Fr. Joseph Huneycutt: Our changing yet unchanging Church

 An old and successful parishioner once told me: “One of the keys to successful living is being able to adapt to the changes." Change is inevitable. Yet just as “Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb 13:8)  - so shall the Church be. A rudimentary study of Byzantine history reveals many changes wrought by fallible humans throughout that era in the Church. Yet the same Church now being found by American converts, reverts, and retreads - founded by Christ upon the Apostles - is the same Ark of Salvation that found our Byzantine brethren Within her embrace many years ago. It is the same faith being experienced anew in Russia. It will endure throughout all time. For now, its witness is a fledgling mission in America. Should the Lord tarry, there will inevitably develop an “American expression" of the true faith in a land populated With immigrants from many nations. In the meantime we may all look a

bit crazy, flying over, while praying Within, that onion dome. Glory to God for all things!

+Fr. Joseph Huneycutt, from One Flew over the Onion Dome American Orthodox Converts, Reverts & Retreads

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware: Dissent in Russian Orthodoxy

 There arose in seventeenth-century Russia a movement of Dissent; but if we compare it with English Dissent of the same period, we notice two great differences. First, the Old Believers - the Russian Dissenters - differed from the official Church solely in ritual, not in doctrine; and secondly, while English Dissent was radical - a protest against the official Church for not carrying reform far enough - the Russian Dissent was the protest of conservatives against an official Church which in their eyes had carried reform too far.

+Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, from The Orthodox Church, Chapter 6 History: Moscow and St. Petersburg.