The Revival of the Order of Deaconess by the Patriarchate of Alexandria – Public Orthodoxy

The Revival of the Order of Deaconess by the Patriarchate of Alexandria – Public Orthodoxy: The Center of Ecumenical, Missiological and Environmental Studies “Metropolitan Panteleimon Papageorgiou” (CEMES) has recently published the Proceedings of its international conference on “Deaconesses, the Ordination of Women and Orthodox Theology”, both its English version and the Greek version.

America’s New Religion: Fox Evangelicalism - The New York Times

America’s New Religion: Fox Evangelicalism - The New York Times:

...the nationalistic, race-baiting, fear-mongering form of politics enthusiastically practiced by Mr. Trump and Roy Moore in Alabama is central to a new strain of American evangelicalism. This emerging religious worldview — let’s call it “Fox evangelicalism” — is preached from the pulpits of conservative media outlets like Fox News. It imbues secular practices like shopping for gifts with religious significance and declares sacred something as worldly and profane as gun culture.

After Trump and Moore, some evangelicals are finding their own label too toxic to use - The Washington Post

After Trump and Moore, some evangelicals are finding their own label too toxic to use - The Washington Post:

In the 1960s and 1970s, there was evangelical momentum behind progressive causes and candidates, including Democratic President Jimmy Carter, who described himself using the evangelical term “born again.” But with the rise of the religious right in the 1980s, the ties between white evangelicalism and the Republican Party strengthened.

FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN, SJ: WHY SHOULD AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN BE INTERESTED IN HIM? by Jim Forest | ORTHODOXY IN DIALOGUE

FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN, SJ: WHY SHOULD AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN BE INTERESTED IN HIM? by Jim Forest | ORTHODOXY IN DIALOGUE:

“And just what is it,” my friend asked, “that was so Christ-revealing about Berrigan’s life?”

When he died last year, age 94, obituaries focused on the anti-war aspects of Berrigan’s life: he was eighteen months in prison for burning draft records in a protest against conscription of the young into the Vietnam War; then there was a later event in which he was one of eight people who hammered on the nose cone of a nuclear-armed missile. No one has kept count of his numerous brief stays in jail for other acts of war protest. He was handcuffed more than a hundred times.

The Advent Question | internetmonk.com

How much Christmas should be allowed during Advent?

The Advent Question | internetmonk.com:

I remember once watching a dramatic show about life in post-WWII America. A certain episode took place during the Christmas season. One character, an aristocratic woman, expressed how appalled she was that stores were decorated for Christmas the week before the holiday! And that people were buying and putting up Christmas trees before Christmas Eve! Horrors! How gauche!

The great capitalistic industrial-consumer complex has certainly changed all of that.

A one-man Dead Poets Society

The stories of dead poets, inspired mostly by their graves. 



Notes from a Common-place Book: More Travels In the U.K: Some Misfits Along the Way:

I had my regular lunch an old friend. He is a bit conventional in his view of the way things should be. The fact that things were never actually like that in reality is besides the point. I was talking about poetry in general and made the observation that so many poets seemed to be tortured souls, whether it be by alcohol, sex, or substance abuse, and this tension in their lives fueled their poetic impulses. My friend was unwilling to grant the point, and I countered that I thought very little poetry emanated from the easy chairs of suburbia. He was still having none of it, so I herded the conversation on to more well-nibbled pastures.