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To bring Orthodoxy to America we need more than Rhetoric
Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 at 12:11 PM by Jason Barker
In the January issue of the The Word, Fr. John Abdalah has an interesting article about the "need to be American in our embrace of freedom, and Orthodox in our correct apostolic faith and worship." Most of Fr. John's article, while important, is not directly applicable to the philosophy and methodology behind my work with Orthodox Christian Bible studies, but he makes one statement that reinforces the need for a ministry like this. He states, "Our worship must be expressive of that which God has revealed though the ages, while palatable to the now indigenous American population."
In a post last week I repeated a point I have made on numerous occasions: the Bible studies I create must be Orthodox in approach and content, and must engage in a full Bible study (rather than simply slipping Bible verses into an entertainment or pop-culture or pop-psychology package), but they also must be accessible for teens. Teens are increasingly more willing to use a computer and multimedia to learn about the Bible and religion than they are to pick up a book and read about these subjects. It is therefore imperative that these Bible studies, while being faithful to the beliefs and practices of Orthodox Christianity, also be presented in an electronic format that teens are more likely to use.
This is one way in which we can express "that which God has revealed through the ages" in a manner that is acceptable to modern generations in America.
Posted in Miscellaneous