Friday, October 13, 2023, Fordham University's Orthodox Christian Studies Department presents "Seeking Harmony and Compassion: Pastoral Care and LGBTQ+ Orthodox Faithful." https://t.co/3GluVY1bpc pic.twitter.com/CBf5XrELoq
— Orthodox Observer (@OrthoObserver) October 12, 2023
(Fordham) - Friday, October 13, 2023
1:30 - 5:30 p.m.
Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus
McNally Amphitheater (in Gabelli Business School, 140 W 62nd St.)
Reception to follow in Platt Court
We invite you to a conversation about ministering to LGBTQ+ Christians. The afternoon includes a panel review of the recently-published books Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality and Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy: Beyond Male and Female and a discussion of the opportunities, challenges, and resources for ministry among LGBTQ+ faithful.
Orthodox Christian Studies Center Events are free and open to the public.
Join Us!
Questions? Contact:
Orthodox Christian Studies Center
orthodoxy@fordham.edu
Posts
Here we go... It looks as if the Fordhamites have been gathering their forces.
ReplyDeleteI really wonder if Abp. Elpidophoros is intent on abandoning any appearance of synodality with other American jurisdictions.
What could possibly go wrong? /s
ReplyDeleteYou are who you are in communion with.
ReplyDeleteYes, it seems the Archdiocesan district leadership is endorsing this. I suppose the Metropolitans who have clergy speaking at it do as well at least implicitly. On the one hand, is there much to see here? The Church has been ministering to same sex attracted people for thousands of years. On the other hand, I would not be surprised if there is the advocation at this event for the GOA to go the way of much of mainline Protestantism or the Synod on Synodality when it comes to man's new so-called enlightened understanding of human sexuality. Nothing really surprises me anymore when those in power do things like this because there really is a de facto schism in the Church. There has been one for a long time. Lord, have mercy.
ReplyDeleteDoes our host or anyone know of a good (i.e. by someone who holds to traditional theological anthropology) review of the "Gender Essentialism" book? Just based on the title, my guess is the author holds to some sort of neo-Kantism when it comes to theological anthropology, and thus rejects the "essentialism" of the Tradition - i.e. , that we are created with a *nature* (given by God) and that this nature means we are this, and not that, and what is moral is this, and not that.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, the "Archons", the Fordham boys, etc. are just the intellectual spokespersons of the EP/GOA *charisma* - the "spirit" of modern theological anthropology that they have (largely unconsiously) accepted.
The last couple of years or so I thought the expression of this spirit in the form of women's ordination, modernist "rites" and moral acceptance of homosexualism, transhumanism, and whatever other forms of modernist anthropology will be coming down the pike might not occur in my lifetime within EP/GOA, at least not in any significant way. I might be mistaken...;)
To answer my own question:
Deletehttps://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/male-female-and-transgender-notes-theological-anthropology
Perhaps my favorite part is:
"...Without much help from scripture {the author has argued that Scripture nowhere explicitly or implicitly assumes not only the binary sexual reality, but any sort of human nature (what he calls "essentialism")} , we turn to Christian tradition. The church fathers and mothers, informed by a Neoplatonic worldview, believed in an ungendered rational soul, created in the image of an ungendered God. Their teaching has informed theologians for centuries. It would take German Romanticism’s love of binary oppositions to bring the idea of male and female gendered principles, inspired by the pairing of gendered souls in Jewish mysticism, to such disparate modern theologians as Sergius Bulgakov, Karl Barth, and John Paul II...."
Yes, the Fathers and the whole first millineum Greek/Christian synthesis lived in the philosophical soup called "NeoPlatonism", but they were not "informed", as in *formed* by it - on the contrary they *rejected* it, or rather transcended it by in the said synthesis. The author wrongly asserts that the distinction of sexual nature is a product of 19th century through Orthodoxies contact with Western thought. The assertion is absurd.
The EP/GOA is in deep deep spiritual trouble...will a reflexive conservativism of ecclesiastical incompetency save them from succumbing to an overt transhuminism? Perhaps...
I took a brief look at the article you mentioned in your comment. The mental gymnastics required to deny what is in the biblical text are amazing.
DeleteWhy the "Orthodox Studies Center" at Fordham hasn't been condemned by the Assembly of Bishops is beyond me. This group consistently pushes for things that go against Orthodoxy. If this segment of the GOA wants to be Byzantine Rite Episcopalians or Roman Catholics, then let them go ahead. For those faithful in the GOA who don't want to see this happen, you better fight like hell because that's exactly where Elpidophoros wants this to go.
ReplyDelete"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
DeleteThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand..."