Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Who's not a Christian?
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Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Who's not a Christian?
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I can recall growing up as the son of Evangelical Protestant missionaries being taught that Roman Catholics were certainly not Christians. I’m not sure whether my parents ever said that to me, but it was a marked theme in some of the preaching I heard in the various low-church Baptist and small non-denominational churches that marked my growing up years. After all,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Why can't God love me the way I am?
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One of the perhaps most pressing theological questions of our time and place is answered beautifully in this post from Jim John Marks: The question is not “why can’t God love me the way I am”, the question is “why can’t I love God the way I am”. And it is the pursuit of the answer to that question which opens the door to…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Chalcedon: The Triumph of Cyril, not Leo
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Over at John Sanidopoulos’s Mystagogy website, we read the following regarding the Fourth Ecumenical Council, a quotation from the late Fr. John Romanides: Theologians of the Vatican have been supporting their position that Leo of Rome and his Tome became the basis of the decisions of the Fourth Ecumenical Council of 451 which, according to them, supposedly corrected the monophysitic and theopassion…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
The Amazing Memetic O&H
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Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
A Firm Foothold
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I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again. —Frodo Baggins I happened upon this quotation again yesterday evening, while I was reading my daughter The Lord of the Rings. It seems a dauntingly long tome…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Fr. Richard Rene on "God Without Church?"
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Fr. Richard Rene, pastor, fellow CP author and AFR podcaster, has this weblog post up, God Without Church?: It’s a common reality: people who believe in God without feeling the need to attend church regularly. They even have a name—“Nones”—because of their typical response to surveys asking about their religious affiliation. And those of us who consider Church attendance to be central…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The One True Church and the Partisans of Anti-Ecclesiology
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Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
The One True Church and the Partisans of Anti-Ecclesiology
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I believe that the church in which I was baptized and brought up ‘is’ in very truth ‘the Church’, i.e. ‘the true’ Church and the ‘only’ true Church . . . I am therefore compelled to regard all other Christian churches as deficient, and in many cases can identify these deficiencies accurately enough. Therefore, for me, Christian reunion is simply universal conversion…
Nearly Orthodox
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“Pray, in all simplicity.” St. John Climacus We pray at Liturgy. We pray a lot. I don’t know why this struck me so solidly this morning as I sat on my porch drinking coffee. It may be a reaction to the conversation I had with my mother in law yesterday. She asked to bring the boys to their church camp and I reacted with a quick, “no, I don’t think so.” It…
Nearly Orthodox
in the air...
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“If this Orthodox thing doesn’t work out I’m going to have to become an atheist,” I’d said. My conversation partner was taken aback. “Why an atheist, why not an agnostic?” And I realized then, in that moment that I didn’t really mean what I had said. Perhaps, I meant that I’d give up on denominations or organized church or the whole system of religion but I didn’t really mean I’d become an…
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Doctrine matters.
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With the obvious exception of ordained seminary professors, if you were to ask most Christian clergy how often they get asked questions about doctrine, they would probably chuckle sardonically at least a little. Some clergy would probably not care about that bit of irony, and they would likely not chuckle. But the chucklers would be chuckling because they know that most Christians…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: The Weblog
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I have an announcement of a major new project, opening today: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: The Weblog. It’s been plain to me for some time that Christian doctrine is starting to matter to more and more people, and a lot of the people it matters to are Orthodox Christians, some of whom are doing some very good writing about it. You’re of course aware of…
Nearly Orthodox
communion...
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Under a canopy of trees, less a grove or forest, more an outcropping of overgrowth in the corner of our back yard I celebrated the Mass. Greeting my friends as they entered my chapel of branches, I’d place white bread and grape juice on the makeshift altar of rocks and mud, alternately lifting hands, speaking words, making signs of the cross in the air. I celebrated the Mass. I was more than…
Nearly Orthodox
antidoron...
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Last Sunday a woman approached my daughter and I at Liturgy. I knew her by sight, we’d had a conversation at Pascha. I had noticed her the first week I attended. She was there with her children and her husband. She looked to be a little younger than I; wearing her hair cropped short, funky glasses and quirky fashion. “She could be a good friend for me” I thought. I’ve attended this…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Saving the World from Suicide: Localism, Christian Evangelism and the Culture War
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The world is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time; so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and to save the world from suicide. —T. S. Eliot, “Thoughts After…
Nearly Orthodox
Stations...
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It was warm that day in Miss Gardner’s classroom. In an effort to save some time Father Boyle gathered all three of our 2nd grade classes into one room and we sat there, pressed together and listening. I was near the back, hiding in the corner but positioned so that I could see and hear Father Boyle. I took note of how bulbous and red his nose appeared. When he was on…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy turns one!
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On Saturday, May 12, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Exploring Belief Systems Through the Lens of the Ancient Christian Faith turned one year old! It’s honestly a little hard to believe. This little path has now been winding about for more than three years. O&H was originally done as a series of lectures offered at St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Charleston, West Virginia, beginning in November…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Church History and Same-Sex Marriage
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There have been several postings online in the past few days of various articles claiming that the Christian Church at some period in history formerly sanctioned same-sex weddings and treated them just like marriages between a single man and a single woman, based mainly on the work of the late John Boswell. Someone even posted one of those articles in the comments section of…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
"Aren't You Supposed to Hate Me?": Calvinism and the Politics of the Damned
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Update: This post is now available as an audio recording at Ancient Faith Radio. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Orthodoxy, Allegory and Fantasy
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Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker. —J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories” There is a new post today on MyOCN‘s “Orthodox Writers, Readers, and Artists series,” whose title caught my eye: Is it Orthodox to Read…
Nearly Orthodox
Nearly Orthodox...
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Naming is important. After a year and a half of documenting the struggle of becoming Orthodox (and realizing I still have FAR to go) I’ve re-named this blog, to “Nearly Orthodox.” In addition the old url of unorthodoxlyorthodox.wordpress.com will forward to this shiny new url. Just wanted to give you all a heads up. The name is the only thing that will be changing, and you can still access the blog from the…
Nearly Orthodox
Living in the mystery...
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Nearly two years ago I had this plan; take some Orthodoxy classes, learn a little Greek, find my baptismal certificate and get chrismated in time for Pascha. It didn’t happen that first year along the road to Orthodoxy so I changed my plan, second verse, same as the first…best laid plans. May 2012 finds me a catechumen in a new city, in a new community and I think I understand now, some…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Mass Cult of Big
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The following is essentially a piecing together of selections from a Facebook thread in which I participated today. The following quotation led off the discussion: We have become fascinated by the idea of bigness, and we are quite convinced that if we can only ‘stage’ something really big before the world, we will shake it, and produce a mighty religious awakening. – D. Martin…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Speaking Engagement May 16, 2012, in Harrisburg, PA
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Nearly Orthodox
building bridges...
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Today I’m thinking of the tidal island of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. I’m thinking about the progress over the years, of beginning as a part of something bigger, a jutting out from the land mass to finally becoming the island perhaps it always thought it might become. When the tides come in the small connection between the mainland is severed and the island becomes nearly in accessible. In time, without man’s intervention,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Bright Week Debrief
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Like most of the rest of the Orthodox Christian presbytery this time of year, I am currently in post-Paschal recovery mode. Lent, Holy Week and Pascha always take a lot out of us Orthodox Christians, and the clergy stand at the center of the liturgical, spiritual and emotional maelstrom that this season swirls us through. But I quote a certain theologian and philosopher when…
