9/8/2015
Ryan Hunter
Rating: 9,2|Votes: 43
The growing popular veneration of the Imperial Family today is also undoubtedly part of something else, a reality that transcends a purely earthly political dimension.
Rating: 10|Votes: 65
'I have a premonition. I have the certainty that I am destined for terrible trials, but I will not receive a reward for them in this world… Perhaps there must be a victim in expiation in order to save Russia. I will be this victim. May God’s will be done'!
Rating: 1,5|Votes: 2
Loyalty to Tradition, properly understood, means accepting that Tradition is not only something “kept by the Church” exactly as it was some fifteen centuries ago. It is something that “lives in the Church, it is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church ... a living discovery of the Holy Spirit in the present.”
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
The Church’s invitation to holiness, communion in self-sacrifice and the life-long process of Deification through love of God and love of mankind.
Rating: 7,3|Votes: 11
"Truly, by living in imitation of Christ’s loving example, we live the sign, we live the Cross. This is by no means easy—indeed it is a great challenge—but it is the most beautiful, the most fulfilling one ever offered to mankind."
Rating: 5,5|Votes: 19
For years I have endeavored to understand, yet never been able to truly understand or accept, one of the most important theological aspects of Roman Catholicism,
Rating: 6|Votes: 2
The Church’s Catholicity: Affirming Orthodoxy’s conciliar approach, its non-coercive understandings of authority and the maintenance of Church communion—and its emphasis on the mysterious role of the Holy Spirit in life and liturgy. Catholic and Orthodox, Infallibility and Conciliarity: Different approaches to the “theology of communion” and opposing conceptions of how the Church maintains its catholicity.
Rating: 8,7|Votes: 3
One of these “unmistakable inner convictions” of the Church is the refutation of the Filioque clause, which played a defining role in the eventual Schism between East and West.
Rating: 5|Votes: 23
"What I consider to be a massive pastoral failure on the part of the Roman Catholic leadership led me to question Church doctrine and dogma more than I had previously."
The Orthodox Church: A family of Churches united by belief in the central role of conciliarity, the pastoral role of bishops, and adherence to a common Tradition.
Rating: 6,3|Votes: 8
"Many Protestants and Roman Catholics are unfamiliar with the use of icons in Church services or private devotions. In Orthodoxy they play a major role in both, but this role has often been grossly misunderstood."
Rating: 10|Votes: 3
My first experience of Orthodoxy was, fittingly, also my first experience witnessing the Divine Liturgy, on the evening of Holy Thursday, April 1, 2010, at Holy Wisdom (St. Sophia) Greek Orthodox Cathedral a few blocks down Massachusetts Avenue from my university.
Rating: 7,7|Votes: 6
After years of spiritual wandering and disillusionment, and studying all religions, I am entering the Orthodox Church: How I discovered new meaning in the word “catholic” and the true challenge of a Christian life
Rating: 5,5|Votes: 4
The “Gorbachev Revolution” and Beyond: An End to State Repression and an Organic Orthodox Resurgence, 1987-2008:
Ryan Hunter, Nicholas Chapman
Rating: 2|Votes: 1
When we think of the pilgrims, who came to the American continent from England to start a new life and a new country, we think of Puritans and Calvinists. But how many of us know that one of the largest landowners in the state of Virginia, a personal friend of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, an ancestor of Robert E. Lee, was a pious Orthodox Christian?
Rating: 8,2|Votes: 19
One cannot hope to understand Russia today without first coming to understand its religious history. Russian Orthodoxy is the only cultural and religious institution that survived Soviet rule.
Rating: 5,6|Votes: 9
"After over 40 years of initial construction paid for by donations from across the Russian Empire and with imperial patronage, the cathedral was first consecrated on 26 May 1883 in the presence of Emperor Alexander III and senior members of the Imperial Family along with numerous Church and foreign dignitaries."
Rating: 9,5|Votes: 17
Is democracy “automatically” the best form of government? Where did the Christian form of monarchy come from? Ryan Hunter explores these questions and more on his blog.
It is well-known that in May 1896, at the last coronation of a Russian monarch and his consort, Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna were both crowned and anointed by the Russian Orthodox Church’s senior-ranking metropolitan. Russian tsars had been crowned from time immemorial, but what is fascinating about this last coronation ceremony was that many of the time-honored rituals Nicholas II participated in as the monarch were rituals first observed in 1730 at the coronation of a female sovereign, Empress Anna Ivanovna.
