Today, the world finds itself moving through a turbulent transformation between two systems. Collapsing at a faster rate every day are the foundations of a failed imperial world order defined by zero-sum thinking, consumerism and materialism which has defined our existence for decades.
Even though the US president is often seen to pivot in opinions about given points, the sum total of his maneuvering seems to work for the nation as a whole. The coronavirus pandemic is no different.
However, it does have to be acknowleged that the President has done what amounts to a complete 180-degree turn on his policy positions about the Wuhan coronavirus since the time it first made headlines back in December and January. He went from “it is not a problem” to “there is going to be a lot of death” over the three-month period.
We hope that this series was helpful in shining some detailed and critical light on the matter of church closures, particularly in the various Eastern Orthodox Christian national churches in the United States and around the world. We looked at the historical precedents in Christianity that show the Church trying tirelessly to help her people.
In part I of this series, we began to examine the present issue of Church closures in the West – Europe and the United States in particular, in response to the coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying illness, COVID-19. We tried to detach the hysteria and hype from this, and rather than make it a screed about the intrusion of the Dark Side upon the religious Christian right, we wanted to test current events against the following questions:
One of the most peculiar characteristics of the coronavirus pandemic and its effect on all of us is the massive campaign of social distancing that has led to the closures of churches or “skeleton crew” Christian religious services currently being practiced all across the world.
Our faith has not been in God, but in ourselves and our supposedly mighty civilization. But now, COVID-19 is showing us how mighty that civilization really is. Patriarch Kirill spoke on this topic today in his sermon in Moscow.
This is translated from patriarchia.ru for our English-speaking readers.
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Despite the facts we are outlining in this Christianity versus Socialism series, we are faced with the fact that there are a great many people – even Orthodox Christians – who ascribe to a philosophical point of view that is not Christianity at all, but socialism. Telltale signs of this include the belief in the notion that rich people should not be so rich, that their ‘excessive wealth’ is sinful and that money ought to be distributed among the people who are not wealthy.
Normally on Sundays I do not write news. This is in an attempt to stay close to God and the things that really matter. But today, the Sunday of the Triumph of Holy Orthodoxy, came with an extra added bonus that seemed very important to write about. The Russian Constitution is undergoing changes that will stun the West.
In this section of our Orthodox Christianity versus Socialism series, we examine the historical nature of the conflict between these two religions – a conflict that is recent, and yet ignored by even some of the people that experienced it directly.
In Part I of this series, we began analyzing the incompatibility between Socialism and Orthodox Christianity. This has become something worthy of study, especially recently in the United States as the rise of Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders has drawn more and more public and voter attention. Statistics show that a great number of “millenials”, those twenty-something young Americans, see no problem with taking the US into a new existence as a socialist state.
