Archives for 2015

So, I was asked my position on Ms. Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for refusing to follow the law, even after losing her appeal to the Supreme Court. I answered: “Every public official is subject to the rule of law.” This is not a popular one to answer, but let me […]

Teaching high school Sunday School last school year and now teaching junior high school this school year has been a challenge. In order to keep some interest in the younger tweens, I am in the process of telling them some of the “funnier” stories in the Old Testament. Well, that is, I am telling them […]

Lately there has been much discussion of undocumented immigrants and anchor babies. But, in the midst of that discussion, the fate of legal immigrants is not being discussed. Why do I mention that? Well, because if the citizenship of natural-born citizens can be removed under some type of specious argument, then the citizenship of those […]

There was God’s Will to consider, and God was understood often to give people not what they wanted but what they needed. He dealt with people not according to fixed principles of justice but in ways that would best bring about each soul’s salvation. The Byzantine term for this was oikonomía, and it is still […]

Father Justin Patterson of the OCA uploaded the video above to Facebook. It is the Paschal troparion sung to Appalachian harmonies, but conforming to tonal rules of the Slavic Orthodox. It was sung at a music workshop at the All American Council of the Orthodox Church in America, meeting in Atlanta in July of 2015. […]

There is an argument among some Orthodox as to whether it is appropriate to speak of there being fundamentalist Orthodox. I would argue that there are. From a lecture by The Rev. Joshua Raja John (UK Anglican), I abstracted the slide above. It has a good set of statements that are well worth noting and […]

During the last couple of days, a scandal has broken out that involves Planned Parenthood in the sale of body parts to various institutions. I have posted the short version of the video that broke the story, however, it is important that you know that the organization that posted the video has also posted the […]

I saw the above posting, as usual, on Facebook. I am not sure who the author is. But, like most postings of this type, the above is only possibly true if you make some rather odd assumptions about both the people involved and about what is ethical and moral. 1. You cannot legislate the poor […]

I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken. One of the true tests of maturity is the realization of how many things you were wrong about. Although the most famous, Saint Augustine of Hippo is not the only one to have written at the end of his life an essay in which the […]