Orthodox Theologies of the Afterlife: Review of “The Departure of the Soul”

· Paul Ladouceur 44 Leave a Comment on %s
Editor’s Note: The following is a review of The Departure of the Soul According to the Teaching of the Orthodox Church, published April 2017 by St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, Florence, Arizona. It was sent to us by Dr. Paul Ladouceur originally as four separate posts, but we have combined them here into one, since they are closely related and also since…

Utah’s Largest Newspaper Interviews Mormon to Orthodox Christian Convert

· Cameron Davis 9 Leave a Comment on %s
Editor’s Note: A couple of weeks back, a reporter at the Salt Lake Tribune contacted us on the O&H Facebook page to get in touch with former Mormons (LDS) who had converted to Orthodoxy. One of those who responded to this inquiry was Cameron Davis. He was one of several interviewed for this piece (which is well worth reading). Like all newspaper…

Philosophy According to Christ: Were the Fathers ‘Corrupted’ by Greek Philosophy?

· Dylan Pahman 20 Leave a Comment on %s
It is a recurring popular trope, especially in some Protestant circles, to dismiss the Church Fathers on the grounds that they were “seduced” or “corrupted” by Greek philosophy and that their understanding of the faith displays the cultural milieu of the day, rather than proper biblical exegesis. Even many scholars have claimed that attempting to read the Bible as the Fathers did…

Two Surprising Statistics about Orthodox Christianity in America

· Seraphim Danckaert 22 Leave a Comment on %s
Plenty has been written about the Pew Research Center’s second Religious Landscape Study, published in 2014. Relatively little commentary has focused on what the findings tell us about Orthodox Christians in America. In part, the lack of attention is due to the very small sample size of Orthodox believers in the study — so small that the margin for error is somewhere…

A Helpful, But Uneven Contribution: Review of “The Benedict Option” by Rod Dreher

· Rev. Fr. Joseph Lucas 3 Leave a Comment on %s
On April 2, 2017, Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option debuted at number seven for hardcover non-fiction on the New York Times’ bestseller list (promptly to drop from the list the following week). This new offering from Dreher is a summary of his life experience, a sort of manifesto for the conservative Christian seeking meaning in a world inundated by progressive agendas, commercialism,…

Ed Stetzer on Hanegraaff Switch: What CT Gets Wrong About Orthodox Conversions

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick 58 Leave a Comment on %s
Writing in Evangelical flagship publication Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer, who is a professor at Wheaton and heads up the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism, made some guesses about why Evangelicals become Orthodox Christians in “Hank Hanegraaff’s Switch to Eastern Orthodoxy, Why People Make Such Changes, and Four Ways Evangelicals Might Respond“: The obvious question is what draws evangelicals to more liturgical traditions—and…

Revised & Expanded O&H on Pre-Order + New Podcast in the Works

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick 4 Leave a Comment on %s
Hello, blog readers and email list subscribers! I just wanted to give you a couple quick updates in case you hadn’t yet heard: — The revised, expanded edition of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape is now available for pre-order. Wondering what’s new? Read all about that here. Click here to place your order and…

Review of ‘How Our Departed Ones Live’ by Monk Mitrophan

· Guest Author 2 Leave a Comment on %s
HOW OUR DEPARTED ONES LIVE: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH. By Monk Mitrophan. Translated, Archpriest John R. Shaw. Jordanville: Holy Trinity Publications, 2015. 452 pps. ISBN-10: 088465401X The Wall Street Journal  ran a headlining piece on March 31, 2011 entitled, “The Last Laugh,” that anecdotally reported on a sea change in the conduct of funerals in the United States in which “families…

Why I Cannot Be a Post-Evangelical, Post-Denominational, etc., Christian

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick 29 Leave a Comment on %s
One of the things I’ve noticed in recent years is the growth of all kinds of “Post-_______” Christianity. By this I mean varieties of Christianity that are all generally within the Evangelical Protestant genre yet explicitly do not embrace any particular tradition. Typically, what this looks like is something recognizably Evangelical yet with a potpourri of different doctrinal, worship and pastoral emphases…