Category: political

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”

Genesis 1:27

“You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

Matthew 22:37-40

Racism is an affront and an insult to God. Jesus Christ, the incarnate logos and word of God made flesh suffered the humiliation of the cross for the salvation of the whole of mankind regardless of ethnicity, ancestry, or skin color. Racism is an obscenity and a blasphemy against what God created, and a denial of what the Son of God, the incarnate logos, suffered on the cross for.

Throughout history, there have been Christians who have been practitioners of racism. These people were not Christians, they were heretics and blasphemers. These include the western Christian countries who were involved in the transatlantic slave trade against people from Africa, and American Protestants who first supported slavery and then racial segregation, as well as outright murder of African Americans.

Another form of race hatred has been in the form of anti semitism. Anti Semitism was once religious (Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants have all been complicit in this sin at one point or another in history). By the twentieth century, as Western Europe underwent a process of secularization, Anti Semitism became a matter of racial hatred.

This was the case when Hitler seized power in 1933. By 1942, what the Germans called “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in which the Jews were to be exterminated became official state policy. Six million Jews were slaughtered in the Shoah (Holocaust).

The Nazis may have been the most ambitious and depraved group of racists. They had entire groups of people chosen for either outright extermination or enslavement. Jews and Gypsies were chosen to be wiped out of existence. Slavic peoples such as the Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Czecks were considered “untermenschen” (subhuman).

The Slavic countries were treated far worse than the other countries of Nazi occupied Europe. They were considered in the Nazi racial hierarchy to be just above Jews. These Slavic peoples suffered horribly under Nazi rule. Of course, Hitler hated the Russians with an enormous passion.

Operation Barbarossa, the name of the Nazi invasion of Russia which began on June 22, 1941 was waged as a racial war of conquest against the “inferior” and “asiatic” Russians. During the war, Josef Stalin turned to help from the Russian Orthodox Church to help motivate the Russian people to fight the Nazis. The murderer of Orthodox Bishops, Priests, and faithful turned to the Holy Church of God for assistance against the pagan, racist, and occult ideology of Nazism.

Several years ago a book was published entitled, “Ataturk in the Nazi imagination” by Stefan Ihrig. Ihrig having researched Nazi party newspapers from the 1920’s found that the Nazis were greatly inspired by the founder of modern Turkey, the so called “Ataturk” whose name was Mustafa Kemal.

Kemal was a notorious Turkish racist who presided over the final genocide of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians that had begun under the auspices of his predecessors known as “the Young Turks” in 1914. Ihrig writes in this book that the Turkish genocide of Christians served as a model for the Holocaust of the Jews under Hitler. Racism is an act of war against God and the denial of the Biblical teaching of creation.

Saint Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Racism is a cancer that can strike anywhere. In 2012, as Greece was sinking into the economic crisis, the Neo Nazi Golden Dawn Party won seats in the Greek Parliament. This was a vile and satanic political party that embraced all the Nazi ideas of racism, anti semitism, occultism, and neo paganism. Their members went about the streets of Athens beating up and terrorizing illegal immigrants. Fortunately, their support diminished in Greece and are no longer a factor in Greek politics.

Orthodox Christians should always reject racism as such theories and practices contravene the Biblical teaching of creation, the message of the Gospel and the example of Jesus Christ, and the purpose of the saviour’s own suffering and resurrection which was for the purpose of the salvation of all people everywhere.

Orthodox Christians should reflect on the evils of racism during these critical days in the United States. Greek Americans in particular should be sympathetic to African Americans. In 1922, there was an American Admiral named Mark Bristol who was the High Commissioner at Constantinople who referred to the Greeks as “the worst race in the near east”. This man was responsible for censoring news reports that were intended to inform the world of the slaughter of Greek and Armenian Christians at Smyrna.

Five years ago, I went to see the film “Selma” about Martin Luther King. What a pleasant surprise it was to see an actor portray Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos. The character is in the film for two minutes or so, but what a two minutes. The Archbishop along with Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders stuck their necks out and could have been killed for joining Dr. King.

Various forms of racism have existed in the United States over the years. There is a book called “imbeciles” by a writer named Adam Cohen. The book focuses on a woman named Carrie Buck who was the daughter of a prostitute who was adopted by another couple. Carrie was impregnated by a young man who was related to the couple and was subsequently sterilized despite the fact that she did not understand the consequences of this procedure.

Carrie Buck’s case got to the Supreme Court which ruled in favor of the sterilization. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Court’s ruling declared that “three generations of imbeciles are enough”. Cohen writes that between 1907 and 1983, at least sixty and seventy thousand people had been involuntarily sterilized. During the late 1920’s and 1930’s, the eugenics movement which supported bills supporting involuntary sterilization throughout America was thwarted by the Roman Catholic Church (to its credit) which stopped such laws from passing by mobilizing its priests, nuns, and faithful to lobby against them.

The Eugenics movement in the United States did not only hold racist views of African Americans, they advocated immigration restrictions against Italians, Jews, Greeks, Irish, Poles, and Russians. Much racism emanates from the corruption of the theories of Charles Darwin.

These theories are called “social darwinism”. In fairness to Darwin, he never endorsed or advocated the ideas associated with “social darwinism”. Social Darwinism in the nineteenth century produced various theories of racism and included advocates such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman who would have an influence on Hitler himself.

The philosophy of racism is evil and will always be the enemy of Christianity and the cross of Christ.

Reflections on the Double Headed Eagle Blog

Twenty years ago the charismatic Archbishop Christodoulos of blessed memory called out the faithful in dramatic fashion in two separate and well attended rallies that took place in Athens and Thessaloniki. The purpose for these rallies was to protest the plans of Prime Minister Costas Simitis which intended to remove religion from identity cards. The issue of religion on identity cards reflected the battle between faith and secularism, conservatism vs liberalism, and nationalism vs internationalism.

Within the Eastern Orthodox Church which consists of fourteen local autocephalous and self governing Churches are several Greek speaking Churches. The largest of these is the Orthodox Church of Greece which has around ten million faithful. Other Greek speaking Churches include the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the Autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus.

Twenty years after Archbishop Christodoulos fought against secular encroachment on the rights of the Church, the Church of Greece is now under the influence not of the secular government of Greece but the secular government of the United States. American officials ranging from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to American Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt shamefully interfere with the functioning of the Greek Church.

In 1999, Archbishop Christodoulos was unrelenting in his condemnation of the Clinton administrations bombing of Serbia, an Orthodox country and historic ally of Greece. In 2004, Archbishop Christodoulos condemned the anti Serb pogroms that took place in Kosovo. The Archbishop condemned the European Union for adopting a constitution that made no mention of Christianity.

Furthermore, the Church of Greece during the tenure of the late Archbishop found itself being encroached upon by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In 2003, two Metropolitans in northern Greece passed away. The Ecumenical Patriarchate in turn citing a 1928 agreement between the two Churches announced plans to elect new Bishops to those vacant bishoprics. This led to an angry response on the part of Archbishop Christodoulos and the Church of Greece. A settlement was reached which restored the status quo in which Metropolitans in Northern Greece were elected by the synod in Athens.

If the Church of Greece were still led by Archbishop Christodoulos or an Archbishop like him there would very likely be no canonical crisis within the Church of Greece today. The present Archbishop Ieronymos II has proven to be a moral failure as can be seen by the surrender on the part of both himself and the Holy Synod to western secular interests. In October 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo travelled to Athens to ask Archbishop Ieronymos to recognize a schismatic “church” in Ukraine on the strictly political grounds that this entity is anti Russian. American Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt last fall gave a speech at the Athens branch of Foreign Affairs magazine and defended the Archbishops subsequent recognition of the Ukrainian “church”.

The American Ambassador had no business involving himself or commenting on Church matters, and the Secretary of State had no business asking the Archbishop or any member of the Church hierarchy to recognize the Ukrainian schismatics. The Holy Synod by establishing communion with a group of delusional lay people betrayed Christ, the persecuted hierarchy, clergy, and faithful of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and their very own faithful within the Church of Greece.

Adding to the spiritual tragedy that has engulfed the Greeks are the actions of some Monasteries on the Holy Mountain of Athos. Some of the Monasteries have received the imposter “bishops” of Ukraine and have concelebrated the liturgy with them. Other Athonites adhering to Orthodoxy have refused to receive the fake “bishops”. That any monastics on the Holy Mountain even received these evil people is a moral outrage.

American diplomatic officials have interfered on Mount Athos and have reportedly used their influence to block at least one Russian Bishop and some priests from visiting Mount Athos. The contempt of western officials for freedom of religion is openly demonstrated. Greek Orthodoxy is perceived by them as an instrument in their war on Russia. There is no freedom of religion when the Orthodox Church is being used as a political prop.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria likewise extended recognition to the Ukrainian lunatics masquerading as “bishops”. This only one year after his beautitude Patriarch Theodore II travelled to Odessa to concelebrate the liturgy with the canonical bishops of Ukraine and to urge the faithful to remain in the canonical Church. Orthodox Greeks everywhere should be weeping at the endless betrayals!

After the Council of Florence in 1439, the people of Constantinople took to the streets to express their moral outrage at the betrayal of the Orthodox faith by the Emperor and his Bishops. When in late 1452 the Church of Hagia Sophia was desecrated by the presence of Latin clergy who arrived in Constantinople to formalize the “union”, the faithful of the city refused to enter the Great Church. More recently, in the Greek City of Patra the faithful rose up to stop the visiting fake bishops of Ukraine from serving the liturgy in the Cathedral which holds the relics of Saint Andrew the Apostle.

At the Monastery of Saint Nektarios of Aegina, the Abbess of the Monastery defied the local Bishop and refused to permit visiting “bishops” and “faithful” of the fake “Church” to even set foot onto the Monastery grounds. Twelve Bishops of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece opposed the disastrous decision to enter into communion with a fake “Church”.

There are also priests, monastics, theologians, and lay people in Greece who expressed opposition to any recognition of the schismatic Ukrainian entity through a signed petition that was sent to the Holy Synod many weeks before their cowardly surrender to the dictates of the State Department. The Church of Cyprus has not recognized the schismatic entity but there have been signs the Archbishop of Nicosia has been wavering.

Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem has refused to recognize the schismatic entity and cancelled a meeting with the former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko who instigated this blasphemous politicization of the Orthodox Church. Patriarch Theophilos has formally banned all schismatic clergy from the liturgy at the Holy Sepulchre and enforced identity checks of all visiting clergy from Ukraine to ensure only canonical Bishops and Priests may serve at the most sacred site in Orthodoxy.

Furthermore, Patriarch Theophilos III hosted a minor gathering of Churches in Jordan last February. Although only a few Churches attended and no decisions were made hopes were raised that a future council will be held to formally pass judgement on the desecration of the canons of the Orthodox Church. Several Orthodox Churches have spoken of Jerusalem as the “Mother Church” of Orthodoxy.

It was Archbishop Germanos of Patras that raised the standard of revolt against the Ottoman Turks in 1821. Patriarch (Saint) Gregory V was executed (for refusing to inform the Sultan of Greek revolutionary activities) and Archbishop Kyprianos of Cyprus was hanged for supporting Greek independence. In 1922, Saint Chrysostom of Smyrna refused appeals to leave his Church and his flock and was butchered together with his flock after the Turkish entry into the city.

During the Nazi occupation of Greece, Archbishop Chrysanthos was deposed by the Germans for refusing to cooperate with them, and Archbishop Damaskinos was threatened with death for giving protection to the Jews of Athens. In 1955, Archbishop Spyridon of Athens defied the Greek Government and spoke on Greek radio to condemn the Turkish instigated pogroms against the Greek Orthodox faithful in Turkey and the refusal of America and Great Britain to criticize Turkey.

After the hijacking of the Greek War of Independence in 1833, a Roman Catholic King was imposed on Greece. An “autocephalous” Church was established that was in fact under the authority of the Papist King and his advisors. The use of the septuagaint version of the Old Testament was banned in favor of the Protestant one, Byzantine iconography was replaced by western religious art, Churches were built in a Protestant style, and seventy two Churches from the Byzantine era in Athens were destroyed in order to build the Cathedral of Athens!

All that was done to keep Greece away from the Russians. Russophobia has a long history. But even in those dark days there was resistance in Greek Orthodoxy. Voices such as that of the monk Christophoros Papoulakos preached the Gospel throughout Greece and spoke about the desecration of the Church by the western powers and the liberation of Greece. Once again in our day, the Greek Churches are being profaned by western secular interests.

Where are the Bishops of Greece to follow in the footsteps of Archbishop Germanos, the monk Christophoros Papoulakos, and Archbishop Christodoulos? Let us pray for the freedom of the Greek Churches and the restoration of the unity of Orthodoxy!

ORTHODOXIA I THANATOS!!!!!!!!

CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN!