The Great Divide: Secularism and the Church

Powerlessness has its own speech. Weakness has its own triumph. The world cannot be served from a place of power, but it can be served from the cross. On the cross the world stabs its own heart, but the cross is a school and to run away from it is to run away from the future. Fr. Bishoy Kamel

Fr. Alexander Schmemann prophetically wrote over 50 years ago (1964) that the liturgical crisis the Orthodox Church is facing is not liturgical renewal but the ideological crisis of secularism in the west being imposed on the church. This secularism Fr. Schmemann argues has destroy the beauty of the liturgy and has turned our church to a "Sunday Church". These words can still be used today. The church still finds itself stuck as a "Sunday church" not catering to the poor and needy (those deprived of Christ) but rather serves in how the best serve the church. Father Matthew the Poor summed up the work of the church as that who serves the poor when he said,

"The Church should never desire rule or ownership on earth. Woe to the church that possesses much! Woe to the church that has numerous investments stored away in the national and central banks, only to be eaten away by the moth! Woe to the church whose assets are large while her poor are hungry! Woe to the church which owns many acres and buildings but has no poor eating at her table! But blessed is the church which is satisfied with Christ the Word, and gives daily from her riches, that the people might claim ownership with her in heaven-possessions which cannot be buried, pass away, or perish". Taken from "Words for Our Time" Page 120.  

We should never think of the church as an institution among other institutions but rather as Fr. Schmemann puts it, the place in which the kingdom has been bestowed upon all of creation. The liturgy becomes this journey which leads into the dimension of the kingdom. It is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world. The liturgy is the manifestation of the kingdom on the earth. The issue with secularism is that it has divorced the "sacred" from the "profane". What has naturally occurred from this separation is a division between the "life in the world" and a "life in the church". This great divide has separated the church from its function to serve all nations. Nowadays, especially in the west, the church is perceived as an activity. The priest constantly asks people to do something for the Church. Their activism is measure in quantitative criteria: how many meetings, how much money, how much "doing". What is dangerous is not the activity itself, but the reduction of the Church, the identification of this activity with life in the church. The entire point of the church, the sacramental principle of its life, lies in taking us way from "activity", in making us commune with a new life, the Kingdom. The idea of the church, also demands that we wold bring into the world this experience of a new life in order to purify the world with the life and experience of the church. Sadly the opposite happens and we bring activism into the church, the fuss of the world, and fill the church with worldly cares. What happens is that the church ceases to produce life and it becomes a church of the world.    

We have to recover the meaning of what it means to live in the body of Christ. This notion that the sacrament is set our against, or existing outside the rest of life has taken hold amongst many of the church goers. This distinction between the sacred (sacraments) and profane (the world) has caused a great divide. With the coming of Christ and establishing the new life the scared and profane has been broken. All that we do and participate in has become an offering to God; a sacramental and a calling for the life of the world. We must begin to restore the imagine and likeness of God in who we are as human beings. By inquiring about the traditions, church fathers, scriptures and the church we will begin to restore this image and unite that which has been divided between the "sacred" and "profane". Fr. Schmemann summed up Christianity beautifully when he said,   

 "Religion is needed where there is a wall of separation between God and man. But Christ who is both God and man has broken down the wall between man and God. He has inaugurated a new life, not a new religion" (For the Life of the World 19-20). 

If we understand Christ establishing new life for us when we must understand Christ as our starting point in anything that we do in the church. Baptizing all nations begins with the person of Christ. We must turn our focus away from "activities" and "fundraisers" and turn our focus to Christ and his kingdom. If we cannot even feed the poor how then can we begin to feed ourselves who are constantly deprived of Christ? It is in the Eucharist that we find life. Once we come to the realization that all we do is Eucharistic (unites us to God) then we will realize that all of life, good and bad, unites us to that which has brought us life; Christ!

"And so the Eucharist is not simply a way of discharging our duty of thanks to god, although it is that as well. It is not merely one possible relationship to God. It is rather the only possible holding together-in one moment, in one act-of the whole truth about god and man. It is the sacrament of the world sinful and suffering, the sky darkened, the tortured Many dying: but it is also the sacrament of the change, His transfiguration, His rising, His kingdom. In one sense we look back, giving thanks for the simple goodness of God's original gift to us. In another sense we look forward, eschatologically, to the ultimate repair and transfiguration of that gift, to its last consummation in Christ". Fr. Alexander Schmemann

 The following are different sayings I came across that relate to this topic!

T.S Eliot, a Anglo-Catholic said in 1930: 

There is no good in making Christianity easy and pleasant; "Youth," or the better part of it, is more likely to come to a difficult religion than to an easy one. For some, the intellectual way of approach must be emphasized, there is need of a more intellectual laity. For them and for others, the way of discipline and asceticism must be emphasized; for even the humblest Christian layman can and must live what, in the modern world is comparatively an ascetic life. Discipline of the emotions is even rarer, and in the modern world still more difficult, than discipline of the mind...thought, study, mortification, sacrifice: it is such notions as these that should be impressed upon the young...you will never attract the young by making Christianity easy; but a good many can be attracted by finding it difficult: difficult both to the disorderly mind and to the unruly passions. 

Fr. Stephen Freeman in a recent blog entry entitled Grace and Psychology of God said:

In our modern culture, Christian belief has become divorced from Christian Church (this was an intended outcome of the Reformation). Thus people, self-identified as individuals, struggle to have a "relationship" with God in a manner that is analogous to their "relationship" with other individuals. The nature of these "contractual" events is largely perceived as psychological. How we feel about one another and what we think about one another is seen to be the basis of how we treat one another. And so in our cultural "social contract" we seek to control, even to legislate how we feel about one another. We imagine that eliminating "hate" and "prejudice", "racism" and "sexism" will impact violence. But despite that unflagging efforts of modernity, violence not only continues but escalates. With God the "contract" is often extended or renamed a "covenant," an agreement between a human being and God that stipulates requirements and behaviors and outcomes. Grace, perceived as a divine emotion or attitude, is part of the contract. God's promised manner of performance. The result of this imaginary divine milieu has been the gradual decrease of the Church (or anything resembling it). The Church as sacrament and mystery has been replaced by the sentimentality of the individual. People attend Christian assemblies because they "like" them and they encourage them to "feel" good. Teaching is interpreted as learning to manage the "relationship" (contract, emotions, obligations) with God.    

Fr. Johnathan Tobias says: 

Real beliefs actually produce real religion, like church attendance, prayer and charity. But "religious opinions" have no power to produce any real religion. The mere fact that Americas "agree" with a survey statement reveals only an observation that Americas have a positive opinion on God's existence, with the strong likelihood that they might not want to do anything at all about that opinion. If religion is demoted to the level of opinion, or, more accurately, "consumer choice," then like any other choice it can always be easily replaced and switched out with something more convenient or entertaining. Maybe something more "personally fulfilling" will come along. This state of affairs is really contemporary stuff--religion is not only privatized now, it is also commoditized. Like everything else, religion is passed through a "values clarification" mental evaluation that judges whether or not it is "doing anything good" for the individual. Is it entertaining? Is it fulfilling? Are my kids happy in the youth group? As I attracted to the leader and the crowd? Do I feel better about myself?     

What is Theology?

Theology is something more than just an academic study rather it is life itself. Life that is offered to the world through the person of Christ. Life offered to all as we live in communion with each other. What it means to see God and to live through his energies is to interact with other human begins and all of the created world. Theology, the study of God, tries to un-package this mystery through both the academic study and through everything we do in life. To understand the mystery of God means to live a life in communion with humanity and creation. The following passage is taken from a book written by a Catholic theologian who was influenced by the late Fr. Alexander Schmemann. In this passage he tries to define theology and how theology is lived through the liturgy. In order to understand theology we have to understanding the liturgy that happens "after the liturgy". We need to break out of the "Sunday church bubble" we find ourselves enslaved to. David Fagerberg unravels this more in the following passage.    

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Any theological effort involves a quest for meaning (logos).

But in this case, the quest does not occur inside the scholar’s mind; it is a meaning sought by the liturgical community. This is why Kavanagh calls their adjustment a genuinely theological effort. He discerns three logical moments in the liturgical event. First, the assembly encounters the Holy One; second, by consequence of this encounter the assembly is changed; third, the assembly must adjust to this change, and this act he calls theological.

“Theology” is not the very first result of an assembly’s being brought by the liturgical experience to the edge of chaos. Rather, it seems that what results in the first instance from such an experience is deep change in the very lives of those who participate in the liturgical act. And deep change will affect their next liturgical act, however slightly. ... It is the adjustment which is theological in all this. I hold that it is theology being born, theology in the first instance. It is what tradition has called theologia prima.

The scholar seeks to understand what the liturgical community understood. Liturgy itself is a stab at intelligibility, a search for understanding and meaning.

Theology does not take place over there in the world of reason and intellect, beyond liturgical ceremony which is only an indulgence in pious feeling. Liturgy is itself theological for reason of being a meaningful understanding of such questions as why God created, the destiny of anthropos, how spirit and matter interpenetrate, the cosmological presuppositions of the kingdom of God in our midst and its eschatological consequences.

Granted, because of its subject matter (theos) this stab at meaning is unlike any other that the human being makes. The subject matter of theology is God, humanity, and creation, and the vortex in which these three existentially entangle is liturgy. I take this to be why Schmemann calls liturgy “the ontological condition of theology, of the proper understanding of kerygma, of the Word of God, because it is in the Church, of which the leitourgia is the expression and the life, that the sources of theology are functioning precisely as sources.”

If the subject matter of liturgical theology were human ceremony instead of God, it would be self-delusional to call it theology; it would be anthropology, not theology. Worse, it would be ritual narcissism.

But liturgy is, in fact, theological precisely because here is where God’s revelation occurs steadfastly.

When a dichotomy is imposed between theology and liturgy, then liturgy doesn’t even appear on the theological map. It is off the taxonomical page. It is as if theology exists for academicians, while liturgy exists for pure-hearted (but simple-minded) believers.

This prejudice supposes a two-step procedure from the believer’s faith-expression (liturgy) to the academic’s rational reflection (theology). The working definition of liturgical theology I am uncovering challenges the supposition that theology only exists in the second phase."

Dr David Fagerberg, Theologia Prima

The Implications of the Eucharist

The liturgy is not only the work of the people but the greatest gift we can offer each other. As the following quotes demonstrate the greatest gift we can offer each other is ourselves. As Christ became the paradigm offering himself to show us the true human being (cf. John 19.5) then the Eucharist becomes the greatest gift we can offer to each other. It is not about what we can do or what we have to offer but rather who we are that unites us in the body of Christ. We are simply human beings and we tend to forget this point. Instead what we do is box people in. For example we visit a doctor and see a doctor, we go buy prescription drugs and see a pharmacist or we attend a lecture and see a teacher. We box these people in forgetting the all to human fact that they are simply human beings. By seeing the human being we see Christ and once we see Christ we can start the process of offering ourselves to each other. It is only through the Eucharist that we truly are made human beings. It is in our death that we are made alive as Ignatius of Antioch reminds the Romans. He tells them that in order to become a true human being he must not be stopped of his death..."do not hinder me from living, do not wish to keep me in a state of death; and while I desire to belong to God, do not give me over to the world. Allow to to obtain pure light: when I have gone there, I shall indeed be a man (human being) of God". By offering ourselves we become true human beings. Through the Eucharist we become true human beings.
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At the turning of the bread and wine into Your body and blood, our souls shall be turned unto fellowship with Your glory, and our souls shall be united to Your divinity...And as You are one in Your Father and Your Holy Spirit, may we be one in You and You in Us, that your saying may be fulfilled, "That they may all be one in Us".

+ From the Fraction by St. Cyril (Frace of "O Lamb of God")

First of all, our life itself is the greatest gift to give-something we constantly forget. When we think about our being given to each other, what comes immediately to mind are our unique talents: those abilities to do special things especially well. You and I have spoken about this quite often. "What is our unique talent?" we asked. However, when focusing on talents, we tend to forget that our real gift is not so much what we can do, but who we are. The real question is not "what can we offer each other?" but "who can we be for each other?" No doubt, it is wonderful when we can repair something for a neighbor, give helpful advice to a friend, offer wise counsel to a colleague, bring healing to a patient, or announce good news to a parishioner, but there is a greater gift than all of this. It is the gift of our own life that shines through all we do. As I grow older, I discover more and more that the greatest gift I have to offer is my own joy of living, my own inner peace, my own silence and solitude, my own sense of well-being. When I ask myself, "Who helps me most?" I must answer, "The one who is will to share his or her life with me".

+ Fr. Henri Nouwen, The Life of the Beloved, Given, P.113.

But then, what should we do? You hear every Sunday in the Liturgy words that say, 'Let us lay aside all the cares of this life'. Does it mean that we must turn away from the earth on which we live, from the tasks which are ours, from the joys and true sorrows that come our way? No!...It means that if we are dead with the death of Christ to everything which is destructive of love, destructive of compassion, which is self-centredness, which is self-love, which leave no space for anyone but ourselves-if we are dead to all this, and if we have accepted life on Christ's terms, ready to live for others, live for God, live for the joy and life of those who surround us-then we are risen with Christ, and our life is indeed hid with Christ in God, it is at the very depth of divine love!

+ Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, on the Bridal Feast, 24 December 1989

"Christ did not come to make bad men good, but to make dead men live".

+ Fr. Stephen Freeman

The Eucharistic Gift

Fr. Alexander Schmemann always had a way with words. In the following passage Fr. Schmemann is trying to show the reader that in our modern western (America) society we have forgotten our Eucharistic vocation and in losing this vocation we have turned the Eucharist to a Sunday practice. By divorcing the Eucharist from our day to day lives we have forgotten what it means to live a life in Christ. Christ is present in all places and fills all things showing us what it means to be a human being. Fr. Schmemann warns us that if we continue to separate the Eucharist and the life in the world then we have lost the meaning of living a Eucharistic life. I recommend this book as Fr. Schmemann shows us the meaning of Lent through understanding what it means to live a Eucharistic life.

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It is useful to note here that the Orthodox liturgical tradition, different in this from the Latin practice, has no adoration of the Eucharistic Gifts outside Communion. But the preservation of Gifts as reserved sacrament, used for Communion for the sick and other emergency situations, is a self-evident tradition which has never been questioned in the Orthodox Church. We mentioned already that in the early Church there even existed a practice of private "self- communion” at home. We have thus the permanent presence of the Gifts and the absence of their adoration. By maintaining simultaneously these two attitudes, the Orthodox Church has avoided the dangerous sacramental rationalism of the West. Moved by the desire to affirm—against the Protestants—the objectivity of Christ’s "real presence” in the Eucharistic Gifts, the Latins have, in fact, separated adoration from Communion. By doing this, they have opened the door to a dangerous spiritual deviation from the real purpose of the Eucharist and indeed of the Church herself. For the purpose of the Church and of her sacraments is not to "sacralize” portions and elements of matter and by making them sacred or holy to oppose them to the profane ones. Instead her purpose is to make man’s life communion with God, knowledge of God, ascension toward God’s Kingdom; the Eucharistic Gifts are the means of that communion, the food of that new life, but they are not an end in themselves. For the Kingdom of God is "not food and drink but joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.” Just as in this world food fulfills its function only when it is consumed and thus transformed into life, the new life of the world to come is given to us through the partaking of the "food of immortality.” The Orthodox Church consistently avoids all adoration of the sacrament outside Communion because the only true adoration is that having partaken of Christ’s Body and Blood, we "act in this world as He did.” As to the Protestants, in their fear of any "magical” connotation, they tend to "spiritualize” the sacrament to such an extent that they deny the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ outside the act of Communion. Here again the Orthodox Church, by the practice of reserving the Holy Gifts, restores the true balance. The gifts are given for Communion but the reality of Communion depends on the reality of the Gifts. The Church does not speculate on the mode of Christ’s presence in the Gifts. She forbids the use of them for any act other than Communion. She does not reveal, so to speak, their presence outside Communion, but she firmly believes that just as the Kingdom which is yet to come is "already in the midst of us,” just as Christ ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of the Father yet is also with us until the end of the world, the means of Communion with Christ and with His Kingdom, the food of immortality, is always present in the Church.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent. Pages 59-60! 

Let Us Look at Each Other with Compassion: On the Sunday of the Paralytic

The following is a homily given by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom on the Sunday of the Paralytic (after the feast of Pascha).
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So we are surrounded, all of us, by people who are in the situation of this paralytic man. If we think of ourselves we will see that many of us are paralysed, incapable of fulfilling all their aspirations; incapable of being what they longed for, incapable of serving others the way their heart speaks; incapable of doing anything they longed for because fear, brokenness has come into them.

How tragic today’s story of the life of Christ is. A man had been paralysed for years. He had lain at a short distance from healing, but he himself had no strength to merge into the waters of ablution. And no one – no one in the course of all these years – had had compassion on him.

The ones rushed to be the first in order to be healed. Others who were attached to them by love, by friendship, helped them to be healed. But no one cast a glance at this man, who for years had longed for healing and was not in himself able to find strength to become whole.

If only one person had been there, if only one heart had responded with compassion, this man might have been whole years and years earlier. As no one, not one person, had compassion on him, all that was left to him – and I say all that was left to him with a sense of horror – was the direct intervention of God.

We are surrounded by people who are in need. It is not only people who are physically paralysed who need help.

There are so many people who are paralysed in themselves, and need to meet someone who would help them.

Paralysed in themselves are those who are terrified of life, because life has been an object of terror for them since they were born: insensitive parents, heartless, brutal surroundings. How many are those who hoped, when they were still small, that there would be something for them in life. But no. There wasn’t. There was no compassion. There was no friendliness. There was nothing. And when they tried to receive comfort and support, they did not receive it. Whenever they thought they could do something they were told, ‘Don’t try. Don’t you understand that you are incapable of this?’ And they felt lower and lower.

How many were unable to fulfil their lives because they were physically ill, and not sufficiently strong… But did they find someone to give them a supporting hand? Did they find anyone who felt so deeply for them and about them that they went out of their way to help? And how many those who are terrified of life, lived in circumstances of fear, of violence, of brutality… But all this could not have taken them if there had been someone who have stood by them and not abandoned them.

So we are surrounded, all of us, by people who are in the situation of this paralytic man. If we think of ourselves we will see that many of us are paralysed, incapable of fulfilling all their aspirations; incapable of being what they longed for, incapable of serving others the way their heart speaks; incapable of doing anything they longed for because fear, brokenness has come into them.

And all of us, all of us were responsible for each of them. We are responsible, mutually, for one another; because when we look right and left at the people who stand by us, what do we know about them? Do we know how broken they are? How much pain there is in their hearts? How much agony there has been in their lives? How many broken hopes, how much fear and rejection and contempt that has made them contemptuous of themselves and unable even to respect themselves – not to speak of having the courage of making a move towards wholeness, that wholeness of which the Gospel speaks in this passage and in so many other places?

Let us reflect on this. Let us look at each other and ask ourselves, ‘How much frailty is there in him or her? How much pain has accumulated in his or her heart? How much fear of life – but life expressed by my neighbour, the people whom I should be able to count for life – has come in to my existence?

Let us look at one another with understanding, with attention. Christ is there. He can heal; yes. But we will be answerable for each other, because there are so many ways in which we should be the eyes of Christ who sees the needs, the ears of Christ who hears the cry, the hands of Christ who supports and heals or makes it possible for the person to be healed.

Let us look at this parable of the paralytic with new eyes; not thinking of this poor man two thousand years ago who was so lucky that Christ happened to be near him and in the end did what every neighbour should have done. Let us look at each other and have compassion, active compassion; insight; love if we can.

And then this parable will not have been spoken or this event will not have been related to us in vain. Amen.

Theological Illiteracy

Theological Illiteracy

A talk given by Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou on Clergy Laity Conference, November, 2010.

Father's talk looks at the relationship of theology with its connection to the society we live in and its relationship with the church. Many think of theology as a mere study of the arts. However, theology is much more than just a study. Theology is a way of life. Just like Evagarius said, "the theologian is the one that prays and the one that prays is a theologian". We have to grasp this in order to understanding what it means to live in the image and likeness of God. A lot of us struggle with this idea especially living in a society that does not speak the same language as the church. Many of our issues today stem from this notion that the society we live in does not speak the same language as the church. How can we reconcile this? The following will give us some ideas and notions on how to tackle this. I hope you all enjoy!
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"People are not interested in theology these days. We need to address the issues which concern them". I have lost count of the number of times I have heard comments like this, even from clergy and theologians. This seems to have become our mantra of defeat, and we have somehow allowed this world to convince us that theology is not relevant or of interest to modern man. As a result, adult catechism or religious instruction, where it has not disappeared altogether, is often reduced to an explanations are, therefore, sometimes erroneous. Furthermore, we find ourselves unable to explain the Church's position on a whole host of issues which are rooted in theology, for example: why can non-Orthodox not take communion or play an active role in Orthodox sacraments?

The first challenge for adult catechism, therefore, is to find ways to get people interested in theology and to help them understand why it is important. Furthermore, we must stop seeing theology purely in terms of a field of academic study, of interest only to priests, professors and theology students, and start seeing it for what it is: the very essence of Christian life and faith. The absence of theology in Christian catechism and the theological incoherence of some ecclesiastical practices mean that the average layperson is able to understand little of the Church's services, scriptures and rules. So often we hear people complain that they do not understand the language of Greek Orthodox services. But the issue of language is oversimplified, as thought the answer to all our problems is abandoning New Testament Greek for Modern Greek or English.

We need to address the problem not only of language comprehension (whether the solution us using a modern language or teaching an ancient one), but also the problem of what I would call 'theological and ecclesiastical illiteracy'. Whatever language we use, many people are unable to understand the scriptures, hymns and prayers of the Church, because they are not familiar with basic theological language, e.g. God the Word, Incarnation, Resurrection, Consubstantial, Catholic, Apostolic, Ecumenical. The problem of language is therefore first and foremost one of acquaintance with the language of the Church and of Orthodox theology.

It is important to find new ways of making theology fresh and interesting, and to provide examples of how theology has direct and practical implications for our whole ethos and way of life. For example, does believing that God is Trinity make any difference to how we live our lives and how we treat other people? And let us not make the mistake of assuming that everyone knows the basics about Christianity. A good many people, Orthodox and otherwise, have never had the Trinity or the Incarnation explained to them. We too often make the mistake of casually repeating biblical phrases which, while true, are meaningless to a great number of people these days. We forget that the Bible is above all the Scripture of the Church, and that it can be properly understood only by those who already believe and have been instructed in the Faith. "Christ died for our sins", for example, does not mean much to someone who has not been taught anything about the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the Fall of man.

The second challenge we face is the process of catechism itself. There is very little in the way of systematic catechism and reading material in the English language. There are many books and introductions to Orthodoxy, but they are invariably either too simplistic or too academic. The knee-jerk reaction of many clergy if to tell people to acquire a copy of "The Orthodox Church" by Timothy Ware. While this is certainly one of the bet, if not the best, written introduction to Orthodoxy in English (it is the first book on Orthodoxy I ever read and from which I learned a great deal), it is for many people today too difficult and heavy-going.

We are dealing today with many people who, while not illiterate, struggle with the language and style of this and other such books. But even when someone understands and enjoys such books, a teacher and guide is still needed to explain in simpler and clearer terms or in more depth and detail what they have read. It is careless to just tell someone to read and leave them to it. Books are an introduction, not a conclusion. But the level of literacy of many people today is very poor, as I am frequently reminded at baptism, when the godparent or candidate for baptism, though a native English-speaker, struggles to read the Creed in English. I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard Pontius Pilate said correctly and the number of times someone has not struggled with the word Apostolic or Incarnate.

This leads us back to the issue of theological illiteracy. No doubt people who struggle to read church texts do not struggle half as much when reading the Sun Newspaper or the latest best seller, but religious education has plummeted spectacularly in this country. They may have never heard of Pontius Pilate, and the words Apostolic and Incarnate are certainly not ones that they have come across before or very often. We must not equate this ecclesiastical and theological illiteracy with stupidity, any more than we should equate someone who is not familiar with economics with stupidity for know knowing what gross profit and net profit mean, or someone who is not advanced in computer literacy for not knowing JavaScript. On the one hand, we should not patronize our pupils and talk to them in such a way that they feel like they are being treated like idiots, presenting them with theology fit for a 6 year old child-many of them are well educated and are capable of understanding complex subjects-but on the other hand we should not assume that everybody had had adequate R.E lessons at school. Often what someone knows will become clear during catechism itself, and we should make sure that the person feels comfortable revealing that they do not know what certain words mean. When doing group catechism, this difficulty becomes greater, because we are then dealing with variety of levels, and trying to pitch things at a level suitable for all is not always easy. In such cases, it is important that the subject being taught is presented in a fresh way, so that those who already know (or think they know) the subject can still engage in it and learn. Furthermore, there are so many opportunities here to correct the misconceptions that many have on issues such as Holy Communion, icons, memorial services etc.

Recently, I began group catechism classes at All Saints' Cathedral (Camden Town, London) ever Saturday, which are attended by approximately 10-15 people every week, most of whom are between the ages of 20 and 40. Some are Greek Orthodox Christians who wish to learn more about their faith, others are non-Orthodox Christians who are curious about Orthodoxy, while others are planning to be baptized in the near future. Even those whose imminent reception into the Orthodox Church has been prompted by plans to marry an Orthodox partner have a sincere interest in theology. What has been pleasantly surprising about these sessions is the fascination with theology that the pupils have. The material I am using for the sessions is largely my own, though I do sometimes borrow from other sources. In addition, a good number of people who are unable to attend receive written material for the sessions by e-mail, and follow the lessons that way.

The sessions are half-hour talks (sometimes including supplementary handouts and visual aids) plus another half-hour of questions and answers, which I try to make sure are relevant to the topic in question. The sessions are quite theological-dealing with topics such as Trinity, Ecclesiology, Ancestral Sin, etc. but also practical, when covering liturgical subjects. But I think it is about time we began seriously considering a catechetical book for our Archdiocese which all of our clergy and teachers could use to teach the faith systematically, as well as simple but comprehensive reading material for our parishioners and catechumens.

There is another important for of catechism, apart from classes, which I have not touched upon, and that is the sermon. The sermon is, above all, a catechism, but unfortunately this aspect of preaching has largely disappeared from the Liturgy and other services. Sermons should always be instructive, be they sermons on the gospel reading, the Divine Liturgy or the feast of the day. Developing a structured series of sermons for a long period of time is difficult and time-consuming, and it can be problematic when the congregation varies greatly from one Sunday to another. But sermons are an ideal way to teach the Faith on a weekly basis in the context of worship. It is here that we can work on improving the theological literacy of the people, with explanations of such words and terms as 'The Word of God', 'the Fathers of the 1st Ecumenical Council', 'the Liturgy of the Pre-sanctified Gifts', 'Dormition', 'Incarnation', an so on. Fr. George Zafeirkos and I have recently begun discussing the idea of dedicating the Sunday Sermons at All Saints' Cathedral to explaining the Divine Liturgy. these will be given alternately in Greek and English over the period of a year or maybe a few months. We hope that this may prove to be an effective form of liturgical catechism.

These are but a few ideas for how we can go about bringing theology back into the lives and concerns of our people and restoring a degree of theological literacy among the laity. Theology matters! It is what the Orthodox Church is all about. For if God becoming a man, dying for our sins, rising from the dead and granting us all eternal life is not theology, I don't know what is. Theology should therefore be the concern not only of a select few, but of every Orthodox Christian. While we must of course learn to adapt our methods of teaching according to the different age groups and cultural backgrounds of our people, the Orthodoxy we teach them must be the same. For theology is relevant precisely because it concerns eternal truths about God and man, about the Church and the salvation of the world - things which should surely concern all Orthodox Christians. If it does not interest them, then we should try to find ways to engage them in theology, not brush it aside. Only when we begin to understand and teach that theology is relevant to all can we begin to properly instruct our people in the Orthodox Faith.      

On Preaching and Christian Identity

The following is a question and answer with Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. These question do not have a particular theme as they range from topics on the WCC, to mission and preaching. Metropolitan Anthony was a bishop in England who truly lived for others. A selfless man who gave up a lot in order to see others smile. For more info on Metropolitan Anthony follow this link for more details.  

Full dialogue can be found here.

Question: How do you answer those who say that this is again a religious message? What is the difference between a religious message and the Gospel message?

Answer: "For one thing, I am not ashamed of bringing a religious message, because it is not my fault that Bonhoeffer has made of 'religious' almost a dirty word, and others have followed suit. If you mean by religion, religion as understood in the ancient world or by people who use the terminology of the Gospel with the mentality of idolatry, if religion is a system of methods and means and ways by which one can trap God and hold him prisoner and make him do what we want, then of course we have no religious message because the whole Gospel is a testimony that this is no approach. What one could say about Christianity is that Christianity is the end of religion in the sense that we need no longer hunt God down and hold him. God is in our midst, Emmanuel. God is one of us, Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of God become the real son of man. In that sense we don't need to look for God anywhere. He is in our midst, and not only the fullness of the godhead in Jesus, but the fullness of that godhead in the Spirit given to the Church and given to each of its members. In the presence and the relatedness to the Father, as St. Paul puts it: 'Our life is hid with Christ in God.' In that sense it is no religion."

Question: Let me now ask you a very blunt question-What do you evangelize for? What is the object of your evangelism?

Answer: "I was a totally nasty unbeliever until I was in my middle teens. I had never read the Gospel. I had never held one in my hands, never heard it; I made sure that I never got to church. I was totally outside this realm of things. At fifteen I read the Gospel for the first time at a moment of very deep despair and negativism, when life..., people... made absolutely no sense, had absolutely no meaning to the point that I had determined to commit suicide if I did not find a meaning within a year. A meeting face to face with Christ as my living God, in the living, risen person of Jesus of Nazareth, made an absolute difference to everything. And this is what I have got to speak about: the discovery of meaning who is a person; the discovery of truth who is someone; the discovery of the end which is not ahead of us but which is come now and is even behind us, 2,000 years back; the discovery or eternal life which is not for tomorrow when I will be dead but for today because one lives it. And all that is in the context of the total Gospel with all its narrowness, its sharpness, its refusal of any compromise with anything which is not that truth which is declared there."

Question: The young people who through your preaching come in various ways to a wonderful experience of Jesus Christ, a personal meeting with him, do they all become professional religious, or do they go into trade-unions, into political life, into the social struggle of society, where they encounter not only the problem of relation of persons to person but of class to class?

Answer: "No, they certainly do not become sort of professional religious. That would be really too bad. I think the Christian must be present everywhere. You know, by profession I am a physician; I am not a theologian. I have never been in a theological school. I did five years of war surgery and five years of general practice. That's my background. And I have met people of very different walks of life in both capacities. Now, what I feel is that what is characteristic of the Christian individual and of the Christian community is that both are eschatological realities. They are a presence of eternity, of the world to come, of the final summing up of history already here within time. And it is in that capacity and as such that we should be present in all the walks of life. Now, that is a very important thing, because I do not believe that Christians should be in politics, social work, medicine, or anywhere else simply as human partners, but as people who have another dimension. Not as people who are prepared, say, on the ground of the Gospel's commandments to do things better or slightly differently, or with more love, because all that is untrue. There are millions of people who do things better and with more love than we do. But we can introduce through our very presence, without saying a word about it, a dimension which is properly the dimension of God, and that is our vocation."

Question: I have only one more question, and it is this: you are a member of the WCC Central Committee. You work in the Christian Medical Commission and at the same time your heart is warm with the desire to convey the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What would be your advice to the WCC, or if not advice, your brotherly message? Is there something that the WCC can do, should do, must do?

Answer: "But on that level the witness to the Gospel must be made, perhaps first of all, in the shining of a Christian eschatological personality or in the resplendence of a Christian eschatological body of people and secondly, in the supernatural way in which we can work sacrificially, loving beyond the measure of human love and with a degree of forgetfulness of self which will leave us without any awareness of self, so that only others can assert us because we have forgotten to assert ourselves at all. Our witness comes not by speaking in quotations of the Gospel, but in the spirit of the Gospel, in being leaven in the dough, so that every situation is leavened, every situation is made new by the salt added to it. And in that respect, may I say that I do not believe that the people of God are the people who possess Bible in 250 languages, can read it aloud to others or can make timely or untimely, true or doubtful quotations from it. The people of God as I see it in the Old and the New Testament, are the people who are so rooted in God, know him in such a personal way that they could write and proclaim the Bible, not only rehearse and repeat it. And unless we learn that approach to our message, unless we become the people who can re-proclaim the whole Bible — I am not, obviously, saying 're-write it' as it was written — bringing to people the message of the Bible whether the Bible exists or not physically, we are not yet the people of God. We are simply people repeating other people's messages, while we play the role of a postman delivering a letter, and that is not enough. If we were the people of God in that true sense, we would not make people angry by eternally quoting at them things which have gone stale on them or go against the grain. We would be a revelation of what there is to be revealed."