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...."The work is amazing. People are already coming by," said Tumbas. "Miloje has accomplished in 12 years what it often takes generations to do." Now the walls and ceilings are covered with brightly covered religious images that represent scenes from the Bible. The birth of Jesus, the raising of Lazarus, Jesus' death on the cross. There are also drawings of saints and other holy figures that would have special meaning to the Serbian Orthodox such as St. Sava, a member of the royal family who gave up his crown to become a monk. "Iconography is considered the poor man's Bible,"...

Contemporary Orthodox Christian singer/songwriter, Jim Giatas, has written and recorded “If You Imagine” as an answer to former Beatle, John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” “If You Imagine” has generated significant criticism. One writer called it blasphemy. On MySpace, Vangellis responded that it was: “A terrible denigration of Lennon's ode to reason. And the fireworks are just beginning. “John’s song has gone virtually unchallenged for all these years and I felt compelled to write an answer to it from my own conservative Orthodox Christian faith.” It can be heard for free on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMM3WZ7AErA “I ‘ve always been a Beatles and...

Holy Michael the Archangel statue in Kiev, courtesy of The Roving Medievalist blog (The following is excerpted from Dom Prosper Guéranger's entry in The Liturgical Year for May 8, The Apparition of Saint Michael, in Volume VIII of the 1983 Marian House edition of the English translation by the Benedictines of Stanbrook.) "The very name of Michael urges us to honour this glorious spirit; it is a cry of enthusiasm and fidelity, for it signifies: 'Who is like unto God?' Satan trembles at hearing this name, for it reminds him of the noble protest wherewith the bright Archangel answered the...

Belgrade - There has been very little of turn thy cheek or love thy neighbour in the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) over the turbulent past year, but instead, plenty of fighting, backstabbing and hostility. In Belgrade, the capricious hardline Kosovo Bishop Artemije openly went against the Holy Synod, the church government, when it tried to restrain his heavy-handed tactics which led to fistfights among monks in the holy Visoki Decani monastery. To the west, two years after the tiny republic Montenegro claimed independence from Serbia, its clergy also wants to break away from Belgrade's rule. There, in the northern town...

Talgat Tadzhuddin, one of Russia's two competing chief muftis, has once again declared jihad against the US, this time because of its support for Georgia, according to a September 8, 2008 report by the online news web site Gazeta.ru. "The USA are fiends of hell who impose spiritual assimilation on anybody who strikes back against their filthy hands," the mufti is quoted as saying, further characterizing the West as "enemies of the human race." An August 29, 2008 BBC Russian service report carries an additional quote: "We [Muslims] should help Russia in its jihad against the USA. Muslims have experienced...

Georgians streamed to Sunday Mass a month after the start of a war with Russia and prayed for lasting peace while Russian forces remained dug in deep inside Georgian territory. A day before European Union leaders are due in Russia and Georgia in an effort to ease the crisis, Moscow gave no sign it would accede to their demand to withdraw its troops to pre-conflict positions. Nor was there any letup in Russia's aggressive rhetoric. At the Kashueti church on the main avenue in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, Georgian Orthodox faithful lit candles and lined up to kiss the glass pane...

On Monday, Georgia came to a halt or, rather, it came to life.  A massive human chain gripped the avenues of Tbilisi, the streets of Russian-besieged Poti, the squares of every city, the lanes of every village and the country roads that connect them.  Maybe Russian Czar Vladimir Putin watched on television the human chain that will defeat his tanks.  This is no maudlin deviation from this column's traditional realist analysis.  It is a sober argument that Georgia's human chain represents the march of history from which Putin has kept his country. The sky above Tbilisi threatened rain but loosed...

Full disclosure: I was raised Presbyterian, attended both Methodist and Episcopalian seminaries where I took Theology from both an Anglican and a Roman Catholic, OT exegetics from a Hebrew scholar, NT from an ancient Greek professor, and ethics from a Mennonite; served as an ordained minister in both “high” and “low” Episcopal parishes for almost a decade; married a Church of God pastor and two years ago was received into the Orthodox Church. If one can dine from the smorgasbord of Christianity, I certainly have eaten my fill. My choice of the Orthodox Church was a very thoughtful, deliberate one;...

"What these events show is the collapse of the myth of unity of Orthodox peoples and the collapse of the myth of the supreme peacemaking ability of Orthodox civilization..." .... Georgia has fewer than five million people, but is one of the most ancient Christian countries in the world. Its church dates back to the fourth century, far outpacing the Russian church, which dates its founding to the Baptism of Rus in 988, when Prince Vladimir of Kiev brought Orthodoxy to the banks of the Dnieper River. ... "This is a very complicated and long history of relationship between the...

Russia's military and political actions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are likely to have another unintended consequence: they are likely to make it easier and more attractive for Muslim émigrés from the North Caucasus to return there and change the ethno-religious balance not only in these two republics but in the region more generally. At present, Muslims constitute approximately 35 percent of the populations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but both Muslim leaders there and analysts in Moscow say that the new situation which has arisen in the wake of Russia's moves in Georgia is certain to increase that figure,...

Democrats have invited more than two dozen religious leaders to pray or speak at their upcoming conventioin with a notable exception: Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, a policy wonk and the leader of Colorado's largest religious denomination. Several Catholics, including former Colorado state Sen. Polly Baca, "Dead Man Walking" author Sister Helen Prejean, social justice lobbyist Sister Catherine Pinkerton and Pepperdine University professor Douglas W. Kmiec, are on the program. Organizers are also flying in Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios from New York to give the opening prayer Wednesday. But Archbishop Chaput's only contact with the convention has been a meeting...

AL-NEBEK, Syria (CNS) -- A sixth-century monastery in the desert of western Syria is giving today's visitors the experience of ancient spiritual life. Named after St. Moses, an Ethiopian monk, the Mar Musa monastery is about 20 miles from the nearest town, Al-Nebek. The monastery and its church are staffed with Catholic and Orthodox nuns and priests, and the compound has become a center for Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue. With its vegetable garden and goat herd, the desert monastery is a model of sustainability. "I felt like I had a calling to come here, and I felt at home in Mar...

Baptism for the Dead in Ancient UkraineBy Marvin R. VanDamA prominent contemporary Russian religious scholar, Sergey Antonenko, has studied and written about Latter-day Saint theology and ordinances in an admirably objective way. His writings about LDS work for the dead and the ancient Christian origins of such work are of particular interest.In an article entitled Research and Analytical Material, he seeks to explain the prevailing bias in Russia and other eastern European countries against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He sees this bias as being the result of an "objective lack of information or maliciously distributed...

MAALOULA, Syria (CNS) -- Aramaic, the language of Jesus that flourished in villages thousands of years ago, is being kept alive in the Syrian desert, about an hour's drive from Damascus. Today, Aramaic is spoken in Maaloula, an ancient mountainous town with two historic monasteries, Catholic and Orthodox, both built into the cliffs. Georgette Halabi, a tour guide at St. Serge Melkite Catholic convent in Maaloula, grew up speaking Aramaic. "I don't write it," she said. "But I want to learn." Local residents' Arabic education has never offered formal instruction in written Aramaic, but they have managed to pass down...

Prayer is about falling in love with God. Isaac of Ninevah was an early eighth century monk, Bishop and theologian. For centuries he was mostly revered in the Eastern Christian Church for his writings on prayer. In the last century the beauty of his insights on prayer are being embraced once again by both lungs, East and West, of the Church. He wrote these words in one of his many treatises on Prayer: “When the Spirit dwells in a person, from the moment in which that person has become prayer, he never leaves him. For the Spirit himself never ceases...

KIEV (AFP) - Ukraine's president on Saturday asked the head of Orthodox Christianity to bless the creation of a Ukrainian Church independent of Russia, raising the stakes in a simmering spat with Moscow. But Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, speaking during celebrations to mark the anniversary of the conversion of Ukraine and Russia to Christianity in 988, moved to extricate himself from the regional row. The dispute over the allegiance of Ukraine's Orthodox believers has already entered the diplomatic sphere, with a Russian foreign ministry official on Friday reportedly accusing Yushchenko of trying to foment a schism. The arrival in...

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Christian Atheism The title for this post sounds like an oxymoron, and, of course, it is. How can one be both an atheist and a Christian? Again, I am wanting to push the understanding of the one-versus-two-storey universe. In the history of religious thought, one of the closest versions to what I am describing as a “two-storey� world-view, is that espoused by classical Deism (the philosophy espoused by a number of the American founding fathers).They had an almost pure, two-storey worldview. God, “the Deity,� had created the universe in the beginning, setting it in motion. He had done so in such...

Reports are circulating, in circles which are intensely attuned to the continued warming of relations between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, of a statement and proposal allegedly made by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. If they are confirmed, it may signal a major move toward communion between Eastern Catholics and their Orthodox Brethren.It may also open the path to dialogue on communion between the Churches even wider. The Religious Information Service of the Ukraine, associated with the Ukranian Catholic University, was cited as one source for the articles. Another was a German Ecumenical Journal named after the great Bishops Cyril...

Britain's Jewish community is enjoying a demographic revival for the first time in 50 years because of massive growth in its haredi population. Almost three out of every four Jewish babies in the UK are born to ultra-Orthodox families, who account for 46,500 out of the estimated 280,000 Jews in the UK, according to Dr. Yaakov Wise of Manchester University's Center for Jewish Studies. By the second half of this century, haredim will outnumber secular ones, he said. "Though Britain's Jewish population is the fifth largest in the world, it has declined by 40 percent, from over 450,000 in 1950...

[The following joyful announcement is lifted from the Rorate Ceali blog. --PP] The Chaldean Catholic Diocese of St. Peter and Paul has formally received into its fold, those members of the Assyrian Catholic Apostolic Diocese who, under the leadership of Mar Bawai Soro (pictured above), had asked to be reconciled with the Catholic Church last January 17, 2008. One bishop (Mar Bawai himself), six priests, 30+ deacons and subdeacons and an estimated 3,000 faithful were received into full communion during liturgical celebrations for the Feast of Pentecost. Mar Bawai Soro has long advocated the Primacy of the See of Rome....

The Prayer of Jesus echoes in the Church at the beginning of this new missionary age. We need to make it our own: "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me."John 17:20-23 ... Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter "Ut Unum Sint" (On the Commitment to Ecumenism, literally "May They Be One") was a monumental contribution to...

BELGRADE, Serbia: The Serbian Orthodox Church urged its followers in an Easter message on Sunday to take a vow to defend Kosovo. The head of the church, Patriarch Pavle, and other top dignitaries said in the message that "Kosovo is part of every Orthodox Christian Serb's life." "We are urging all, from scientists and politicians to the youngest and most modest sons and daughters of our nation, to deserve and preserve Kosovo with our work and honorable living," the message said. Kosovo was the ancient seat of the Serbian church and the Serbian medieval state. But the region is now...

The Holy Father addressed representatives of other Christian communities during an ecumenical encounter at St. Joseph's Church, New York, 18 April 2008. Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, My heart abounds with gratitude to Almighty God - "the Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Eph 4:6) - for this blessed opportunity to gather with you this evening in prayer. I thank Bishop Dennis Sullivan for his cordial welcome, and I warmly greet all those in attendance representing Christian communities throughout the United States. May the peace of our Lord and Savior be...

WASHINGTON, March 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pope Benedict XVI will lead an ecumenical prayer service April 18, at St. Joseph's Church in the Yorkville area of Manhattan. Participants at the service will include 250 national and local Protestant and Orthodox Church leaders. St. Joseph's Church was built in the 19th century by the immigrant German community that settled in the area and today serves a diverse population. A Sunday Mass is still celebrated in German. The pope will address the group after a reading from Paul's letter to the Ephesians (4:1-6) and before the congregation prays the Lord's Prayer. At the...

BAGHDAD - An Assyrian Orthodox priest was killed in a drive-by shooting Saturday in Baghdad, police and an assistant said, the latest attack against Iraq's Christian minority. The priest, Youssef Adel, was shot by gunmen who drove up in a car and opened fire as he was opening the gate of his house near the St. Peter and Paul church where he presided, an assistant said. Christians have frequently been caught up in the violence or been targeted in this predominantly Muslim country. The body of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, one of Iraq's most senior Chaldean Catholic clerics, was found...

If you look up the verb “proselytism” in most dictionaries, you’ll find it defined as any effort to persuade a person to give up one point of view in favor of another. The word is sometimes used in a political sense, but most often it is used religiously. The most common synonym for “proselytize” is “convert”. This will come as a surprise to Catholics, and it requires clarification. For Catholics, who have a highly developed spiritual vocabulary, the standard definition is not adequate. In the Church's lexicon, proselytism typically refers to conversion efforts that fail to respect the prospective convert’s...

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi. Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb. His arrival in Assisi was described as "spiritual perestroika" by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper. "St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ," said Mr Gorbachev. "His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life," he added. Mr Gorbachev's surprise...

With his arms outstretched, his legs straight and his hands nailed to the cross, it is the image of Jesus's crucifixion held dear by Christians for centuries. But now the producers of a BBC drama about Christ's final days have challenged the traditional representation, saying they believe Jesus probably did not die that way. Instead of portraying Christ with his arms out wide and his legs straight down, The Passion will show him nailed to the cross in a foetal position, with his arms above his head and nails through his arms - the way, the producers claim, he may...

The Future Lies in the Past -- Why evangelicals are connecting with the early church as they move into the 21st century.Many 20- and 30-something evangelicals are uneasy and alienated in mall-like church environments; high-energy, entertainment-oriented worship; and boomer-era ministry strategies and structures modeled on the business world. Increasingly, they are asking just how these culturally camouflaged churches can help them rise above the values of the consumerist world around them. For younger evangelicals, traditional churches are too centered on words and propositions. And pragmatic churches are compromising authentic Christianity by tailoring their ministries to the marketplace and pop culture....

I have heard tales of an amazing work taking place among the garbage workers of Cairo since I was an undergrad. So it was very encouraging to read this article from the February Lausanne World Pulse: Transforming Lives in Cairo's Garbage Villages. Villagers collect garbage from city apartments and recycle it. They are the most despised group of people in Egyptian society. They are not paid by the government; however, they receive small tips from the people whose garbage they collect. The rest of their income comes from recycling garbage. It is one of the most ecologically efficient operations in...

ATHENS (Reuters) - Bells tolled across Athens and canon shots were fired as Greece on Thursday buried the head of its Church, Orthodox Archbishop Christodoulos, with a funeral befitting a head of state. Tens of thousands of mourners followed a funeral procession through the city centre to Athens cemetery as public offices and schools were shut on a day of nationwide mourning for the passing of the head of the country's powerful church. Christodoulos, who mended ties with the Vatican but clashed with the Greek state, died after a seven-month battle with cancer on Monday at the age of 69....

The head of Greece's powerful Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, died of cancer on Monday at the age of 69.A staunch defender of the role of the church in Greece, he died at his home in Athens, only months after plans for a liver transplant in the United States were cancelled."He was an enlightened church leader whose work brought the church closer to society, closer to modern problems and to young people," Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a statement.Condolences poured in and crowds of black-clad mourners gathered at his Athens home, where he died, as well as the Metropolitan Cathedral...

ATHENS, Greece (Jan. 28) -- The leader of Greece's powerful Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, who eased centuries of tension with the Vatican but was viewed as reactionary by his liberal critics, died Monday. He was 69. Christodoulos, who headed the church for a decade, was first hospitalized in Athens in June before being diagnosed with cancer of the liver and large intestine. He spent 10 weeks in a hospital in Miami but an October liver transplant operation was canceled when doctors discovered the cancer had spread. He refused hospital treatment in the final weeks of his life. He died at...

A burglar who broke into a Greek Orthodox bishop's car made off with quite a haul, but fencing one of the stolen items could prove difficult. Among the items stolen from Bishop Metropolitan Isaiah's car was a jeweled crown of gold and silver, which Isaiah estimated to be worth between $6,000 and $10,000. Isaiah, who is based in Denver and is bishop for the Northwest region of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, said he was dining with others at a restaurant when the break-in occurred. He said the car was parked in a well-lit spot. "We came out at...

Getting into the church was easy. The thieves probably walked in through the front door, posing as a few more of the faithful who come to bow their heads in St. John the Evangelist, the most important church in Capranica, 35 miles (56 km) north of Rome. They hid, waited to be locked in after the last people left, then went to work. They ignored the candlesticks, the alms box and the communion chalice: those are for amateurs — easy to grab, easy to sell. These were professionals, and they were after something specific: the Via Crucis, or Stations of...

2008 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Chair of Unity Octave, which has evolved into an annual pan-Christian week of prayer running from January 18-25. Prayer, it seems, is what is most required in the early 21st century quest for Christian unity, a quest that reached a peek of euphoria in the mid-1960s and that has suffered many disappointments ever since. Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, briefed his brother cardinals on the current state of the ecumenical enterprise at the consistory this past November 23. Kasper made several important points in the...

NICE, France — On a February morning in 2006, a group of experts in Russian art approached the onion-domed Russian church here and demanded to be admitted to take an inventory of the building and its contents — icons, liturgical vestments, incense burners, everything. “We refused them entry,� even though they had an order from a local judge, said the Rev. Jean Gueit, for the last four years the archpriest of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas. “It was a long morning,� he added. The cathedral, completed in 1912, was built with the “solicitude and generosity� of Czar Nicholas II, as...

To make Christmas less offensive to the enlightened, anti-Christian tolerants of this country, a reader named Alex proposes that the six million or so Eastern Orthodox Christians in this country demand that their holiday greeting be given equal display time in stores and on postage stamps. Instead of the West’s watered down “Merry Christmas”, the required salutation will be: CHRIST IS BORN! When greeted thusly by Eastern Europeans, all retail employees in America would have to respond with the traditional, “Indeed he is born!” or “Glorify him!” Further, Christmas decorations would have to stay up until after January 7th, which...

Baghdad - At least seven attacks using mortar shells, explosive devices and car bombs hit churches and monasteries in Baghdad and Mosul overnight Monday as orthodox Christians in Iraq were celebrating New Year's Eve. At least six people were wounded, including two guards, Voices of Iraq news agency reported. The attacks happened during the New Year's celebrations according to the Gregorian calendar still used by the Eastern Orthodox Church. On Monday morning, Iraq's Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, condemned the attacks saying he sympathized with the Christian brothers. "I stand with them against this brutal attack that turned happiness...

The Story of Christmasby Abbe Dom Prosper Gueranger By God's design the number 40 is most significant in holy Mother Church's liturgical year, especially in this particular liturgical year. After four weeks of Advent, we follow with 40 days of Christmas called Christmastide, with the main emphasis on the time between the Nativity of our Lord and the Epiphany. This year within four days of the Feast of the Purification, we follow Christmastide with the 40 Days of Lent, then 40 glorious days before Christ's Ascension into Heaven. Alleluia, indeed! "There is scarcely a prayer, or a rite, in...

According to legend, Saint Barbara was the extremely beautiful daughter of a wealthy heathen named Dioscorus, who lived near Nicomedia in Asia Minor. Because of her singular beauty and fearful that she be demanded in marriage and taken away from him, he jealously shut her up in a tower to protect her from the outside world. Shortly before embarking on a journey, he commissioned a sumptuous bathhouse to be built for her, approving the design before he departed. Barbara had heard of the teachings of Christ, and while her father was gone spent much time in contemplation. From the windows...

PRAYER TO THEIMMACULATE CONCEPTION O God,  who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, did prepare a worthy dwelling place for Your Son, we beseech You that, as by the foreseen death of this, Your Son, You did preserve Her from all stain, so too You would permit us, purified through Her intercession,  to come unto You. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ,  Your Son, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen. First, recite the Prayer to the Immaculate Conception. Then, recite the appropriate prayer of each of the nine days. Day 1 Day...

A document containing 46 articles that sets the foundations for the unification of the Catholic and Orthodox churches after their separation in 1054 was signed by the delegations of the two churches in Ravenna after a meeting in October, Italian daily Repubblica reported on Wednesday. The Vatican representatives at the lengthy consultations were headed by Cardinal Walter Casper, president of the Papal council for Christian unity, while Metropolitan Joannis Zizioulas led a delegation of the Constantinople Patriarchate. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church walked out of the summit in Ravenna because representatives of the Estonian Orthodox Church were present, who,...

Feastday: November 12 Josaphat, an Eastern Rite bishop, is held up as a martyr to church unity because he died trying to bring part of the Orthodox Church into union with Rome. In 1054, a formal split called a schism took place between the Eastern Church centered in Constantinople and the Western Church centered in Rome. Trouble between the two had been brewing for centuries because of cultural, political, and theological differences. In 1054 Cardinal Humbert was sent to Constantinople to try and reconcile the latest flare up and wound up excommunicating the patriarch. The immediate problems included an insistence...

"Had we angels' eyes, we should see the earth as a vast field sown with seed for the resurrection. The death of Abel opened the first furrow, and, ever since, the sowing has gone on unceasingly the wide world over. This land of labour and of suffering, what treasures it already holds laid up in its bosom! And what a harvest for heaven, when the Sun of justice, suddenly darting forth His rays, shall cause to spring up as suddenly from the soil the elect ears ripe for glory! No wonder that the Church herself blesses and superintends the laying...

Pope Benedict XVI is to hold an extraordinary consistory of cardinals later this month to promote ecumenical dialogue with non-Catholic Christians. The gathering of 202 cardinals from 67 countries will take place on the eve of the consistory on November 24, convened by the Pope to create 23 new cardinals. The debate on ecumenism will be led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity. It follows the Vatican's dialogue with Orthodox leaders at Ravenna last month and an inter-faith conference at Naples attended by the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury and organised by...

Czech Orthodox Church commemorates St. Gorazd's death under Nazis Czech News Agency Tuesday, September 04, 2007 8:49 PM Prague, Sept 4 (CTK) - The Czech Orthodox Church today held two events commemorating the 65th anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Gorazd, who was tortured to death by Gestapo on September 4, 1942 and declared saint in 1987. Bishop Gorazd was in charge of the St Cyril and Methodius church in Prague, in whose crypt he provided hiding to Czech parachutists after their successful attempt to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, in May 1942. The parachutists died...

  In this short paragraph are hidden 16 names of books in the Bible. Can you find them all? I once made a remark about the hidden books of the Bible. It was a lulu, kept people looking so hard for facts, and for others it was a revelation. Some were in a jam, especially since the names of the books were not capitalized. But the truth finally struck home to numbers of our readers. To others it was a real job. We want it to be a most fascinating few moments for you. Yes, there will be some...