Is Orthodoxy “Christianity, Only Tougher”?

Particularly during this season of Great Lent with all its fasting and services and so forth, Orthodox Christians who live in a multi-religious society may be tempted to think or say something like what you see in this image here: “Orthodoxy: Christianity. Only Tougher.” On its face, there is of course a lot of truth to that characterization. Being a faithful Orthodox Christian is


Should religion be physical?: Great Lent and Polycarp the Palpable

Today is the beginning of Great Lent for most Orthodox Christians (a handful of Western Rite Orthodox Christians will begin with their Ash Wednesday the day after tomorrow), and I’ve decided to try my hand at doing 40 days of blogging—posting at least once a day from today through the Friday before Lazarus Saturday. This is my first post for Great Lent. Today I


12 Reasons Why I Became and/or Remain an Orthodox Christian

Lists like this are usually so much clickbait, I know, but I thought it was nevertheless worthwhile to compile a list of most of the reasons why I became and/or remain an Orthodox Christian. Some of these things were not really on my radar when I became Orthodox in 1998, but they are part of the reason why I genuinely do love belonging to


Writings, Recordings and Recommendations: An Update

As you probably can tell, I’ve mainly been focusing my weblogging energy into the new Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy weblog. Forgive my neglect here. I’m still working out the balance of the kinds of work I plan to do there and here. In any event, in case you don’t happen to be a reader over there yet (and why not?), I thought I’d update you


No True Church? No True Church History.

One of the criticisms of Orthodoxy’s understanding of its own history (not to mention, Roman Catholicism’s) is that there really is no unbroken Christian tradition of anything at all, that Church history is really just about multiple movements, doctrines and practices that cannot coherently be traced back to the Apostles. This is essentially one version of the historiography of the anti-ecclesiologists. If there is