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Rival Orthodox Christian Visions

Orthodox Church Left, having failed to cancel me, is now counterprogramming
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There’s still time to register for the online lecture I’ll be giving on January 30. It’s the Schmemann Lecture, sponsored by St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary:

You can register for it here. Note well that the registration fee goes up after January 15. I will base my lecture on my book Live Not By Lies, with a particular emphasis on the challenges that priests and Christian lay leaders will face now and into the future. I will be addressing an Orthodox audience, and will get into Orthodox particulars, but my lecture is by no means only something that Orthodox Christians will be interested in. I will speak with all small-o orthodox Christians in mind. In my book, I interview Christians from Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant traditions who were persecuted by the Communists. They were not persecuted because of their particular confession; they were persecuted because they professed Christ, and were understood to oppose the unjust regime. I really think that all Christians (and even traditional believers from other religions, who are trying to figure out how to live and to raise faithful children in the shadow of this civilizational crisis) will find what I have to say provocative and helpful.

It turns out that my talk has caused a tempest in the teapot that is American Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Left — primarily academics — have been trying to get my talk cancelled. I oppose their efforts to turn Orthodoxy into Byzantine Episcopalianism, and though I would not be so rude as to name names in this lecture, they quite correctly understand that I am going to call their project what it is: a dead end that stands to do to the Orthodox Church what progressivism has done to Mainline Protestantism, and is doing to Catholicism.

Having failed to get me cancelled, they’re now counterprogramming:

Prof. Demacopoulos is a Fordham professor, a leader in the Mainline-Protestant wing of American Orthodoxy, and one of the people trying to get me disinvited by the seminary on grounds that I am neither academic nor cleric, and that I am somehow demeaning the lecture by being political (my lecture will not be political). No time has yet been announced for Demacopoulos’s just-announced lecture, but — surprise! — I imagine it will coincide with mine. Seems to me like a cheap stunt by people who are outraged that they can’t control the Orthodox narrative, but given that I didn’t expect that the Orthodox Left would fork over the money to listen to my talk, I suppose it’s good that they will have something to do with their time on that day. Interested observers of American religious culture will see rival visions of Christian engagement on display that day, from two Orthodox commenters. I’m biased, of course, but if you listen to my lecture, you will hear something about a vital future for Orthodoxy in America; the other guy will be talking about a way for the Orthodox Church to manage a decline into senescent respectability.

Please sign up for my talk, and encourage your friends to do so. You may not like everything I have to say, but you will be challenged by it, and certainly not bored.

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