410. The Many Concerns of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

1) The new conservative ecumenical coalition, 2) Secularized education, 3) The Environment, 4) Ukraine and Patriarch Kirill, 5) Abortion? Homosexuality?  Introduction I greatly admire His All-Holiness Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Please understand that I am a priest of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, answerable directly to His Eminence Metropolitan Saba and […]

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75. Orthodoxy and Other Faiths: Modern Protestantism, Part 3 – Why is the Mainline down? Why are Evangelicals up? Pentecostals. Charismatics.

We’ve been tracking the decline of the Mainline Protestants and the rise of the Evangelicals.  According to Pew Research in 2014 above, maybe the change in American religion has been even more radical. Look who’s growing fastest now, and rapidly. I can’t begin to describe how different the American religious scene feels today compared to 50 […]

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54. Orthodoxy and Other Faiths: Roman Catholicism, Part One – How We Began to Grow Apart

Here’s the humorous question with the obvious answer: “Is the Pope Catholic?” The Orthodox answer (to be uttered with a slight air of mystery in your voice) is ”Well… …?” Or sometimes we hear this from non-Orthodox folks: “You’re almost like the Catholics.” The proper Orthodox response (to be offered as humbly as possible) is […]

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41. Orthodoxy and Other Faiths: Judaism, Part One

“At inter-religious conferences, at first you find Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Protestants together ‘over here’ and Jews ‘over there’. But as we get down to the nitty-gritty of what religion and life are all about, you find Orthodox Christians and Jews together ‘over here’ and Roman Catholics and Protestants ‘over there’.” The preceding is […]

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36. Protestant Reformation, Part 2 – Where Luther was right, Where he went wrong, and What it all led to

To my surprise, I am impressed with Martin Luther. He made big mistakes, as don’t we all? and he was headstrong, as aren’t we all sometimes? But I think his intentions were honorable, his heart was good, and much of what went wrong with the Protestant Reformation (which was a whole lot) was not Luther’s fault. […]

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