Anastasios Hudson

Category: Correspondence

  • Thoughts on the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate

    The following question was recently posed to me on my personal Facebook page, by a Ukrainian friend of mine, who is a college professor.

    Dear Anastasios… Just what do you think about the current status of, and what do you think about, this “Russian Orthodox Church?” You see, I’ve known you “virtually,” in “cyber space,” and what not, for are a number of years… But now, what do you think, really?

    Dear Dr. X______,

    Thank you for your question!

    I have long avoided answering such questions on my Facebook page, because I have a mixed group of friends and hate engaging in polemics and controversy. That’s not to say that I would change my actual beliefs based on whom I am speaking with—that would be duplicitous—but rather, that I tend to avoid such discussions altogether, because the work that has to put in to crafting an honest but dispassionate and sufficiently polite response borders on onerous. I don’t like offending people, or upsetting them—to a fault, perhaps. I prefer to write about what the GOC (Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians/”Old Calendarist Church”) stands for, versus what it is against, especially since there are so many people already doing the latter; but since you pose the question, I feel obligated to answer openly and forthrightly, despite my aversion to polemic and debate.

    With that loquacious disclaimer out of the way, let me try to answer your question. I have to make a distinction between the “Russian Orthodox Church” on the one hand, and the “Moscow Patriarchate” on the other. The Russian Orthodox Church is a mostly venerable institution; after the conversion of St. Vladimir in 988, it was a regional organization of bishops in Kiev and later, after the Mongol destruction of such, Moscow, subject to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. By the 16th century, it was independent and self-governing, taking its place alongside the four ancient patriarchates (using as a precedent the independent ecclesiastical administrations in Serbia and Bulgaria). It grew and expanded across the East, to Siberia and then beyond, and established itself even in the far East and Central Asia, through the endeavors of such saints as Macarius of Altai, Innocent and Herman of Alaska, and Nikolai of Japan.

    With these positive achievements, however, came certain downsides. The suppression of the Georgian Patriarchate (1811) is illustrative; where the Russian Empire expanded, the Moscow-controlled church administration expanded (as opposed to the Orthodox faith per se). After the fall of the empire, brief attempts at creating autocephalous churches in the newly-freed areas such as Ukraine were crushed when the Red Army retook these areas.

    I have to say that I am against ethnic-based churches on principle, so the idea that there has to be a national church in each country is something I dislike; I would prefer to see exarchates, dioceses, or metropolitanates based on territory and tied to one of the original patriarchates. The Georgian Church is a good example of the way it could have been: the Georgian patriarch was originally called a Catholicos, and he was sort of a junior patriarch to the patriarch of Antioch, and his election had to be confirmed by him and his synod. I would have preferred to have seen the national churches that developed in Europe have been catholicosates under the Patriarchate of Constantinople instead of full-fledged patriarchates; unfortunately, nationalism being what it was, this was impossible to deal with from an ideological standpoint, and political and practical considerations ruled. Now, we even have the abhorrent, uncanonical, and disastrous practice of each national church even setting up exarchates for its members in other countries, such that there is now a Serbian administration in Romania and a Romanian institution in Serbia. The attempted Romanian incursion into Jerusalem was stopped, however, when the Jerusalem Patriarchate broke communion with the Romanian Patriarchate until they backed down. This sort of behavior leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

    Given that each national church was made autocephalous as it became independent, however, means that a precedent has been set (even though the Canonical Tradition does not technically take precedent into account as it is not based on Common Law, people are still human and cite prior examples). As such, I don’t see how it’s really fair for Ukraine to not be autocephalous by this point, and I think it will eventually happen, no matter what Moscow says.

    Now that I’ve addressed the question of the Russian Orthodox Church from the perspective of history and the development of national churches, I will turn to the point of how I see the Moscow Patriarchate as an institution and its relationship to the Russian Orthodox Church. We Old Calendarist Greeks view the Moscow Patriarchate as an invention of Joseph Stalin in 1942, the product of his decision to change tactics: to stop trying to stamp out the Church completely, which only resulted in the growth of an underground, unregistered church, and to instead attempt to create a state-sponsored church which he could use to rally the people against the Nazis in World War II, and then use as an effective spy agency going forward.

    For the history of such, I agree mostly with the analysis of polemical older works such as The Truth About the Russian Church Abroad by M. Rodzianko (http://rocorhistory.blogspot.com/2008/07/truth-about-russian-church-abroad-by-m.html) and the witness of the saints who refused to submit to the Moscow Patriarchate as it was formed, chronicled in the work, Russia’s Catacomb Saints which is now out-of-print and will never be reprinted, as it contains quite damning information that the present publisher would like to forget (digital copies are available from time to time; let me know if you are interested). I won’t go through all the arguments from a historical standpoint, but suffice it to say, I believe that the submission of Met. Sergius to Stalin and the creation of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1942 were wrong, schismatic, and associated with heresies (such as modernist movements in the diaspora, liberation-theology-inspired theological treatments glorifying the Soviet state, and later Ecumenism, which the Moscow Patriarchate used as a means to further the Soviet diplomatic effort and its intelligence services. A succinct summary of the problem of Sergianism can be found in the document The True Orthodox Church in Opposition to the Heresy of Ecumenism (http://www.hsir.org/pdfs/2014/03/22/E20140322aCommonEcclesiology15/E20140322aCommonEcclesiology15.pdf):

    1. Another phenomenon and movement akin to ecumenism, likewise possessing an ecclesiological dimension, is so-called Sergianism, which, in the unprecedented circumstances of the persecution of the Church in the former Soviet Union, through the agency of the fallen and compromised Sergius Stragorodsky (†1944), originally Metropolitan, and later Patriarch, of Moscow, surrendered to the atheistic Bolsheviks and their struggle against God an outwardly proper Church organization, so that, in the hands of the revolutionaries, it could become an unwitting tool in their unrelenting warfare against the very Church Herself, as the Bearer of the fullness of Truth in Christ.

    2. Sergianism is not simply a Soviet phenomenon, for it caused severe damage to the local Orthodox Churches in the countries of Eastern Europe, where, after the Second World War, atheistic and anti-Christian Communist régimes were established.

    3. The quintessence of Sergianism is the adoption of the delusion that deception could be used as a means to preserve the Тruth and, likewise, that collaboration with the enemies and persecutors of the Church was the way to ensure Her survival; in practice, however, the exact opposite occurred: the Sergianist Bishops became tools of the atheistic Communists for the purpose of exercising control over the Church, to the end of Her moral and spiritual enfeeblement and with a view to Her ultimate dismantlement and annihilation.

    4. At the level of ecclesiology, Sergianism completely distorted the concept of Orthodox ecclesiastical canonicity, since in the realm of Sergianism, canonicity was essentially torn away from the spirit and the Truth of the authentic canonical tradition of the Church, assuming thereby a formal adherence to legitimacy, which could be used to justify any act of lawlessness committed by the ruling Hierarchy; in fact, ultimately, such a veneer of canonicity degenerated into an administrative technique for the subordination of the people of the Church to the Sergianist Hierarchy, regardless of the direction in which it led the faithful.

    Such a corrupt institution was not the Church of Christ. Some argue that the Greek Church under the Ottoman Empire was in a similar situation, but that’s not really true. It is true that the Ottoman authorities interfered with the selection of patriarchs and bishops, but they left the faith itself alone; they even helped the Orthodox bishops expel Roman Catholic infiltrators among the clergy from the Greek islands after they were conquered in the 16th and 17th centuries, whereas the Soviet State pushed the Moscow Patriarchate to reach out to non-Orthodox, which even culminated in the Moscow Patriarchate communing Roman Catholics officially for some years in the 1960s.

    The question then becomes, given that communism has fallen, does this stuff still matter? There are those who claim the Moscow Patriarchate has repented of its past, but this is hardly true. I’ve read the “apologies” issued in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in the 1990s, and they are quite general, non-specific apologies for past mistakes and but nothing more. There is no repentance for collaboration, for reporting on confessions, or for Ecumenical obsesses. All of the top people in power in the Moscow Patriarchate are still people who grew up under communism. Those who did not were trained by those who were, propagating a culture of corruption. Quoting again from The True Orthodox Church in Opposition to the Heresy of Ecumenism:

    5. After the collapse of the anti-Christian régimes around the end of the preceding twentieth century, the very grave ecclesiological deviation of Sergianism, under the new conditions of political freedom, was preserved as a legacy of the past and, at the same time,changed its form.

    6. Anti-Ecclesiastical Sergianism, having long ago incorporated within itself a worldly spirit, unscrupulousness, deception, and a pathological servility towards the powerful of this world, continues to betray the Church, now no longer for fear of reprisals from atheistic rulers, but for the sake of self-serving and secularist motives and under the cloak of supposed canonicity, still peddling the freedom of the Church in exchange for gaining the friendship of the powerful of this world, with all of the concomitant material benefits and, to be sure, prestigious social status.

    7. Today, the virus of Sergianism, in this modified form, as neo-Sergianism or post-Sergianism, and also in other forms of state control over the Churches, affects to some degree a large part of the Episcopate of the official local Orthodox Churches around the world, thereby contributing to the promotion of an equally secularist and syncretistic ecumenism, under the cover of a false canonicity.

    Duplicity is rampant; on the one hand, the Moscow Patriarchate issues soft “condemnations” of Ecumenism, but on the other sends Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfayev) around the world trying to better position the Moscow Patrairchate’s role in the Ecumenical Movement. Respect for other religions is preached, but then more strict restrictions are placed on Eastern Rite Catholics, Latin Catholics, Baptists, and groups deemed “schismatic” by the Moscow Patriarchate (i.e. those who consider themselves Russian Orthodox, but refuse to commune with the Moscow Patriarchate due to its corruption and compromise of the faith).

    Especially under Putin, the alliance between the Moscow Patriarchate and the State has grown; the Moscow Patriarchate now functions as a virtual arm of the Russian State Department. The reunification of the Moscow Patriarchate with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) under Metropolitan Laurus in 2007 occurred with the active participation of Vladimir Putin, and the ROCOR’s role in maintaining Russian culture abroad has superseded its previous role as a beacon of Orthodoxy in places where Orthodoxy was being compromised (c.f. the “Sorrowful Epistles” of Metropolitan Philaret http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/sorrow.aspx). In fact, when a Moscow Patriarchate bishop, Diomid, attempted to do something about Ecumenism, he was censured by the Moscow Patriarchate, and Metropolitan Hilarion of ROCOR went along with it.

    We hear stories of the so-called resurgence of Orthodoxy in Russia. I don’t deny that in some local instances, there are some nice things happening in the sense of parishes being constructed, charities operating, people rejecting atheism and embracing Christianity, etc. However, quantitatively, it is a tiny dent on an otherwise unaffected culture. Russia is not a beacon of Orthodoxy; many of the churches outside of the capital are empty even on major feast days, and even with all the construction of churches and religious education being put into schools, statistics I have seen point to only about 1% of Russians attending church regularly. This contrasts greatly with Roman Catholic Poland, where 80-90% of people attend church regularly, Slovakia, where 60% do, and even the Czech Republic, where 30% of people attend church regularly. Abortion is rampant in Russia, as are drug abuse, prostitution, and many other vices (c.f. Russia, Putin, and Christian Values by Vladimir Moss http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/articles/535/russia,-putin-christian-values/). Russia is against gays, though, so that somehow makes everything ok, and Putin a modern-day beacon of morality…

    In essence, an institution which is the creation of communists, which compromised the faith of its adherents and the witness of the Church, which never repented once it became “free” and then went right back in to bed with its former master, and which serves as a tool of the Russian State and intelligence services, all the while participating in Ecumenical joint prayers and other excesses, is not the Russian Orthodox Church.

    Rather than the Moscow Patriarchate, I recommend that those who are Russian Orthodox attend a parish under the Russian Church Abroad under Metropolitan Agafangel, who lives in Odessa, Ukraine, and has bishops and clergy there, in Europe, North and South America, Australia, and in Russia itself. This Synod, deemed “uncanonical” and “schismatic” by the Moscow Patriarchate, is free from the corruption of that institution, and many of its members suffer greatly for being opposed to Putin and his State Church. The confession of faith of these bishops is Orthodox. It must be noted that they have had some internal disputes over the question of Russia versus Ukraine as of late, but seem to have come to an understanding recently at a council.

    Those are my thoughts on the Russian Orthodox Church.

    Your friend,

    Anastasios

     

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    2. The Orthodox Church in Raleigh, North Carolina
    3. Excerpt from Upcoming Book: Finding the True Orthodox Church
    4. Angry Orthodox

  • Ordained by a New Calendar Bishop?

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions.

    Based on your research, Is it true that one of the ordaining bishops of Metropolitan Petros was with the “New Calendar but under the ROCOR” like I have read?

    You’re getting things mixed up a bit—Metropolitan Petros was ordained by ROCOR Bishop Seraphim of Caracas and Archbishop Leonty of Chile. (more…)

    Related posts:

    1. Old vs. New Calendar: Frequently Asked Questions
    2. On the Truth of the Old Calendar
    3. New Calendarism, Vaganteism, and the True Orthodox Church
    4. New Book: Metropolitan Petros of Astoria

  • Answering a Sincere New Calendarist Inquirer

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions.

    Dear in Christ A.,

    Since the last time we talked I have looked into some other “true” churches and have been absolutely appalled at much of their beliefs. However, this is still not the case for your church. Who from what I see is teaching the same Orthodoxy of the Holy Fathers.

    I’d be curious to know which other “true” Churches you have investigated and which teachings of theirs you find appalling. It seems to me that many in this day and age imitate the Greek Old Calendar Church.  In other cases, there were former members of our Church that left us and went down an unsober path.

    I still have a few more questions to ask, if you don’t mind, brother?

    I don’t mind; please ask me as many as you wish.

    I was baptized and chrismated in the Greek Orthodox Church under the EP. I have been and continue to attend an OCA church where I will be tonsured a reader soon. If I were to visit one of your churches would I be considered a heretic? Or would be I be considered Orthodox but lost in a sea of modernist heretics? What is the view from your church’s perspective?

    We do not make it our general business to prejudge people.  If you were to visit our Church, you would be treated as an Orthodox Christian.  If, after the fact, you espoused modernistic or ecumenistic viewpoints, we would have to reassess our opinion, but from our previous discussions, I highly doubt that is the case   Now, we have a different view when it comes to certain hierarchs and priests in your Church that officially teach Ecumenism and branch theorism; this scandalizes us and we must state that those bishops who are praying vested with Roman Catholics such as Patriarch Teoctist in 1999 are acting in a heretical way.

    That raises the problem of how we could presume someone like you to be personally Orthodox when you may in fact be under an Ecumenist bishop.  Based on our conversations, I believe that you personally have an Orthodox confession of faith.  If you realize that your bishop is heretical, and yet you continue to commune with him, you will, however, take his heresy onto yourself.[1]  For this reason we do not espouse resistance from within the New Calendarist Ecumenist Church, as we previously discussed when talking about Fr. Justin Popovich.  Canon 15 of the 1st-2nd Council states that we are to separate from heretical bishops.  Of course, some are of the opinion that Ecumenism is a mistake, but not a heresy, and therefore believe it is wrong to separate.  We wish such individuals well and pray that their approach will bear fruit, for ultimately the goal of both approaches is to confront false teaching and restore communion between us.  We don’t believe that that approach will ultimately bear fruit, nor is it the method found in the Fathers. We believe that our approach is the correct one, so we would ask you to prayerfully consider breaking communion with your present bishop and come under a right-believing bishop.

    I have heard words like Matthewites? These words have nothing to do with your church, the Genuine Church of Greece, right?

    Have you studied revolutionary theory?  I hesitate to compare the Holy Church of Christ to a movement, but as you may be aware, in a revolution inevitably the idealogues become dissatisfied with the new order once they have “won” and are often marginalized by the centrists.  In a similar fashion, after the three Metropolitans of the State Church of Greece returned to the Old Calendar in 1935, and consecrated four bishops to assist them, one of these bishops, Matthew, became angry that the Synod began to take a softer approach to governing after many years of polemical rhetoric (I am not suggesting the rhetoric was wrong, but merely that it was considered overly polemical to some).  One of the Metropolitans, Chrysostomos of Florina, concluded that the best solution would be to encourage the State Church to return to the Old Calendar and renounce Ecumenism, instead of battling it in the open so to speak.  Bishop Matthew believed this conciliatory approach of our Synod was a caving in to the New Calendarists and split, forming his own Church and consecrating his own bishops.  We cannot accept such a questionable practice.  Since then, the Matthewites have become increasingly isolated to the point that they believe they are the last remaining Orthodox on Earth. We heartily disagree.

    On a personal note. I find it interesting how a convert like yourself ended up in this jurisdiction. If you don’t mind telling me how it unfolded for you, I would love to hear it?

    I had always been aware of Old Calendarists since I discovered Orthodoxy, via reading the website OrthodoxInfo.com, which used to have many Old Calendarist articles on it.  I went to St Vladimir’s Seminary as a Catholic to learn about Orthodoxy more, and in the course of studying there and taking some classes that were supportive of Ecumenism, I came to the conclusion that Ecumenism hinders evangelism of non-Orthodox.  I also believe that the practice of receiving converts by chrismation alone cheats them out of a great grace.  There are of course other issues, but these were two big issues.  I began to research Old Calendarists more and decided to do my thesis on the first Old Calendarist bishop in America, Metropolitan Petros of Astoria.  I began to go to St Markella’s Cathedral in New York, which was 20 minutes from where I lived at St Vladimir’s.  After graduating and moving back to North Carolina, my wife decided to finally join me in Orthodoxy, and so we were baptized in St Markella’s.

    I hope this answers your questions and I hope I have not offended you.  Please let me know if you have any more questions. I am always glad to answer them.  Also, please tell me a bit about your journey to Orthodoxy.

    In Christ,

    Anastasios

     

    [1] Please see the article Why The True Orthodox Are Truly Orthodox for a thorough analysis of this point.

    Related posts:

    1. New Calendarist Elders
    2. New Calendarism, Vaganteism, and the True Orthodox Church
    3. Uncanonical
    4. Angry Orthodox

  • New Calendarist Elders

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions, mostly when I served as a priest (2008-2013).

    Dear Chris,

    I’m not surprised that you are struggling with the issue of how to view the New Calendarist elders. Almost everyone who comes down this path has to confront this issue.  I also had to consider it, of course.  As you know from my article I sent you[1], I do not believe that struggling from within makes any sense or is good for the soul, and I think that “elderphilia” is a cancer in modern Orthodoxy.  To me, the idea that one would not follow ecclesiological principles to their logical conclusion because there is someone who is holy on the “other side” seems to be a subversion of the proper order of theology.

    For instance, we of course have our elders (such as Elder Ieronymos of Aegina)…does that mean that Elder Ieronymos, who left the New Calendarist Church in 1942, is a fraud?  Or does it mean that there are true elders on both sides, and it really doesn’t matter which side one is on?  Or perhaps it does matter, but God blessed people who made the wrong choice anyway, but who were sincere?  These are all possibilities.  However, seeing that one would have to consider all these possibilities, I do not see how any of them would supersede wanting to be under bishops who are Orthodox, because the Church is where the bishop is, not where the elder is. Look at Church history, and try to find how many times a charismatic figure ultimately won out against the episcopacy? Whenever there is a dispute between bishops and monastics, the bishops almost always win.

    So how do I and other Old Calendarists deal with the people you listed?  We could discuss each one individually, but I will instead just give you the highlights, and we can follow up if you wish.  Fr. Paisios was in delusion, I believe, owing to the many false prophecies that he gave.  Of course none of these are mentioned by his supporters, especially not in English translation.  However, in Greek we have published some of the most notorious ones, such as his prophecy that he would die on Athos (which didn’t happen) or my favorite, his telling a Greek colonel that he would be the one to liberate Constantinople from the Turks (the colonel retired without having ever received even a promotion).  We have thought about translating these things into English, but that is a double-edged sword.  If we do, then we might be accused of being evil, mean-spirited, spiteful, partisan, etc.  If we don’t, then we let misconceptions remain and are accused of not having an answer.[2]

    In regards to Fr. Joseph the Hesychast, Bishop Petros knew him on Mount Athos, and in fact, thought he was in plani (delusion) for returning to commemoration.  Fr. Joseph’s sister remained a non-commemorator/Old Calendarist.[3]

    Fr Justin Popovich was a great author, and in fact, he broke communion with the ecumenist Serbian patriarchate, although not all of the Serbian bishops.[4]

    While it would have been best for him to completely leave, the fact that he recognized that communion with a blatant communist and ecumenist was impossible and that he therefore broke communion with him speaks volumes of his character.

    I know little about Elder Cleopa.

    In regards to Met. Chrysostomos of Florina, two points should be considered.  The first is, that while he was reticent to deny that New Calendarists had grace (although he eventually did, publicly) he still did not think it was possible to have communion with them.  Secondly, he viewed the situation which was still at play in the Church of Greece; there were hierarchs telling him that they wanted to return to the Old Calendar. He softened his position from 1937 to 1950 because he second-guessed whether a hardliner position was right, seeing that there was still “some hope” in the state Church, a struggle for Orthodoxy…that failed, ultimately.  That was in the 1940’s, also—things have gotten qualitatively worse since then, I think we can all admit.

    As for the idea that we haven’t entered into “blatant” concelebrations or heresy, can you honestly watch this video and say that?

    “Orthodox Unilateral Ecumenism”     Part 1   Part 2

    My “favorite” part is where Met. Christodoulos admits they rejected a large number of Uniates in Italy who had applied en masse to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the 1960’s, because they didn’t want to set back ecumenical dialogue with the Vatican.  That isn’t heretical?

    As for the question of feeling peace or not, I am not sure what to tell you.  I felt peaceful when I joined the Catholic Church, I felt peaceful the first time I went into a New Calendar Church, and I felt peaceful when I went to the Old Calendar Church the first time…I don’t make much out of feelings.  For the record, when I was baptized at St. Markella’s, I experienced something different than “peace,” namely illumination of the nous, which lasted about 10 minutes.  During that time, reality changed.  It was like I could see beyond what was in the room, and I experienced other realities.  When my thoughts went back to worldly things, I lost the feeling.  When I was ordained, I felt fire reign down on my head.  When I have prayed for people, I have felt “electricity” go from my hand to them, and they likewise have felt it.  What to make of all these experiences?  I suggest you see experiences as secondary to proper ecclesiological concerns.

    I hope it gives you something to think about. You are in my prayers.

    In Christ,
    Fr. Anastasios

     

    [1] An as-of-yet unpublished manuscript titled Resisting from Within: A Personal Testimony, in which I draw on my experience as a Eastern-Rite Catholic trying to be more Orthodox in practice and use this to argue against the idea of resisting the heresy of Ecumenism, Modernism, and the New Calendar from within the New Calendarist Church.

    [2] We subsequently did translate the incident with the colonel into English here.

    [3] After I wrote this letter, we received a large group of clergy and faithful from HOCNA, and some of them brought with them a personal devotion to Fr. Joseph. The argument that HOCNA put forth was that Fr. Joseph reacted to extremism, but if he had been alive in 1965 when the anathemas were lifted, he would have stopped commemorating again. I do not believe that this is a proper line of argumentation, since the Church of the GOC of Greece had already ruled the commemorators as schismatic, but I do not wish to quarrel needlessly with other bretheren.

    [4] Vladimir Moss, “The Fall of The Serbian Church.” I do not generally recommend the writings of Vladimir Moss, due to their polemical and political nature, but occasionally he does write some great material. Please use caution with other links on that site.

    Related posts:

    1. Answering a Sincere New Calendarist Inquirer
    2. Uncanonical

  • Statements Against Ecumenism by New Calendarists

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions, mostly when I served as a priest (2008-2013).

    What is your take on this? Very strongly worded. The list of signers is impressive.

    A Confession of Faith Against Ecumenism

    Dear M.,

    I rejoice when people in the New Calendar Church make the correct confession, but here are a few points to consider:

    1) This is the latest in a series of such statements. If you see the one (and only!) Romiosini we put out in 2007, we republished similar statements that were made then. It raises the question: how many statements do they need to make before they do something about it?

    2) They do not include New Calendarism in the category of Ecumenism for obvious reasons; if they did, they would have to conclude that they fall under their own anathema.

    3) The signatories to this statement are the usual crowd. Fr George Metallinos, Fr Thomas Zisis. Other members of the New Calendar Church ridicule them behind their backs–I have seen this first hand when I was in the seminary, where the dean of St Vladimir’s referred to Fr George as basically a crackpot.

    4) Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus just wrote a blazingly arrogant piece against us, totally unprovoked. You can see our response (in Greek) on ecclesiagoc.gr

    That being said, I am hopeful, but in a way most people do not anticipate. After the Council of Nicea in 325, the group that remained faithful from Day 1, the Orthodox, are referred to as “Old Nicenes” by scholars. They confessed “homoousios” ie. that Christ is the of the same substance as the Father. The compromisers, who arose under the heretical Emperors that succeeded St Constantine, confessed “homoiousios” ie. that Christ is of similar substance to the Father. They remained in communion with the Arians and are termed semi-Arians by many scholars.

    At some point, the Arians became more extreme and confessed Eunomianism–Christ is not of the same substance as the Father. This finally scared the Semi-Arians, who broke communion with them and joined communion with the Old Nicenes. They became known as New Nicenes as they were the “johnny come latelies.” Together, these two groups vanquished the Arians.

    In our modern situation, I believe that we are the Orthodox and that the conservative New Calendarists are like the Semi-Arians/New Nicenes. If they follow their consciences they will eventually break communion with the blatant heretics and join with us, and together we’ll win. That’s my opinion for what it’s worth. I therefore support reaching out to these people, and having good relations with them, not being too antagonistic towards them, while at the same time reminding them that as long as they are with the Ecumenists, they are not doing anyone any good. Also, we will have to be patient with them, as they will continue to lash out at us like Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus did, because we prick their conscience.

    in Christ,

    Fr Anastasios

    Postscript: The above-mentioned statement against Ecumenism was published in 2009. Nothing has come of it whatsoever in the intervening five years. In fact, as I edit this post for publication on my website, Patriarch Bartholemew of Constantinople is preparing to meet Pope Francis in Jerusalem to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the so-called “Lifting of the Anathemas,” which inaugurated a syncretistic ferver with Roman Catholicism.

    Related posts:

    1. Angry Orthodox
    2. Answering a Sincere New Calendarist Inquirer

  • Angry Orthodox

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions, mostly when I served as a priest (2008-2013).

    Dear Father Anastasios,

    Thank you for your message.

    At the moment I am with ROCiE, but am wondering where to look within Orthodoxy for doctrinal purity without a rigid, cold, legalistic mentality.

    So, for your thoughts on one question, please, I would be grateful.

    Where might I find Orthodox Christians who have a pure confession of the Faith (eschewing ecumenism) but do not have their knives out?

    Please forgive the bluntness of that question; but I am becoming a bit disillusioned after seeing how the various groups within Orthodoxy appear to hate and revile one another. Where amidst all this skullduggery is the vehicle of salvation?

    Sincerely,
    D.

    Dear D.,

    The simple question as to where you can find Orthodox Christians without their knives out is to start with yourself. Make sure you are always at peace with yourself and others. Then you will draw in people of like mind.

    But as for the broader question, there is no place in the world where there is a perfect confession of faith coupled with perfect people. If you keep looking, you will never find it.

    What you can find is the proper confession of faith, and you can find people in that Church that are struggling to live pious lives, and you can join with them. But you will run in to people in that same Church that have knives out. Only Christ will separate the wheat and the chaff. There can be no salvation without temptations to overcome.

    In Christ,

    Fr. Anastasios

    Related posts:

    1. Statements Against Ecumenism by New Calendarists
    2. How Do Orthodox View Non-Orthodox Religious Phenomena?
    3. African Orthodox Christianity
    4. Thoughts on the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate

  • Uncanonical

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions, mostly when I served as a priest (2008-2013).

    Dear V.,

    The Calendar was changed in 1924, and that was a big event in Greece.  At that time, about 25% of the people rejected the change, by some accounts.  Monks from Mount Athos, who did not change to the New, came down to Greece to serve the people that rejected the change.  From 1924 to 1935, no bishop was on the side of the Old.  But in 1935, three bishops couldn’t wait any longer.  They had tried to restore the Old Calendar but the other bishops wouldn’t listen. So they returned to the Old Calendar on May 13, 1935.  The other bishops who were on the New attacked them immediately, and some of them were even arrested and put in jail!  Some of the priests were taken to the basement of the New Calendar Archdiocese in Athens, and were hit and then had their beards shaved off and were dressed in civilian clothes! One New Calendar bishop came in to one of our Churches in Greece and took the chalice off the altar and dumped the Holy Communion out of it and stomped on it, saying, “you are not really priests!”  Even if they felt that way, that is a very evil thing to do. It was in this set of circumstances that our own founder in America, Bishop Petros, came to America.

    Yet it was not just about a Calendar.  The Old Calendarists knew that the Calendar was just one of the things that they were trying to change.  Take a look at this letter that the Ecumenical Patriarchate wrote in 1920 “Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere.” The title itself is a problem; the Church of Christ is the Orthodox Church only; all other Churches have broken away from it.  The Ecumenical Patriarchate is offering to change the calendar to have union with the fallen Western Churches.  There are other proposals such as exchanges of theological students, etc.  The whole context is one of the Greeks trying to soften Orthodoxy to have relations with the Westerners.

    This fit in to a political situation at the time, Venizelos vs the Royalists, when Venizelos wanted to make Greece look like London.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with reaching out to other people and trying to work out our differences, but the difference here is that it is not based on the truth, but on a kind of committee discussion and compromise. That would lead to what we have in modern times, the “World Council of Churches,” where all sorts of groups of people that disagree get together and sign compromise documents. Unfortunately, many so-called Orthodox go to this and sign these documents.  They say they are trying to reach out to non-Orthodox, but really, they are not offering them the truth that Orthodoxy is the original and true Church of Christ.  That’s not really being nice to them if you think about it. You’d want your friend to tell you if your shirt was ripped, right?

    So the point of the above paragraph is just to put the Calendar change in context. It was part of a bigger program of the Greek government of the time reaching out to the Westerners and using Church union as part of the plan.  The Calendar change was just the first step in many changes that would happen as time went on, which is what we now call Ecumenism.

    Our New Calendar friends are the majority, and so they like to put us on the defensive. They like to say we are not “canonical” or recognized because we are on the Old Calendar and not in communion with Patriarch Bartholemew.  But really, we are the ones that did not change anything. Orthodoxy is about preserving the truth and keeping firm to the traditions, right? So how do they say that we are the ones that are unrecognized when we did not change a thing? We are the ones that on March 10, 1924, went to bed, and the next day we woke up and it was March 11, 1924.  They are the ones that went to bed on March 10, and woke up on March 24, cutting out 13 days.  We stood firm against this, and they gave in.  Yet they say we are the ones who are not canonical.

    Let’s take a look at this word canonical.  It means following the canon, which in Greek means the rule, like a ruler. The canons are a collection of rules that the Church Fathers laid down for our spiritual benefit.  They say that we disobey the canons, yet which canons do they think we disobeyed?  Again, we are not the ones that changed things.  They, on the other hand, go against the holy patriarchs and churches that agreed that the New Calendar was wrong—back in 1583.  Here is that document: http://orthodoxwiki.org/Sigillion_of_1583

    Basically, what it boils down to is, they changed things and began to disobey the previous Fathers and Councils, but then because they are in the majority, they say we are the ones who are obviously wrong because we are small and “fanatical.”  But their arguments center on two things usually: the first is to claim we are uncanonical, which really means we are not administratively under the Patriarch so we are not “official,” and the other is to cite various elders and saints in the New Calendar as proof that we are wrong.

    I think that you both know that just because something is “official” does not mean it is true.  And official by who’s standards, exactly? The New Calendarists are the majority, so they make people think they are the Orthodox while we are just dissatisfied breakways. Their argument is that we are being disobedient to the Patriarch and so we are in the wrong.  But Christ and the Apostles said we had to follow the truth, and that there would be false teachers in the end.  Numbers aren’t what counts, but truth is.  Our Old Calendar Church is the one that has not changed things, while they did. So basically, their argument is administrative while they are breaking the same canons they accuse us of breaking. Here is a video of supposedly Orthodox bishops praying with the Pope and Protestants. This is forbidden by the canons, yet they say they can’t do anything about it because the Patriarch approves. We say that even a Patriarch is not above the law. http://www.synodinresistance.org/Publications_en/Video/Videos%20On%20Ecumenism/E4d1008Ortho1998VideoPart3Tainia-256Kbs.wmv

    As far as the argument about saints, they will say that various holy figures were and are under the New Calendar such as Fr. Ephraim and others.  Yes, it is true that these people may be personally holy (I have never met Fr. Ephraim personally), but whether or not they are holy is irrelevant. Every religion has so-called holy people; our Old Calendar Church has many holy people like A. mentioned who have worked miracles.  Here is a good book about a modern saint, whom our Metropolitan Pavlos knew as a boy:

    http://www.bostonmonks.com/product_info.php/products_id/686

    Elder Ieronymos was very holy, and lived in Aegina.  He died in the 1960’s. He left the New Calendar and became an Old Calendar priest.  He rivals any holy person from the New Calendar.  I think that he proves the Old Calendar Church has the grace of God and is legitimate. Yes, God does allow some miracles to guide us, but always in the context of the truth, which is discerned from the Liturgy, the writings of the fathers, and the canons of the Church.

    In the end, don’t let people fool you with arguments from administrative authority or appeals to holy people alone, when they themselves are not following the canons they claim they uphold. The Old Calendar Church is the Orthodox Church.  We have a valid bishopric (ordained by the Russian Church in the 1960’s after the last Old Calendar bishop in Greece died).  We haven’t changed anything. We have an entire Synod in Greece of 10+ bishops, with around 200 parishes. Our Archbishop is Chrysostomos II.

    If you have any more questions or something I said didn’t make sense, please ask me to clarify.

    May God bless you as you continue to develop your faith and spiritual life. Pray for me a sinner.

    Fr. Anastasios

    (Originally written in 2010. The present Metropolitan of America is His Eminence Demetrius and the present Archbishop of Athens is His Beatitude Kallinikos. There are now 26 bishops on the Holy Synod).

    Related posts:

    1. My Father’s Church
    2. My Father’s Church
    3. New Calendarism, Vaganteism, and the True Orthodox Church
    4. Old vs. New Calendar: Frequently Asked Questions

  • Scripture “versus” Tradition, and the End Times

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions, mostly when I served as a priest (2008-2013).

    Dear Tim,

    Finally, I have time to write you back! I was unusually busy the past two weeks.

    I’ve read a little about the Greek Orthodox Church, enough to know that there is one doctrine that might divide us: “Bible + nothing” VERSUS “Bible + church tradition”. Being Baptist, I, of course, would be on the “Bible + nothing” side of the equation. Please don’t let that separate us, brother, because it appears that we are on the same page for many, if not most, of Christian doctrine.

    That is one of the issues that Baptists and other Protestants have an issue with, the idea of “Scripture versus Tradition.”  I certainly can’t cover the whole topic in one or even ten emails, as entire books, websites, and seminars have been held on the topic.  I find that ultimately, all of the issues between Christian denominations boil down to questions of authority.

    My basic response is that it is not necessarily the case that we Orthodox believe in two sources. We ultimately believe that properly speaking, the Word of God is Jesus Christ (John 1) and as such the Bible is the “Word of God” insofar as it is a reflection of Jesus Christ and His Gospel of salvation.  The Apostles, who were illumined at Pentecost, were given a vision of God and this enabled them to carry on the message of Christ with the same authority.  What they experienced—exemplified by St. Paul being caught up into the third heaven, and St. John seeing the heavenly worship in Revelation—is something that is available to Christians in each generation who through God’s grace overcome the passions (and purify their “mind”, which in the New Testament is the word used to translate “nous” which actually refers to the highest faculty of the soul, the intellect, which concerns spiritual discernment).

    We do admit, however, that the people who saw Christ personally and were His immediate followers, had a special charisma as Apostles to write down what they experienced and teach it.  That is why we only accept the texts written by the Apostles and their immediate disciples (such as St. Mark) as Scripture (while we accept as profitable the many other writings from that time such as the Epistles of Ignatius, etc., and reject as heretical any writing which did not have as central the Crucifixion, which is why the sayings-gospels such as Thomas were rejected as false, because they presented “wisdom” divorced from the Cross of Christ).

    Yet the Apostles did not just teach doctrines, they shared this experience of Pentecost with their converts.  Life in Christ is not just about believing in Christ, but being sanctified as well, being totally transformed.  Doctrines are like the guardrails that make our spiritual experience of Christ valid, because without proper beliefs, we are worshiping a vague “spirituality” and not the True God.  Spirituality is the proof that our faith is legitimate, though, on the flip side.  Those who are false teachers may appear spiritual for a time, but their flaws and faults are ultimately exposed, whereas the True Christian bears the grace of Christ in a way that is discernable to others. So one’s faith and one’s doctrine, and one’s spiritual life are wrapped up in one, not rigidly separated into categories (if you want to talk about faith vs. works, we can, but that is a separate topic for discussion. I will assuage any concern though preemptively by stating we do not believe in “works righteousness.”)

    Obviously, this method of spiritual discipline was something passed down from teacher to student.  And there was a context in which the Scriptures were passed down. For instance, you might know that the Bible was not given an “official table of contents” until the Councils of Hippo and Carthage (393 and 397), although St. Athanasius of Alexandria lists the New Testament books in his Paschal Letter in c. 367, and other lists existed before this time, although sometimes people disagreed on things like the Book of Hebrews.  How was the list determined? In council, the bishops spoke of which books they had been taught by their preceding bishop, publicly, and of course, they mostly agreed.  What had been read publicly in the Churches in common across the whole world was seen as proof of authenticity.  The Church had discerned true Scripture from false, and they had done it in council.  This whole 300 year process is an example to Orthodox of “Holy Tradition at work”: not another source of doctrine in addition to Scripture, but the context by which the Gospel of Jesus Christ was passed down.  Scripture has a primary role, but Scripture has to be understood according to the context of the Church, in which it is born in each generation.

    To sum up, the text is passed down, but how it is preached and lived is as much a part of the package as the words themselves.  When the Reformers and the Roman Catholics debated “one source” versus “two sources” they were both wrong; there is only one source—Jesus Christ—and the Bible is the primary way His disciples chose to collect this message, but the way the message was communicated and contextualized is very important and authoritative.  We witness now many people having commentaries on Scripture, and trying to explain what the passages meant. For Orthodox, we like to go back to the people who lived right after the Apostles, and then their successors, and then the next generation, and see how the passage in question was understood throughout all time.  We don’t believe that a doctrine appearing in the 11th century, 13th century, or 18th century is valid; it has to be something that was believed by Christians from the beginning.  There is no sense in which the Church “got lost” and then “found itself again.”  We see the arguments between Roman Catholics and Protestants as taking two extremes to basically non-existent problems, essentially.

    So basically, we believe the Scriptures are the means by which we understand the Word of God, Our Savior Jesus Christ, and the Tradition of the Church is how this message was lived from all generations until the present.

    I cannot explain it better than others have already, so if you want to explore the Orthodox view further, please see the articles on this page: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/inq_tradition.aspx

    I’m sure, of course, that you are not pre-Millennial or a pre-Tribulationist, but I can live with that!!!

    It would be interesting to know what the Greek Orthodox Church teaches with regards to eschatology, if you can point me toward anything.

    I am not familiar with all the ins and outs of Protestant views of eschatology, because when I was a Protestant, I was Lutheran, and we did not believe in a pre-Tribulation Rapture.  I only became aware of this idea when I was around 16 years old.  I think, though, that our view is basically that we are in the 1000 years now, because Satan was bound when Christ died on the Cross and descended into Hades (Sheol) to liberate the captives found there, before arising as victor on the 3rd day.  The Church, the Body of Christ, is Heaven on Earth, a foretaste of eternity.  Satan’s power is utterly limited now, such that he can only act on Christians when we give him license through falling into sin. Death is destroyed now, and is only a temporary rest, whereas in the Old Testament, even the righteous feared death, which was a guarantee of separation from God, a gloomy, shadowy, half-existence (the Psalms are full of references to this idea).

    When a person dies, he is given a particular judgment, and sent to the waiting place for hell or the waiting place for heaven (because they don’t have their bodies restored yet, it is a foretaste in either case).  This will ultimately be fulfilled on the day of the Last Judgment, when all people dead will be raised and with those alive at that last time, will be reunited to their bodies and given the final Judgment.  Leading up to this time, will be periods of ever-increasing tribulation for the world, but Christians will not at some point get a rapture, leaving Jews to convert and fulfill the final several years. I don’t see much evidence for such a belief before the 1840’s, and references to a literal 1000 year kingdom did occur in a few Church writers in the 3rd century, but were not the consensus, and the Church ultimately sided against this teaching (called Chilianism).

    I don’t have any good websites to send you to, because just as some Protestants are infected with the end-times mania of people like Hal Lindsey, we Orthodox have people who like to run with all sorts of prophecies of alleged holy people whom God allegedly revealed things to.  I don’t deny that God can do that if He wants, but I am not even sure that some of the things I read on English language websites are accurate translations from the original languages.  For instance, our St. Cosmas the Aitolian who lived in the 18th century allegedly predicted airplanes and telephones before the final “great war,” but people who speak Greek tell me they cannot find the actual Greek texts that are allegedly being translated. So I don’t want to send you to Orthodox websites on the topic without having first discerned whether they really represent Orthodox understandings of the End Times, and I don’t have time right now to research the issue thoroughly.

    Well, I have rambled on way too long here, and I apologize for my wordiness.  If you wish to respond, feel free to.  I’d also love to meet you some time in person as face-to-face interactions are more fulfilling to me. You’re welcome as well to visit our Church any time, especially when we have a service on Saturday since you probably are committed to your own Church community on Sunday.

    In Christ,

    Fr. Anastasios

    Related posts:

    1. Tradition vs. Custom for Protestants
    2. The Holy Apostles in History
    3. Thanksgiving Even in Hard Times
    4. The New Testament Church

  • Tradition vs. Custom for Protestants

    Part of my ongoing Correspondence series, featuring replies to people who contacted me and asked questions, mostly when I served as a priest (2008-2013).

    Dear M.,

    “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (II Thessalonians 2:15).

    I have long thought that Evangelical Protestants approach problems with a methodology of identifying a dichotomy and then arguing for the one side and against the other, but I believe that oftentimes these dichotomies are false dichotomies, or straw men. Obviously, since I am an Orthodox Christian and former Protestant, but you know me well enough to know that I am not approaching this merely as a polemicist but as a fellow open-minded truth seeker (Truth being found in the person of Our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ).

    You are an intelligent and thoughtful person, and I always enjoy our discussions, and in fact, look forward to that day when again I will see you in person, if the Lord should grant it. For that reason, I will simply come out and say that your post was a drive-by post that doesn’t really touch the issue, and you can and should penetrate a little deeper.

    What are the arguments that traditionalists such as myself make? Do we ever suppose that our Traditions are above the Bible? Of course not! We obviously believe that our Traditions are in perfect harmony with Biblical Truth, are revealed by Christ through the Holy Spirit, and are part and parcel of the Apostolic Deposit of Faith, whether by word or by letter. Holy Tradition has been called “Scripture Rightly Understood” or the Word of God as lived and experienced in each generation.

    Yet we do not imagine that everything old is necessarily good; St. Vincent of Lerins, who tackled this problem in the 5th century, had the famous statement that what is Tradition and True is that which is believed at “all times, everywhere, by all people.”  Obviously, there will always be those who deny Truth and break away, but that was not his point. His point is that there has to be evidence of a teaching being present in all times, places, and by all peoples in the Church.  That which cannot be traced to the beginning, or is being championed in only once place, or by only a select few, is not Tradition but rather is “an antiquity of error.”

    We Orthodox, for instance, have faithfully passed down such universal practices of the Church (at least they were universal until the Protestant Revolution) such as making the sign of the Cross, baptizing by three full immersions into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, etc. Yet we also find improper customs floating about that have to be addressed and rooted out in each generation; things such as the faithful only receiving Holy Communion once, twice, or thrice a year, which St. Nikodemos the Haghiorite attacked vociferously as anti-Tradition in the 19th century.

    So the question should not be whether you will follow Tradition or Biblical teachings; your question should be what is Tradition and whether a certain practice is really a Tradition or merely a degenerate custom that has infiltrated the body like a weed among grass.

    Is this merely a matter of semantics? No, I would say not; firstly because St. Paul commands us to follow certain Traditions, so we need to take him seriously and figure out what he means by that, and secondly because it’s just too easy for Protestants to label anything they don’t like as a preference as a “dead Tradition” which can be disposed of.

    The things that you mention in the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) and other Baptist conventions are not matters of Tradition but are rather customers–rather lately developed–which not only have no basis in Scripture, but are anti-Scriptural, are completely novel, and divide SBC members from the universal practice of the ancient Church.  That some SBC members such as yourself have rejected these practices and especially in a different social/cultural context is positive and may we all look in our own hearts for those things that separate us from Christ and the practices of His Holy Church.* But let’s do it with an eye toward fidelity toward the legitimate Tradition of the Church, and not with an eye toward innovation and creating yet more and new expressions of Christianity in the name of relevance.  True, legitimate Tradition will always be flexible and broad enough to speak to all peoples and cultures.

    Yours in Christ,

    Fr. Anastasios

    (* M. is referring to his parish Church’s rejection of anti-alcohol teachings, which separates it from the wider Southern Baptist Convention to which it belongs).

    Related posts:

    1. Scripture “versus” Tradition, and the End Times
    2. From the Orthodox Liturgical Tradition on the Encounter with Aerial Demons at the Time of Death

  • African Orthodox Christianity

    The following is the first in a new series for the site; I will begin posting correspondence that I had with various individuals which contain information of interest to a broader audience, with names and identifying information redacted for privacy.

    In this particular case, unfortunately I never heard back from the individual addressed below, but I pray that some day he find the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church!

     

    October 23/November 5, 2010

    Dear Mr. S.,

    Greetings in the name of our Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ!

    I write to you today because providentially I found your name on the North Carolina Secretary of State’s website while researching Orthodox non-profits in the State of North Carolina.

    Seeing the name of your corporation, the African Orthodox Church of Africa, I did some research and discovered that it is a Church that appears to be descended from Independent Catholics, but with Orthodox leanings.  A few years ago, I had heard about the Church in Africa in the 1930’s that had eventually joined the Patriarchate of Alexandria, but I was not aware that there were others who were still carrying on the name African Orthodox today.

    My reason for writing to you is that it looks like you are planning for an expansion into the Rocky Mount area.  I wanted to write to you and encourage you to consider becoming a part of the already-existing Orthodox Church.  I don’t know anyone in your current Church in order to form a full opinion, but I did look at the pictures, and as I mentioned, it is clearly reflective of a Western Catholic background, instead of an Orthodox one.  The Orthodox Church teaches that the Western Roman patriarchate went into schism by breaking communion with the four Eastern patriarchates gradually between AD 1054 and AD 1204.  Once the schism was permanent, we can consider that the Roman Catholic Church lost its apostolic succession completely, especially after it stopped baptizing by three full immersions, which is necessary for a true baptism.

    Thus, even if the African Orthodox Church now confesses an Orthodox confession of faith (I am not sure exactly, given what was available online), it cannot just come “back to life,” given that it stems from a Western Catholic line of bishops.  Apostolic succession is not just about hands-on-heads in a line back to the Apostles, but about the faith of the Church, which ceased to be passed down in the West in the 12th century.  In other words, the Orthodox Church teaches that apostolic succession only continues to be real inside the bounds of the Church, because it is a guarantee of Orthodox faith, not a personal possession of the one ordaining and the one being ordained.

    I would urge you that if you wish to truly be Orthodox, you should join yourself to the existing Orthodox Church, and become a part of it.  The cure to man’s spiritual illness is only available through the Orthodox Church, with its deep spiritual teachings, and the Holy Mysteries, which are only available inside the Church.

    I notice that your current faith tradition is Afrocentric.  The Orthodox Church honors the many African saints, especially St. Moses the Ethiopian.  The Nubian peoples were Orthodox, as were many others.  Perhaps you are called to bring the message of Orthodoxy to people of African descent in Eastern Carolina.  If so, you will best be able to serve God if you are a part of the visible Church that He established, which has apostolic succession unbroken by the fall of the Western Church so many hundreds of years ago.

    Our Church was brought to America by Greek immigrants, but many of us, myself included, are converts. Our Metropolitan Pavlos, who lives in New York, once tonsured a man of African descent as a monk, and remarked to me once that he hopes in his life he will see many African American Orthodox.  Perhaps, Mr. S., you will help make that dream a reality.

    I have had my eye set on Rocky Mount as a possible future place of expansion for the planting of an Orthodox Church.  As it is, I am currently engaged in planting missions in Raleigh, Greenville, and Charlottesville (Virginia).  We could certainly use help, because the labors are great, but the laborers few.  Perhaps you could attend liturgy with us in Greenville sometime soon, so you can see the faith that was once delivered unto the saints firsthand.

    You are in my prayers, and I ask your prayers for me.

    In Christ,

    Father Anastasios Hudson

     

    Note: to read more about the historical link between Orthodox Christianity and the African-American experience, please see the book Unbroken Circle on Amazon.com:

    Related posts:

    1. Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Orthodox Christian?