Tag: Culture
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From Under the Rubble
Dostoevsky wrote in the mid-19th century, a time when many ideas and cultural forces were only beginning to coelesce. We live in an age after which those forces have come together, and after which they have largely been judged by history to have fallen short of their stated ideals. The world has witnessed more than…
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The Secular Man and the Christian Man
The Secular Man has been the great threat to the Christian faith over the past two or more centuries. Disguised as the person is only only doing the “normal thing,” he lives in a godless world, where others can be tempted to live as though there were no God. Earlier I quoted Berdyaev, “If God…
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Culture and Remembrance
Debate about the place of Islam in the West is growing – particularly in light of the various struggles and terrorist attacks of the past decade. In places like America, that once had no consciousness of Islam outside of film and fantasy, a re-education is taking place as people re-learn the struggles of the past.…
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Candlewax and Hedgehogs – Groundhog Day
This article, from an earlier parish newsletter is posted here by request. Candlewax and Hedgehogs—a peculiar way to entitle an article, I’ll admit. But both have their associations with the second day of February. The first is more important so we’ll begin there. The second day of February is one of the 12 great feasts, and…
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The “Crisis” of Modernity
What do you call a Christian whose mind is so constructed that belief in God is almost impossible? Answer: a modern man. I occasionally make allusions to the crisis of modernity (in one form or another), as in a recent post in which I made reference to Florovsky’s term, the tragedy of Western Christianity. The crisis…
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Christianity in a One-Storey Universe
Conciliar Press has just made my book, Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, available for pre-ordering. It is due to be released on March 1. I greatly appreciate the encouragement I have had from readers as this work has been unfolding and pray that it will be useful. I’ll keep everyone posted on any…
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Living Orthodox in the Modern World
We live in the modern world – a fact for which we have no antidote. It is the moment in history that is ours. Christians before us have lived in the Roman world, various pagan worlds, the Byzantine world, the world of “Holy Russia,” but we are tasked by Divine Providence to live as Orthodox…
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Sloshing Our Way into the Kingdom
A dear friend of mine serves as an Orthodox priest in one of our coastal cities. He told me about a visit to his port of a Russian “sailing ship.” It was a wonderful visit, as he related. The ship had a small chapel on board and a Russian Orthodox chaplain. Together they celebrated a…
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Awakening
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). This fear descends on us from on High. It is a spiritual feeling, firstly of God and then of us ourselves. We live in a state of awe by virtue of the presence of the Living God together with awareness of our own…
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Between Christmas And…
The Feast of Christmas has, for many, come and gone. The eagerness of children for the day of their presents has now passed and, with it, some of their anxieties. Far from marking Christmas as “Twelve Days” (as the old English Christmas carol notes) many parts of the culture hurry forward, eager to put Christmas…
Thank you so much Dee, Fr. Stephen and Michael.