The Task of Orthodox Theology in America Today

OrthodoxNet.com | Fr. Alexander Schmemann | September 26, 1966

WHAT DO WE MEAN when we speak of the Orthodox theological task in America today? It is proper to begin with this question because the title of my paper may seem to suggest a theological orientation of which Orthodoxy is suspicious, but which seems to predominate in the West today. It is the reduction of theology to a given “situation” or “age,” a stress on “relevance” understood almost exclusively as a dependence of theology, its task, method and language on the “modern man” and his specifically modern “needs.”

From the beginning, therefore, we must emphasize that Orthodoxy rejects such a reduction of theology, whose first and eternal tasks is to search for Truth, not for relevance, for words “adequate to God” (theoprepeis logoi), not to man. Theology is truly relevant because it is truly Christian when it remains a scandal for the Jews, foolishness for the Greeks and is at odds with this world and its passing “cultures” and “modernities.”

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A Dangerous Precedent Abuilding in California

Free Congress Foundation | Paul M. Weyrich | October 25, 2007

There is terrible news from California. On October 12, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law three bills which, the opposition argues, introduce the radical homosexual agenda into educational institutions. Unquestionably the traditional purpose of public education is to teach reading, writing, mathematics and other fundamentals necessary for well-rounded intellectual development. Instead, these institutions apparently will become miniature laboratories for redefining nature, implementing “gender theory” and experimenting with the effects of sexual lifestyles.

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Christian couple forced to quit fostering after refusing to tell kids its ‘good to be gay’

Daily Mail | James Mills | October 23, 2007

As devoted foster parents, Vincent and Pauline Matherick have provided a stable family home for almost 30 vulnerable children.

But the couple’s latest foster son is being taken away from them by social workers because they have refused to promote homosexuality.

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The War for the Constitution

Wall Street Opinion Journal | Gary L. McDowell | October 23, 2007

The anniversary of Robert Bork’s failed nomination reminds us what’s at stake in the coming election.

Twenty years ago today the United States Senate voted to reject President Reagan’s nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court. The senators may have had every reason to believe that was the end of the story. However ugly it had been, however much time it had taken, Mr. Bork’s defeat was only one more routine sacrifice to partisan politics. But time would prove wrong anyone who actually thought that. The battle over Mr. Bork was politically transformative, its constitutional lessons enduring.

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The US is a great place to be anti-American

The Time Online | Gerard Baker | October 17, 2007

Anti-Americanism is on the wane at last. All over the world, Americans are being feted once again as farsighted, liberating heroes.

Al Gore has won a Nobel Peace Prize, an Oscar and an Emmy, the triple crown of recognition from the self-adoring keepers of bien-pensant, elite liberal, global orthodoxy. Michael Moore is treated like a prophet in Cannes and Venice, as he peddles his tales of an America that poisons its poor, sends its blacks off to war and shoots itself. Whenever a loquacious Dixie Chick or a contumacious Sean Penn utters some excoriating remark about the depravity of his or her own country, audiences around the world nod their heads in sympathetic agreement. Bill Clinton, of course, is a god. Though protocol dictates that he may not say things that are too unkind about the country he once led, a nod and a wink will suffice.

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The Republican Collapse

David Brooks | October 5, 2007

Modern conservatism begins with Edmund Burke. What Burke articulated was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change.

When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.

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Announcing the American Orthodox Institute

The project I’ve been working on the last three years was unveiled yesterday. It’s called the American Orthodox Institute (AOI) and has this mission: The American Orthodox Institute is a research and educational organization that engages the cultural issues of the day within the Orthodox Christian moral tradition. Take a look at the AOI website to get a clearer idea of contributers, advisors, and such. Note our journal, “The Clarion Review” (new website for Clarion in the works), which has been receiving praise and press in Europe. My latest article, “Orthodox Leadership in a Brave New World” is also included. The opening was a collaboration between AOI and Conciliar Media Ministries.

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The Soros Threat To Democracy

Soros’ propaganda machine is continuing its assault on our culture.

Investor’s Business Daily | September 24, 2007

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute , which gave him “legal and media advice”?

That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.

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The Problem with Gay Marriage

Jeniffer Roback Morse email newsletter | Jennifer Roback Morse | September 24, 2007

Last week I was able to deliver the following statement before the San Diego City Council. The Council was considering whether to add the City of San Diego’s name to a Friend of the Court brief supporting a case in favor of same sex marriage, currently pending before the California Supreme Court.

Next week, I will be going to Canada to do a briefing for their Members of Parliament about why cohabitation is not the same as marriage. I mention that to indicate that my primary job is to straighten out the straight people. And believe me, it is a full-time job. I am here today to explain why I believe instituting same sex marriage will make that job immeasurably more difficult. The needs of same sex couples and opposite sex couples would both be better served by having distinct institutional arrangements, rather than by trying to have one institution serve the needs of both groups.

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