Source: Fr. John Whiteford’s blog
May 27, 2024
Note: The article in question is so over the top that I considered not responding to it directly, but I think the people in my parish, and people who have been part of the parish in the past, or will become part of it in the future will need to understand what happened with this article, and what to make of it.
Sometime last year, Meagan Clark Saliashvili contacted me about whether I would agree to be interviewed for an article she was writing for Texas Monthly on the growth of Orthodoxy in Texas. Meagan is an independent reporter who is a convert to Orthodoxy, married to a Georgian man, and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. I was not unaware of the liberal bent to her past reporting, but I hoped since she was a recent convert that she would be honest and sincere, even though I had reasons to doubt she would be. However, I figured if she was going to write a hit piece, it probably wouldn't matter whether I spoke to her or not, and speaking to her might help.
As it turned out, the article was not about the growth of Orthodoxy in Texas at all, but was in fact an extremely biased attempt to paint me, my parish, and other Orthodox Christians as racists, conspiracy theorists, and authoritarians. However, the fact that I did talk to her, and allowed her to visit my parish resulted in her putting in many details that contradicted much of what she was trying to accomplish. I am not sure if these things were included in the original version of the story or not, but I was contacted by a fact checker from Texas Monthly (a first from any news outlet I have ever interacted with) and pointed out to him a number of relevant facts that did in fact appear in the article as published. On the other hand, I did not anticipate how this would negatively impact some people in the parish, and that is my biggest regret about agreeing to this.
...Read the rest at Fr. John Whiteford’s blog.
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