Blog - Orthodox Church

Sometimes the World is Black and White: Archbishop Iakovos and the Lesson of Selma

March 15 marks the half-century anniversary of the culmination of a dramatic series of events in American Civil Rights history that have been seared into the country’s national consciousness, events now remembered simply as “Selma.” On that day, captured for posterity in a moving...

3/15/15 8000 Views

Selma at 50: No Longer Master and Servants, but Friends

Inclement weather throughout the country, hours of traffic, long lines and hours of waiting couldn’t keep tens of thousands of U.S. citizens from convening in Selma, Alabama on March 7-8, 2015 for the weekend marking the 50 th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. As in 1965, people from various...

3/8/15 8377 Views

MLK & Iakovos: Living Icons of Christ

On the first Sunday of Great and Holy Lent Orthodox Christians around the world celebrate the “Triumph of Orthodoxy,” a feast that commemorates the Church’s victory over iconoclasm. For over a century (726-843 AD), the Church was divided between the iconoclasts, who argued against the use...

3/5/15 16068 Views

Racism Condemned as Heresy in 1872

We censure, condemn, and declare contrary to the teachings of the Gospel and the sacred canons of the holy Fathers the doctrine of phyletism, or the difference of races and national diversity in the bosom of the Church of Christ. – Article I of the Decree of the 1872 Council of Constantinople....

2/25/15 18699 Views

The Omaha Anti-Greek Riot

The stories are rarely told, but in times past, many Orthodox Christians from the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe have been subject to bigotry and violence because of their ethnic background, their foreign accents, and the color of their skin. One example of this mistreatment is the anti-Greek...

2/17/15 10379 Views

The First Black Orthodox Priest in America

In 1907, a black Episcopalian deacon from Jamaica traveled to Constantinople, where he was ordained an Orthodox priest by a bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. He was then sent to Philadelphia with the mission to “carry the light of the Orthodox faith among his racial brothers.” This...

2/10/15 14483 Views

Honoring Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Remembering the Christian Origins of Nonviolent Resistance and Civil Disobedience

Every January, since its first federal observance in 1986, the national holiday honoring the life and legacy of the great civil rights leader and humanitarian, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., reminds us of the seminal role and moral good of nonviolent, peaceful resistance, protest, and civil...

1/19/15 24587 Views