Summer Reading

While shopping for souvenirs in the kitschy tourist block of Kruja, Albania, I spotted a book with a title in English, Faith and Fairies: Tales Based on Albanian Legends and Ballads, by Mustafa Tukaj. I didn’t know I was supposed to haggle, so I overpaid for my used, water-damaged copy. The English translation is quite new – it just appeared last year. Perhaps it should have been delayed to allow an actual English speaker to proofread it before publication – some of the translations are unintentionally hilarious. Of the ten tales in the volume, the last five concern the heroes of Jutbina, Gjeto Basho Muj and his brother Halil. The book begins with a scholarly essay summarizing the main themes and motifs that run through Albanian folk tales. The primary virtue exalted in these tales is faith (besa, in Albanian) – keeping one’s sworn pledge of honor.

Before I found Faith and Fairies, I was reading Arabian Fairy Tales by Amina Shah, who comes from “an ancient Afghan family of writers and savants.” The Arabian stories feel, somehow, more familiar and less austere than the Albanian tales. Perhaps living in Britain has taught the author what an English-speaking audience expects. Or perhaps The Thousand and One Nights has become so much a part of the English canon that tales from that culture no longer seem particularly exotic.

At St. Vlad’s, returning students can check out books for the whole summer. After I learned about this privilege, every time I found a book I thought I might want to read over the summer, I filled out a check-out slip for the book. On the second-to-last day of the semester, I took my pile of slips to the stacks, located all my books, and checked them out.

First on my list was Edessa ‘The Blessed City’ by J.B. Segal, a thorough, detailed history of this city, which was central to Syrian Christianity. Here was where Greek, Semitic, Persian, and Armenian cultures met and mixed. Originally home to Antiochene theologians who followed Theodore of Mopsuestia, Edessa’s theological school later switched sides and adopted the theology of Cyril of Alexandria. The city was also home to King Abgar and the famed Edessa icon, known as the mandylion.

Continuing that last theme is Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a “True” Image by Polish artist Ewa Kuryluk, an examination of the veronica, the mandylion, and other “true images” of Christ from a postmodern feminist perspective.

Tangentially related to these is Image and Liturgy: The History and Meaning of the Epitaphion, the 2008 M.Div. thesis of St. Vlad’s staff member Tatiana Penkrat. The epitaphion is an embroidered icon of the burial of Christ that is used in Byzantine services of Holy Friday and Saturday, particularly the Lamentation service. I am eager to read this work for multiple reasons:

• The Lamentation service has always been my favorite Byzantine service.
• Many recensions of the epitaphion display the Troparion of St. Joseph of Arimathea in the border and place St. Joseph himself at the feet of Christ, making this my patronal icon.
• Penkrat considers the possibility that the epitaphion is a recension of the True Shroud of Jesus, which some equate to the mandylion translated from Edessa to Constantinople in 944.

Finally, a book that has nothing to do with Edessa and its icon: Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo, by Ger Duijzings. Identity politics in the Balkans has interested me since my 1992 stint on a joint military intelligence task force that followed the Balkans. Since then I have followed Kosovo with special interest; Slobodan Milosevic made the province a particular focus of Serbian identity politics, and the Kosovar Albanians responded creatively to his provocations. Duijzings questions the assumption that ethnic and religious identities in the Balkans are clear-cut and fixed. Indeed, I have long been aware that Balkan villages have historically changed their language and ethnic identity when it was expedient to do so, much as they converted to Islam under pressure from the Ottomans. The whole idea of nationalism, as we understand it, is an invention of the 19th century, and it is even more inappropriate to project it further into the past than it is to maintain it in the present.

Vacation Reading

I am free for a whole month between semesters – my longest period without work or classes in 15 years. While I have been spending quite a bit of time with my family, especially playing with my nephews and niece, I have managed to get in some reading, as well.

I wanted to get a jump on my reading for next semester without over-exerting my brain while recovering from final exams and relaxing with my family. So I started with Orthodox Christians in America, by John H. Erickson. It is written at a junior high level, but it will be required reading for Church History this coming semester, as it is the only book ever written on American Orthodox History. It gives a solid overview of the subject, but leaves a lot of details to be filled in.

An excellent place to begin filling in those details is my favorite podcast, Matthew Namee’s "American Orthodox History" on Ancient Faith Radio. Before I left campus, I loaded up my MP3 player with podcasts from AFR to listen to on the road, including the two most recent episodes of "American Orthodox History." The last episode was especially interesting. Namee interviewed Nicholas Chapman about his research on members of the Ludwell and Paradise families of Virginia and Britain, who were secretly Orthodox in the 18th century. Members of these families were tied to the founding fathers of the United States, the governments of Russia and the UK, the Non-Jurors, and the Jacobites.

Next on my reading list was the children's novelette Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman’s take on the world of Norse myth: "In a village in ancient Norway lives a boy named Odd, and he's had some very bad luck: His father perished in a Viking expedition; a tree fell on and shattered his leg; the endless freezing winter is making villagers dangerously grumpy. Out in the forest Odd encounters a bear, a fox, and an eagle – three creatures with a strange story to tell. Now Odd is forced on a stranger journey than he had imagined."

Having recovered from final exams, I was ready to tackle something a bit more challenging. A few days ago I began reading Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread: The Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Anger and Meekness. The subtitle says it all. Since anger is a recurring theme of my confessions, this book went to the top of my reading list even before it was published. I plan to read this one slowly in order to digest it all.

Other books I am carrying around in my book bag include The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, by J. M. Hussey, another book on the syllabus for Church History in the spring semester; Mary for Time and Eternity: Essays on Mary and Ecumenism, which includes an article by my friend Virginia M. Kimball that she has been pushing me to read for a couple of years; The Challenge of Our Past: Studies in Orthodox Canon Law and Church History, another book by John H. Erickson, which is on the syllabus for Liturgical Theology; The Cappadocians, by Anthony Meredith; and finally, another book for fun: Arabian Fairy Tales, by Amina Shah. I hope to get to a couple of these before I return to campus.

Homosexuality Reading List

In recent weeks I have received a barrage of interesting articles on homosexuality and related issues such as same-sex marriage. As a possible explanation of why so much anti-gay material is now finding its way around the intellectual marketplace of the internet, I would hypothesize that, in the wake of the pro-gay blitzkrieg we have seen in the past three years in the media and the courts, the conservative counter-reaction is finally getting organized. I harbor no illusion that these arguments will be seriously entertained by the mainstream media or the government in the age of Barack Obama and his buddy Gene Robinson, but that tide could turn quickly.

In "What About the Children?", Canadian writer Tom McFeely discusses the disadvantages faced by children raised in homosexual households. The article's hook was the new position statement of the American College of Pediatricians, which reversed a 2002 endorsement of same-sex parenting: "Given the current body of research, the American College of Pediatricians believes it is inappropriate, potentially hazardous to children, and dangerously irresponsible to change the age-old prohibition on homosexual parenting, whether by adoption, foster care, or by reproductive manipulation. This position is rooted in the best available science."

The mission of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is to "uphold the rights of individuals with unwanted homosexual attraction to receive effective psychological care and the right of professionals to offer that care." LifeSiteNews covered NARTH's publication of a study that examined over a century of professional and scientific literature, which refutes the claims of some factions of the American Psychological Association, who assert that homosexuality is immutable and that attempts to treat it therapeutically are harmful. Blogger David Virtue interviewed Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, the head of NARTH, at the Sex and the City Conference in London. According to Nicolosi, "the three great pioneers of psychoanalysis, Freud, Jung, and Adler, all saw homosexuality as disordered." In his practice, Nicolosi finds that most of his patients experience significant diminishment of same-sex attractions. Those who do not improve are mostly the ones who are not motivated – teen-agers dragged in by their parents, or husbands pressured into treatment by their wives or pastors.

Dennis Prager, a Jewish theologian and radio talk show host, makes the bold assertion, "When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into marriage, it changed the world. The Torah's prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible." His article, "Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality," supports his thesis persuasively. Prager shows us how radically Judaism departed from the sexual practices of its pagan neighbors. The Jewish condemnation of non-marital sex was, no doubt, a key motivation for the ancient hatred of the Jews. (It should be noted that Prager, in passing, also repeats the Jewish view that male celibacy is a sin: a man who is unmarried is incomplete.)

In "Answering Advocates of Gay Marriage," Canadian scholars Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson enumerate 20 different claims (not all of them consistent) made by advocates of same-sex marriage, and they systematically demolish them. They begin by assuring readers that they are not opposed to gay persons or gay relationships, but only to gay marriage. They describe their approach as comparative and dialogical: "One of us is a man, the other a woman; one is Jewish, the other Gentile; one is gay, the other straight; one specializes in Western civilization, the other in Eastern civilization; and so on. As a result of our collaboration, we have been able to gather a great deal of evidence, both historical and cross-cultural, to support our answers to the claims made by advocates of gay marriage." They argue against the shallow, individualistic understandings of sex and marriage implicit in most current discussions. Instead, they argue that heterosexual bonding is fundamental to civilization, and that it must be deliberately fostered by a supportive culture. In particular, they argue that culture and its institutions must bind men to their families, lest men become a toxic force with no stake in their society. Their own country, unfortunately, ignored their wisdom, proceeding with the "massive human experiment" of same-sex marriage.

Finally, British journalist Melanie Phillips reports that the Conservative Party is expected to unveil a new policy to shore up marriage. It will be based on a report, expected to be released this month, which recommends "a sweeping overhaul of the law to strengthen marriage, including moves to make divorce more difficult and promote marriage preparation classes and 'family relationship centres', as well as tax breaks for married couples." Phillips laments that the Tories cannot see that their support for marriage will ultimately be undermined by their support for gay rights.

After reading all of the above articles and pondering them, I conclude that Western society's current thrust for the abolition of heterosexuality as a norm grows out of a larger underlying problem: Our society is already corrupted with the ideology foisted on us by Baby Boomers, which tells us that the world exists for the immediate pleasure of competent adult individuals, and anything that interferes with this in any way is unacceptable. We have no debt to the past, no obligation to the future; no stake in the culture we inherit and pass on; no responsibility for weaker members of our society, including children (except, perhaps, those we "choose"). The gay rights lobby is so immersed in this self-indulgent, individualistic ideology that it cannot imagine a contrary reality. But this does not distinguish it from most other special interest groups of 21st century America.

We will never reverse the onslaught of gay rights – or, more generally, "rights" associated with sexual identity – if we do not reform our society's entire view of sex and marriage. Barring the once-in-a-millennium true leader, this will not happen through the political process. We can no longer count on a self-serving mainstream media to confront us with hard questions and harder answers. For the most part, the academic world has insulated itself from reality by wrapping itself in ideology. Only a religious revival is likely to save our civilization from being consumed by a culture of self-indulgence. Otherwise, we can start reading Brave New World as a roadmap of the near future (though I think Huxley was rather optimistic).

Ecumenism Reading List

Last week, while following a trail of links, I landed on this interesting post from the blog Torn Notebook. It quotes from a book by Bp. Hilarion Alfeyev, who cites St. Gregory the Theologian, who was reflecting on St. Athanasius. St. Gregory, like St. Athanasius before him, valued the unity of the Church so much that he was not willing to permit division over petty disputes about doctrinal semantics. Both the passage from St. Gregory and the commentary on it by Bp. Hilarion are well worth reading. This is the second in a series of five posts on the subject of “Church Unity and Legitimate Variance,” all of which can be found archived here, though you'll have to scroll down a bit on the page to find them all.

Continuing a bit further on the ecumenical trail tonight, I found a couple of other interesting items. Earlier this month, Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III addressed Pope Benedict XVI on the state of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. His address included this section in which he recounted the Melkites' particular vocation for Christian unity. He concluded with this appeal:

We are indeed rather the Eastern “enfant terrible” in communion with the Church of Rome. That was the goal of the initiative of the late Archbishop Elias Zoghby in 1996: to be in full communion with the Church of Rome and with Orthodoxy. That may be a dream, an Utopian vision, but it is also a prophetic vision.

We would like to live, in the very heart of the Catholic Church, a life that could be accepted by Orthodoxy. Let us do so, Most Holy Father. That is the key to all real progress along the ecumenical way. Accept us, Holy Father, as we are: Eastern Orthodox, who want to live our full and complete Eastern Orthodox tradition in full communion with Rome. That is the really big challenge for the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, as has been evident at every stage of the ecumenical dialogue since 1980 and especially at Belgrade and Ravenna.

For all that, Most Holy Father, we need your prayer, your approbation and your blessing.

Finally, the Byzantine blogosphere is buzzing with commentary on the news from Timisoara, Romania, that an Orthodox metropolitan received communion in a service at a Romanian Catholic church. No one seems to know for sure what the metropolitan was thinking, but some are describing it as a bold step forward in ecumenical relations, while others see it as a scandal.

I will close with a list of blogs I have encountered that focus on Church unity:
The Anastasis Dialogue
Byzantine, TX
De unione ecclesiarum
Eirenikon

Reading List

Many of you are probably busy following the rapidly accelerating developments in the denouement of Anglicanism. I've been reading about it too, but I'm not going to write about it here – not today, anyway. So if you're looking for a break from stories about realignments, boundary crossings, gay bishops, canon law, and speculation about what the Archbishop of Canterbury might have said to his wife at breakfast this morning, you've come to the right place! Here are some things I've been reading that have nothing to do with the Anglican meltdown, along with my own mini-rants on these subjects.

In the Australian on-line newpaper, The Age, David Campbell challenges the careless English that pollutes our electronic world. I have always disputed the notion that the standards of grammar and spelling should be relaxed in electronic communications. E-mail is real communication. If you can't be bothered to use capital letters and punctuation and look up the proper spellings of words, don't be surprised if your readers don't expend the effort required to decipher and interpret it. (Unless, of course, they're your employees, in which case you can expect them to waste hours deciphering what it would have taken you two extra minutes to write properly.) One kind of error that Campbell attacks is confusion between sound-alike words. Two errors of this kind that I see far too often are the use of "illusive" for "elusive" and "adverse" for "averse." When someone uses a sound-alike word, it makes me strongly suspect that they are ignorant of the meanings of both the word they intended to use and the one they actually used. They are just parroting something they heard without understanding it.

Laurie Goodstein, writing in The New York Times, reports that prison libraries are being systematically purged of books on religion. The Bureau of Prisons has decided the standardize its libraries by limiting their holdings to only 150 books in each of 20 religious categories. This was done without broad input, so the lists are narrowly biased toward certain theological or denominational positions. The prisons are trying to eliminate works that might provoke intolerant or violent behavior in their readers – a reasonable motive for prison officials. But this method is backwards. Instead of simply banning potentially dangerous books, they are effectively banning all books that were not on the "favorites" list of their arbitrarily chosen anonymous book pickers. This is the sort of folly that inevitably results from an attitude toward religion that is implicit in much of our government and society today: that some religions are bad, but because this knowledge is politically incorrect we are not allowed to acknowledge it or act on it. Therefore, instead of condemning a religion that is evil or anti-social, the government must find some artifical pretext for dealing with it – and in the process it must equally inconvenience all other religions in the name of equal treatment. The only winners in this game are secularists, who are happy to see all religions inconvenienced.

Finally, in another New York Times article, Nicholas Wade explores the work of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who outlines the biology of natural law. Haidt "identified five components of morality that were common to most cultures. Some concerned the protection of individuals, others the ties that bind a group together. Of the moral systems that protect individuals, one is concerned with preventing harm to the person and the other with reciprocity and fairness. Less familiar are the three systems that promote behaviors developed for strengthening the group. These are loyalty to the in-group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or sanctity." All of these dimensions of morality are part of our human nature. Our liberal society, however, has de-emphasized the group dimensions of morality and focused nearly exclusively on the individual dimensions. Liberals have systematically lowered people's moral thresholds regarding the group-oriented elements of morality, just as totalitarians have systematically lowered people's moral thresholds regarding the rights of individuals. Those of us who truly respect human nature cannot acquiesce to either sort of reductionism.

Thanks to Stephen for sending me the first and second articles and to Bill for the third.

Reading List

After recently posting five times in two weeks, I have returned to a slower pace. To tide you over until I find the time and inspiration to write something new, I'll point you to some things I have been reading.

On his blog, Catholic in the Third Millennium, Dan Dunlap has been writing an interesting and informative series, "The Christological Divide that Anticipated Chalcedon." He explores the theological controversies of the fifth century that led up to Chalcedon's definition of the two natures of Christ.

In The Wall Street Journal Online, Alexandra Alter looks at "the toll one man's virtual marriage is taking on his real one and what researchers are discovering about the surprising power of synthetic identity." The man who is the subject of her article "Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?" spends much of his time in his on-line persona in Second Life, an internet-based virtual world. For a Christian, this article raise questions about the quasi-gnostic implications of technology that allows us increasingly to withdraw from the real, material world and live in an imaginary world.

The theme of the latest issue of AGAIN magazine is "Faith of Our Fathers: The Encounter of Orthodoxy and Anglicanism." Three members of my parish, all former Anglicans, are featured in the issue. Meanwhile, in The New Republic, Jason Zengerle writes about the steady flow of Evangelicals into the Orthodox Church over the past 30 years in his article, "The Iconoclasts." (Rod Dreher mentioned the article on his blog, Crunchy Con, and my friend Colin also forwarded it to me.)

OpinionJournal reprinted "Don Putin," a Wall Street Journal editorial by Garry Kasparov, in which he compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Godfather. Mr. Kasparov is the former world chess champion and a leader of Russia's democratic opposition. I think his analysis and criticism of Putin's corrupt, self-serving rule of Russia is right on target. Given the Moscow Patriarchate's longstanding entanglement with the Soviet/Russian government, I fear it will be hard for the Russian Orthodox Church not to be tainted by this corruption. (Thanks to Stephen for sending me this article.)

I'll leave you with this especially amusing "Pearls Before Swine" strip.