2016

(Previous publication:...) "P". At the Religion and Politics Conference in Alba Iulia, in Romania, we saw you were with a group of Orthodox bioethicists from the USA. Just how important is bioethics and are bioethical issues? Is it worthwhile for Orthodox Christians to spend so much time on them? "Cornelia Delkeskamp-Hayes": The conference in Alba Iulia focused on both political theory and theology. It engaged theology as a resource for cultural criticism. Our group of friends and disciples of Engelhardt share his insight about the cardinal role which the bio-medical complex plays in our own secularized Western culture. This culture is defined in terms of the Enlightenment and its moral principles, as brought to political salience in Europe through the French Revolution and ...

Ms. Jessica Precop traveled to the Dormition of the Mother of God Monastery in Rives Junction, Michigan to interview Father Roman Braga, who grew up and served in Romania under a communist regime. We are very thankful to Ms. Precop, Father Roman, and the Sisterhood at the Monastery for making this interview possible. Father, to start with, what can you tell us about the monastic way of life?  This is a good question. First, however, you have to understand the Romanian cultural environment when I was young – in the 1920’s -1950’s. The Romanian people, I think, were always inclined toward the monastic way of life, because being monastic and leading a monastic type life does not mean only to go and ...

Let us consider the cosmological and ecological functions of liturgy. In the understanding of the early Greek Church, liturgy is not merely the lex orandi of believers, but is cosmology in action. The fullest example in the Christian tradition of the metaphysical, theological and ethical unity of science, religion, contemplation, and asceticism in a cosmic vision that is profoundly unifying, reconciling and ecological is the liturgical cosmology and cosmic liturgy of St. Maximos the Confessor, a great theologian and philosopher who lived in the 7th century.1 Liturgy in the sense that St. Maximos uses it, and in the sense that the Greek Orthodox tradition has embodied, is not to be considered in terms of conventional church ceremonies consisting of outwardly ...

Few lines in the New Testament, I suspect, better anticipated the development of Christian theology than these from the Acts of the Apostles: Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had ...