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We are God’s Workshop

Reading the patristic texts is not always easy. And sometimes, at first sight, it seems disagreeable. The view of the physical world is rudimentary, simplistic. Some dissertations on the human faculties, on the five senses or on the structure of the body are deadly boring. Certain ‘genealogical trees’ of the virtues, certain ‘slotting-in games’ of the vices are even irritating. Certain notes on clothes and certain rules of behaviour are a nuisance or make us

Father Maximos and his Atheist Friend, & Saint Isaac the Syrian

One of [Father Maximos’] close associates was Thanos, an environmental architect who was for a while a professor of architecture at the University of Slovenia. Fr. Maximos and Thanos had been friends since their high school years. Upon Thanos’s return to Cyprus with his Slovenian wife and two children, he became one of Fr. Maximos’s key advisors on several of the bishopric’s architectural projects. But Thanos was also a self-confessed atheist. He told me that

MASHUP: Conversations about Cinema and the Church (Part II)

By Paul Lundberg With regard to work, changes in the American and global economy have undermined stable, lifelong careers and replaced them with careers of lower security, more frequent job changes and an ongoing need for new training and education. It’s no longer a straight upward path: getting your foot in the door, working hard for your first promotion, and then moving into management or trading up for another position in the same field. Young

MASHUP: Conversations about Cinema and the Church (Part I)

By Paul Lundberg Perhaps you’ve seen a trailer for the movie Cowboys and Aliens. And perhaps you’ve wondered, “Has it come to this?” Have we exhausted every possible storyline to the point that we now must combine genres to come up with something new? Apparently it has, and it boasts the star power of Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford-a.k.a. James Bond and Indiana Jones. When I first saw the trailer for this movie, conflict between

Truth and the Times: The Culture Conundrum (Part III)

An Interview with His Eminence Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh PRAXIS: Even so, one might argue, St. Basil was writing about Homer, and Homer wasn’t hip-hop. St. Paul appealed to poets, not comic books. They were appealing to the high culture of their day, to the classical literature, not television comedies. METROPOLITAN SAVAS: You’re right. But one of the distinctive features of our day, as opposed to theirs, is that the dominant culture doesn’t distinguish as

Truth and the Times: The Culture Conundrum (Part II)

An Interview with His Eminence Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh PRAXIS: How would you address the concerns of those who question the legitimacy of any attempt to communicated the eternal truths of the Gospel of Christ in the ephemeral terms of popular culture, those who characterize the effort as a trivialization, a casting of pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6), even a kind of blasphemy? METROPOLITAN SAVAS: There have always been, from the beginning of the Church’s

Truth and the Times: The Culture Conundrum (Part I)

An Interview with His Eminence Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh PRAXIS: Your Eminence, you’ve acquired something of a reputation for your openness to popular culture. How do you reconcile your role as a bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, a Church that prides itself on its fidelity to tradition, with your willingness to engage the rapidly changing and generally irreverent world of pop culture? METROPOLITAN SAVAS: You say “change” as if it’s a bad thing! I

Finding God in Popular Culture (Part II)

By Anton C. Vrame, PhD The Borrowed The second level of religion in popular media has two related dimensions. We can see pieces that are not based on a “religious source” or those that use “religious ideas” extensively. Babette’s Feast is a story about a Christian community by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) that was beautifully adapted into a movie. Many of the ideas it presents are deeply theological (and it includes perhaps one of the

Finding God in Popular Culture (Part I)

By Anton C. Vrame, PhD Walk into a museum, read a novel, listen to a popular song, or go to the cineplex, and most likely you can find God or “the religious” in these elements of our culture. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes not. If we treat these elements like texts to be studied and apply some of our skills as interpreters, we can treat these contemporary-popular sources in meaningful ways and “open them up” for

ON THE DENIAL OF SELF AND THE CLEANSING OF THE HEART

NAKED, small and helpless, you now pass on to the most difficult of all human tasks: to conquer your own selfish desires. Ultimately it is just this “self-persecution” on which your warfare depends, for as long as your selfish will rules, you cannot pray to the Lord with a pure heart: Thy will be done. If you cannot get rid of your own greatness, neither can you lay yourself open for real greatness. If you