Tag: George Demacopoulos
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Hagia Sophia and the Challenge of Religious Freedom
by George Demacopoulos | ελληνικά | српски Christian leaders and secular governments around the world have condemned, with good reason, the recent decision of a Turkish court to reconvert Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Indeed, this ruling is just the latest step in a century-long effort by the Turkish government to erase both the history […]
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Orthodox Christianity, Systemic Racism, and the Wrong Side of History
by George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou | ελληνικά | Română | ру́сский | српски When Archbishop Iakovos stood alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma in 1965, he was maligned by many Greek Americans who took offense that their Archbishop would “fraternize with Civil Rights agitators.” Fifty-five years later, opinion has shifted dramatically. Iakovos’ march alongside […]
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The Good Friday Lamentation and Universal Salvation
by George Demacopoulos | ελληνικά | Română | ру́сский It is striking just how many verses of the central hymn of the most widely attended service in the Orthodox Church assert that Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection provide salvation to everyone—yes, everyone. If hymnography reflects the prayer and thinking of the community, what might this contribute to the millennia-long […]
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Scholars Not Priests
by George Demacopoulos | Ελληνικά | Русский | српски In a seminal essay in 1990, the eminent scholar of early Christianity, Elizabeth Clark, demonstrated that Christianity grew rapidly, in large part, because women served as the community’s earliest financial benefactors—they were “Patrons not Priests.”[1] According to Clark, female patronage was not only a matter of Christian […]
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Pope Francis’s Relic Diplomacy
by George Demacopoulos In June of 594, Pope Gregory the Great received a letter from Constantina, the empress, asking him to send the head of St. Paul to Constantinople so that she and others might benefit from venerating the bodily remains of such a great saint. St. Gregory denied the request, noting that it was […]
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The Audacity of Converts
by George Demacopoulos Several months ago, a recent convert to Orthodox Christianity with the online handle “BigSexy” launched a Reddit thread decrying Public Orthodoxy because, he claimed, it is an affront to Christian teaching. My first impulse was to mock the absurdity—are we supposed to believe that “BigSexy” has a monopoly on theological insight!?! I […]
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The Heresy of Papism
by George Demacopoulos | ελληνικά | ру́сский The three-way dispute between Ukrainians, Russians, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the possibility of Ukrainian ecclesiastical independence is shaping up to be the greatest challenge to Orthodox Christian unity of our generation. From a purely political perspective, Ukrainian autocephaly would represent an unmitigated disaster for the Russian Orthodox […]
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Introducing the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies
by George Demacopoulos and Vera Shevzov The Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University is pleased to announce the launch of the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, the first double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of Orthodox Christianity and the Orthodox Christian world. The first issue is now available digitally and in print. Subscription information and […]
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The Byzantine Origins of Gun Control
by George Demacopoulos | ру́сский | српски It would be difficult to overstate the significance of the Byzantine emperor Justinian for both Christian and political history because, more than any previous Christian ruler, he integrated Christian precepts into imperial legislation. Whether one looks favorably upon the Byzantine model of Church/State “symphonia” or prefers a Jeffersonian […]
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It’s Time to Merge St. Vladimir’s and Holy Cross
by George Demacopoulos It has always been the case that forces beyond the control of the Church have prompted changes in the practice of theological education. For example, Ottoman repression led many Greek Christians to seek education abroad. Tsar Peter I imposed Western-styled seminaries upon the Russian Church. And the Bolshevik Revolution crippled religious education […]