Place Defiled by the Demons? An Orthodox Ethos Original Article - Homily translated from Geronda Athanasios Mitilinaios
[L]et’s be careful not to defile the place where we live, whether by injustice or by immorality, or by any thing whatsoever, by sin in general. The place is defiled, the persons and bodies of men are defiled, even objects are defiled. In the New Testament the following is written. Jude, the brother our Lord, says, “Do not take and do not wear clothes from the skin of sinful men” (cf. Jude 23). Clothes that have come into contact with the skin of sinful men, don’t take them and don’t use them.
Archimandrite Athanasios Mitilinaios (the New Chrysostom, as he is commonly called in Greek spiritual circles) taught and illuminated a great number of souls, and restored and revived the abandoned Monastery of Komnineiou and St. John the Theologian on the mountainside of Stomion overlooking the Aegean Sea. He gave a lengthy series of lectures on the book of Revelation from the early '70s to late '80s in rebuttal of misinterpretations proliferated by sensationalist prophesying of Protestant evangelical fundamentalists.
The lectures were highly popular and widely attended by people from many parts of Greece. I've read the entire translations of his lectures by Constantine Zazalas compiled in Revelation Volumes 1-5, which I found very enlightening. I only came across a couple of errors when the elder referenced the now debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion (White Russian propaganda that was spread from Germany where those Russian loyalists had fled), and perhaps an inflammatory statement about Freemasonry. But a couple of errors in hundreds upon hundreds of pages is of little concern.
I don't know if the presumed translation of one of his homilies by Orthodox Ethos is reputable or not, but if the elder indeed made such a statement in error, it's just the sort of thing the Orthodox Ethos website would uncritically proliferate as truth.
Fr. Athansios makes his point well enough in the homily without resort to Holy Writ, which does not say what the translation claims it does. The Book of Jude consists of only one chapter of 25 verses. Jude 1:23 actually states "And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh."
What does Jude 1:23 mean?
"For those who are not in open rebellion, but are merely confused or suffering from doubt, our response should be that of mercy. We need to seek their redemption, not their condemnation (Jude 1:22).
At the same time, Jude portrays some unbelievers as so contaminated by immorality that this compassion needs to come with sensible caution. It is commendable to reach grossly immoral unbelievers, but it is unacceptable to be drawn into their immorality. Jesus reached out with the message of forgiveness to the most sinful members of society (Mark 2:15–17), but He did not participate in their sin (Hebrews 4:15). Nor did He approve of it (John 8:11)."
Christians do not participate in the sin of others by wearing their clothing which some argue becomes contaminated with their sin. One of the best ways to fight against the Immoral Economy is to buy used goods, particularly second hand clothing. Do sinners likewise contaminate their livestock, the wild plants and animals living on land they inhabit, automobiles and other mechanical equipment? And what about household goods - dishes, furniture, towels, bedding, etc.? Does this mean that Orthodox Christians should be admonished against buying anything that has been previously used by others, lest they inadvertantly buy something contaminated by (gasp) "sin"? Are not Orthodox Christians themselves sinners before they repent? This whole attitude seems highly questionable, and I refuse to believe that Fr. Athanasios would teach such a thing. If he did in error, then surely he is repenting of it even now.
Literalistic interpretation of Jude 1:23 is just the sort of thing Orthodox Ethos would seize upon to further it's fundamentalistic arguments. The website is one belonging to Fr. Peter Heers, the managing editor for which is John Coffman. (See — "About the Editor of Orthodox Ethos" right sidebar at When is a Place Defiled by the Demons?)
According to that published information, Coffman is a convert to Orthodoxy who was received into the Antiochian Archdiocese of America in 2010 in Yakima WA, after which he spent time at the primary Ephraimite monastery of St. Anthony’s in Arizona, and at Philotheou Monastery on Mt. Athos from whence came the Elder.
See — Elder Cultism
The science behind COVID-19 | GAVI Alliance
Created in 2000 [two decades before COVID pandemic], Gavi is an international organisation – a global Vaccine Alliance, bringing together public and private sectors with the shared goal of saving lives and protecting people’s health by increasing equitable and sustainable use of vaccines.
FactCheck.org
Tucker Carlson Misrepresents Vaccine Safety Reporting Data
May 14, 2021
Posts Falsely Claim CDC Official Admitted COVID-19 Vaccines Cause ‘Debilitating Illnesses’ Feb 20, 2023
No Evidence Excess Deaths Linked to Vaccines, Contrary to Claims Online Apr 17, 2023
Elder Cultism
See — COVIDiocy, Religious Fundamentalism (Legalism)
Orthodox Fundamentalism
Response to "Orthodox Fundamentalism" by George Demacopoulos
Greek Orthodox Fundamentalism (“The Ephraimite Sect”) and Evangelicals: Threat to Orthodoxy/Christianity?
Greek Orthodox Christians of Chicago for Truth and Reform
Scott Nevins: a voice crying in the wilderness.
Nature of the Problem
The Ephraimite Movement
What is an Ephraimite
Infected Priest
Gameplan
We Are Not “Under one Umbrella”
Lambs Being Poisoned?
Epraimite Fallacies (Part One)
Who Lost Chicago?
The 3 crowns of Elder Ephraim and how the U.S. will lose its superpower status
...all services from those English-speaking people to be performed in Ancient Greek and with Byzantine music. This was the condition set by fr. Ephraim. All the services will take place in the language of accuracy and theological wisdom and in the music not of Greeks or Byzantines but, as Papadiamantis says, in the music of angels.
"Yesterday, on Tuesday morning, Saint Ephraim appeared—and we are not in a hurry to canonize him, the people have already done it—to a little kid in America and he talked to him in English. The little kid saw him with three crowns on his head and told him: “Father, what are those three crowns on your head? I see three of them.” He told him: “The one is of asceticism, the other is because I endured the blames and the slandering and was forgiving those who accused me and the third because of the apostolic work I performed in your homeland so you can become Saints, the new generation of America. Once, when the bishops asked him ironically: “why are you building these monasteries with the nuns and the monks, father Ephraim?”.
He told them [and this regards] his fourth quality. God will provide him with a fourth crown shortly. The crown of the prophet. He, along with Saint Paisios, are the prophets of our kin regarding the End Times that are coming. He, himself, said: “These monasteries will act as a refuge for the next generation of Americans when the tough times of decay will arrive and [America] will now longer be a superpower. And then, a lot of people will take shelter around the monasteries to save their souls, and they will be saved. Afterwards, the neo-martyrs of American Orthodoxy will come out of these monasteries. “Do you notice what vision this man of God possessed? How far he could see?”
Monastic elder worship (akin to Hindu guruism) elevates monastic elders to such a high degree of holiness as to be infallible; e.g. the Ephraimite cult of the elder Ephraim from Mount Athos at his American monasteries. Apparently following his repose December 7, 2019, there is now a push to have the elder Ephraim (Moraitis) of Philotheou canonized as a saint of the Orthodox Church.
As validated in above quote, Ephraim insisted on creating monasteries in the USA that are Holy Mountain (Mt. Athos) monastery clones (re-enactments akin to theme park recreations or living history museums) with language restricted to Ancient Greek, even the readings of Lives of the Saints during meals. One such monastery I visited effectively functioned as a safe haven for disaffected Greeks dissatisfied with their local parish for measures taken that were not in keeping with their expected level of Ethnophyletism, something the Ephraimite monasteries fullfill to an even greater extent than usual. Conversations were conducted in modern Greek between monks and lay visitors, even in the presence of obvious American westerners who neither spoke nor understood Greek, modern or ancient.
Use of Ancient Greek is "justified" in above quote as "language of accuracy and theological wisdom". The abbot at the monastery I visited went so far as to claim that rational understanding of liturgical language was not essential, that someone had been healed of infirmity simply by attending such liturgy in Ancient Greek even though they understood none whatsoever, essentially claiming that the liturgy is a sacrament or magically endowed.
Such is in outright contradiction to Holy Writ which explicitly states “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” — Isaiah 1:18 Holy Writ is the Word of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. God the Son did not speak to His people in a foreign tongue which they could not comprehend. God's Word is proclaimed in the liturgy, and so must be in the language of the people. But such reasoning is lost on cultists, especially Ephraimites.
Ephraim could not speak or understand English, but pilgrims who wanted to meet with him were encouraged to speak with him and assured he would understand and be able to give them spiritual guidance. In the "vision" to a young boy in the above account, Ephraim miraculously speaks to the boy in English. Why would he not speak to the boy in Greek, or better still in Ancient Greek, the "language of accuracy and theological wisdom"?
Ephraim also tells the boy that God has given him three crowns, one for his "apostolic work I performed in your homeland [USA]". Yet no Orthodox Christian apostle ever insisted on the use of Ancient Greek as the "language of accuracy and theological wisdom". Ss. Cyril and Methodius, "Apostles to the Slavs" created the Cyrillic alphabet for the express purpose of translating the liturgy from Greek to the native language of the Slavic people they were evangelizing. Such has always been the Way of Orthodox Christianity until foreign expatriate immigrants and the Ephraimite cult descended on America.
Hence, Ss. Cyril and Methodius are given the Church title of "equal-to-apostles". If Ephraim is thus credited, it will be as an imposter. For whatever good may have resided in him and that he may have done, he is an Ethnophyletist, and not "equal-to-apostles".
Knowledge of Ancient Greek is indispensable to the Church for theological study since it was the language into which the Church was birthed, and the language of the Church over such a long period of time. If there are terms in Ancient Greek for which there is no satisfactory translation, then those Ancient Greek terms can and should be introduced into the native language of the people. It would also be beneficial for liturgical celebration in Ancient Greek to be maintained for use at special educational events, but Ancient Greek should never be the norm for the Divine Liturgy, not even for modern Greeks, most of whom likewise don't comprehend it.
Such type of cult as Elder Cult has been seen numerous times in the incarnation of the charismatic heterodox leader (evangelist) and the evangelical protestant (and often fundamentalist) megachurches (and/or media empires) crafted by them. Too many times such cults do not end well when the feet of those put on pedestals is revealed to be made of clay like every other human.
Unlike Wesley and his Methodist church, The Orthodox Church does not (and has never) taught that complete and total spiritual perfection is possible in this temporal life. So, elder cultists beware. Blind obedience to monastic elders may not be highly beneficial to spiritual health as believed, and could actually come instead with the cost of disillusionment resulting in loss of faith.
Westernism
William Palmer: The Oxford Movement and a Quest for Orthodoxy
— “This is a fascinating account of a failed "journey to Orthodoxy".... This book charts the eccentric career of William Palmer, ...[who] travelled to Russia to seek communion with the Russian Orthodox Church. In interactions with Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret (Drozdov), the lay theologian Khomyakov, and others, he sought their affirmation that the Anglican Church was part of the ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church world-wide.”
Western Rite
Western Rite Orthodoxy | Wikipedia
— “Metropolitan Kallistos Ware considered Western Rite Orthodoxy inherently divisive, believing following different liturgical traditions than their neighboring Byzantine Rite Eastern Orthodox Christians do not share liturgical unity with them and present an unfamiliar face to the majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians. Ware was particularly concerned about the further fragmentation of Eastern Orthodoxy in non-Eastern Orthodox countries – in this case, in Great Britain.”
Use of Sarum | Wikpedia
Sarum Use | OrthodoxWiki
“Sarum Rite” • Did it exist? What is it?
New Liturgical Movement: The Sarum Missal in English
Western Rite in the Nineteenth Century | OrthodoxWiki
The "Western Rite": Is It Right for the Orthodox?
— “The idea of using a "western rite" in the Orthodox Church first surfaced in England during the 19th century. A former Roman Catholic, Dr. Joseph Overbeck, joined the Orthodox Church in that country and apparently decided that Orthodoxy would never be able to evangelize the West unless it used western forms of worship. Otherwise, he reasoned, the Church would not have a "western memory." Overbeck suggested that a version of the Roman Mass - purified of any medieval errors - be used....
Does the Orthodox Church need a "western rite" in order to evangelize Americans?
If we can picture Overbeck in 19th century England we might realize why he felt an Orthodoxy using a "western rite" was absolutely essential if the Church was to have a viable mission in the West. Overbeck would have only been able to experience the worship of Orthodoxy as done among recent immigrants, using not English, but the languages of their mother countries. No wonder he might reach the conclusion that only an Orthodoxy with a different rite, that had a western memory, could ever again be the church of the venerable Bede.
St. Bede, of course, was a great Anglo-Saxon historian who lived long before the Western Schism. As such, he is perfectly acceptable to us Orthodox today as a saint to be venerated. So are many of the other saints of northwestern Europe - such as Patrick, Aidan, Alban and others, who are now being included in the liturgical calendars of Orthodox Churches. It is obviously a great advantage for converts to be able to venerate saints of their own ethnic background - and it speaks to the catholicity of the Church. Clearly, Orthodoxy doesn't have to have a "western rite" to have a western memory. With this in mind, let us suppose Overbeck's experience of the Church had been quite different. Suppose he had attended the celebration of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on the feast of the venerable Bede and there in the narthex was a beautiful icon of this saint for veneration by the faithful. Suppose, too that the Liturgy had been conducted entirely in English. What could he find missing to celebrate the feast of this great saint of the early Christian west? True, the Liturgy would not be served in exactly the same way as Bede himself would have done. (But then, neither - by a long shot - would the "western rite" liturgies of St. Tikhon or St. Gregory be the same as done by the venerable Bede.) What matters most is that the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the ancient, pre-schismatic liturgical life of the west were the same in all essentials.
Without question, Byzantine worship has demonstrated its suitability for all people. It became the dominant liturgical expression for the Russians as truly as it had been for the Greeks. It also rooted itself deeply in the culture of those Orthodox "Latins", the Romanians. And in Alaska it expressed the religious aspirations of native cultures - Aleuts, Tlingets and others. The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is now being celebrated in Japanese, Korean and a half dozen tribal languages in Africa. Recently, it provided the scriptural worship sought after by the Evangelical Orthodox Church, who were, until recently, the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission. The use of the Byzantine liturgical tradition by the AEOM is one of the strongest arguments, against the need of a "western rite" for purposes of evangelization in America.
But doesn't the use of the "western rite" make it easier to bring people into the Church when they already have "their own" liturgical tradition? Perhaps, but the drawbacks are enormous. Shortly after her former Episcopal parish was received into the "western rite" of the Antiochian Archdiocese in Spokane, WA a woman commented, "We were kind of underdogs in the Episcopal Church by worshipping in the old way. Now we feel we're in step with our Church." Sadly, it can only be a matter of time before she discovers that she is now far more out of step liturgically with her new Church than she ever was with the old. In summary, the use of the "western rite" as a tool for evangelism seems unnecessary at best and misleading at worst.”
Pews
The History of Church Pews: Background information
Electric lampadas
Musical intruments
Iconographic realism
Theological Inconsistency
Where Is Our Bliss In Paradise If Our Loved Ones Are In Fiery Gehenna?
— This article is indicative of theological inconsistency that exists within the Orthodox Church, as evidenced by such contradictory public statements being made by a priest.
Ukraine
The Messianic Delusion of the 'Ruskii Mir' Heresy: The Kyrill-Putin Construct - by Lazar Puhalo