The question was recently put to me whether I could bring myself to pull the switch to execute someone sitting in an electric chair or release the trapdoor to hang someone standing in a hangman’s noose. The one asking the question did...
I cannot have been the only one to have noticed on Facebook and other public forums an overwhelming use of ad hominem arguments when discussing controversial topics. Whether the hot-button topic is abortion, the ordination of women,...
In the rough and tumble world of online discussion of just about any current theological issue, eventually one is sure to come across a denunciation of the God of the Old Testament. His detractors deride Him as cranky, vengeful,...
Lately I was watching an old favourite British television series, “The Prisoner”, starring Patrick McGoohan. The series ran for a mere 17 episodes, ending in 1968. In its time it was ground-breaking, combining psychological drama with...
When I was converted to Christ through the Jesus People movement, there were no praise bands. (A “praise band”, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a band with electric guitars and drums which plays “contemporary Christian music” at...
Saturday morning began with a thunderbolt: a dear fellow-priest from my diocese began his phone call to me early that morning with the words, “Did you hear about Fr. Alexander?” I had not heard about Fr. Alexander Pihach, but soon was...
The burning of books is objectionable on principle. Indeed, whenever I hear of books being burnt, I always think of the famous quote by Heinrich Heine, who was born a Jew but converted to Christianity, and who died 1856. He said, “Where...
On September 21, 2016, the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church met in Chieti and released an agreed statement with the long title, Synodality and Primacy during the first...
How much do you need to know to become a catechumen in the Orthodox Church? That was the question put to me by an inquirer at St. Herman’s one Sunday several months ago. The young lady in question was drawn to Orthodoxy and her heart...
If we read the New Testament through the lenses of our modern egalitarian culture we may miss some things in it which were shocking to the original readers and hearers, especially in the ministry of Jesus. We moderns in the West do not...
Time Magazine recently featured the story of a woman who decided to become a man and then decided to have a baby, which she eventually did. The story was provocatively entitled, “My Brother’s Pregnancy and the Making of a New American...
Missionary work no longer commands the cultural respect it once did. Indeed, missionary work is often grouped together with other forms of cultural and colonial imperialism, and derided as an insensitive imposition of foreign culture,...
It seems to me that self-described Christian Feminism is becoming increasingly shrill (I was struck by this when reading recently some feminist commentaries on the Song of Solomon). Orthodox Feminists, however, seems to offer a kinder,...
Sometimes I feel a little sorry for the Pope—he seems to have the unenviable task of changing Roman Catholic dogma and practice while all the time denying that he is doing any such thing. Take for example his apparent recent desire to...
Our Divine Liturgy here at my parish of St. Herman’s does not actually occur in Langley, B.C.—nor, if it comes to that, does the Eucharist you attend occur in the city in which you live. Rather, both of our Liturgies take place in the...
