Author: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

The Very Rev. Archpriest Andrew Stephen Damick is Chief Content Officer of Ancient Faith Ministries, former pastor (2009-2020) of St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and author of The Lord of Spirits, Arise, O God, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, Bearing God and An Introduction to God. He is co-host of the following podcasts: The Lord of Spirits (with Fr. Stephen De Young), The Areopagus (with Michael Landsman), and Amon Sûl (with Richard Rohlin). He is also host of The Orthodox Pilgrim, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, Orthodox Engagement, and Roads from Emmaus. With Richard Rohlin he is collaborating on the major documentary series The Wolf and the Cross. You can follow him on YouTube, Facebook, Telegram and Instagram.

The Eminem Ethic

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
I spotted this image on Facebook today, and it puts forth a commonly accepted ethic, which I’ve dubbed here the Eminem Ethic. Essentially, various categories of race, sexual desire, physical appearance, and economic status don’t matter when it comes to winning his kindness. What matters is that “you’re nice to me.” This sounds pretty good. This is a morality bandwagon that probably most folks…

The Return to God

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Sunday of the Prodigal Son, 2012 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. One of the principal themes that we meditate upon during these weeks that precede Great Lent and during the Fast itself is forgiveness. And it’s no wonder, because the Christian Church is really the only place in which forgiveness makes…

The Wise Men of Silesia

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Throughout much of January and often into February, I spend close to 20-30 hours every week visiting the homes of parishioners and blessing them as part of the annual Theophany celebrations. I put several hundred miles on my car’s odometer during this time. Aside from the extra workload and of course the joy of visiting parishioners in their homes, I also particularly enjoy driving…

Canticle for the Meeting of our Lord

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Canticle for the Meeting of Our Lord Long years ago I heard the Voice of God— foreshadowing to me the news of Christ, that death I would not see ’til I had seen th’awaited coming of the Son of Man. “Behold, the Virgin shall conceive,” I read, Isaiah’s vision did foretell the One to bring salvation to old Israel, His flesh and blood to…

Two Lectures Available Online

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Two of my lectures from the recent Meeting the World series are now fully online, courtesy of Ancient Faith Radio: Meeting the World: Taking the Gospel Into Our Times and Our Places: Part 1, Part 2 A Peculiar People: Orthodox Christian Identity in a Hostile World: Part 1, Part 2 Three more will be available in the next several weeks, each broken into two…

Religion, Rules and Reality

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
One of the unfortunate aspects of Internet converse that I’ve noticed during my nearly twenty years online is that often interlocutors write as though they assume that what they see in front of them is in fact the only thing that a poster has ever written on a subject. I think this comes of living in a sound-byte world, in which it is proposed…

Updates and Two New O&H Reviews

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Two new weblog reviews of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy have been posted recently. You can read them here: The Hair-Shirt Agenda On Behalf of All Also, for those who don’t regularly follow my posts on Facebook and Google+, you may be interested to know that I am currently at work on a new book (title to be announced later) on introducing Orthodox Christianity to the…