By: Roman Górny

Roman Górny — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 16:02:31 +0000

I am a Greek Orthodox Christian Polish-American with ties to the Anglican Church (Episcopal Church USA). I also have roots in Judaism, kabbalah and talmudic study, and I am at home in biblical Hebrew (in which I pray the Psalms) and biblical/Byzantine Greek (my liturgical language). Currently I am a religious exile from my local Greek church, which is under occupation by hostile forces of the type you describe in this post. In fact, every member of my family, except my wife (because she is mere woman) is considered dangerous by the current parish priest and his followers, and have been forced out of the parish by one means or another. There is gathering a very dark force, a ghost of the worst in our medieval Christian past, that has been taking over Greek parishes one by one, and is now spilling over into other Orthodox jurisdictions as well. These are people who burn books ‘with their lips’ and people as well. I now attend an Antiochian parish, which is Arabic. It is still evangelical and Orthodox as the Greek church used to be when it was led by Archbishop Iakovos (memory eternal). I think the phenomena we are seeing and which you report in this post are part of the dying cry of a fundamentalism which knows deeply but which refuses to accept the end of itself. In fact, all fundamentalisms are actually signs, not of life, true spiritual life based on a relationship to the Living God, but signs of immanent death, which is why they can become so vicious and violent, as in the case of Islamic fundamentalism. Finally, after bringing true modernity and liberty to the world, in spite of the historic, institutional Church, its self-declared promoter but actual restrainer, the gospel of Jesus Christ alone will survive to the end of the age, as He promises, in a Church that knows no divisions, and in which everyone is ‘a first-born child and citizen of heaven’ (Hebrews). Meanwhile, in the Church as it is, we must witness, and wait.

Comments on: “A Christian should have no doubts,” or “Where they burn books…”

By: Roman Górny