Fr Josiah Trenham in Tbilisi: Homofascists not Welcome

[ialmisry]

I guess Jim Crow was fine with him. Disgusting idolatry.

Disgusting assERtion on your part-unless you can cough up evidence that Fr. Josiah was for Jim Crow.

As for "traditional morality" get back to me when your hierarchy rescind their endorsement of contraception.

then you agree with Fr. Josiah.

 

[Charles Martel]

We are not talking about homosexuals per se, but about the political pressure group which calls itself the 'gay rights movement'.

This movement calls right wrong and wrong right. This movement leads people astray. Why shouldn't it be denounced? Why should any deacon find fault with people denouncing this movement?

He did not say we could not denounce.......'demonize and attack' are not a denunciation.....they go further than that.

What's the difference between attacking and denouncing a movement?

I think you're hitting on something that deserves more attention.  It's easy to point to this or that tactic of Fr Josiah (or anyone similar) and condemn it as wrongheaded or unloving or what have you. But what is the alternative? How ought the Church respond to such societal movements?  Ought it respond at all?

The alternative is, you keep your mouth shut like a good little gelded christian and let the sodomites lead you and your culturechurch right  down the pathway to hell and destruction. Or in the very least, go the way of the rest of the "christian" churches out there;

 

[Daedelus1138]

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.  Clearly, he implies that small families, single parenthood, and childlessness are ungoldly and the sign of the apocalypse.  I'd like to see him take that one up with the Mother of God, who like many gay people was not a breeder.

 

[Charles Martel]

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.  Clearly, small families, single parenthood, and childlessness are ungoldly and the sign of the apocalypse. I'd like to see him take that one up with the Mother of God.

I'd like to see you take up  contraception, abortifacients and abortion up with her as well.

 

[Charles Martel]

Fortunately, the pink mafia posters here are not reflective of our Church.

Nominated for post of the month.  8)


This ought to go on my sig line. ;D

 

[Daedelus1138]

I'd like to see you take up  contraception, abortifacients and abortion up with her as well.

What do those issues have to do with being gay?  You don't think a person can be both gay or pro-gay and pro-life?

 

[seekeroftruth777]

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.  Clearly, small families, single parenthood, and childlessness are ungoldly and the sign of the apocalypse. I'd like to see him take that one up with the Mother of God.

I'd like to see you take up  contraception, abortifacients and abortion up with her as well.

Ohh boy it just it got real in here

 

[seekeroftruth777]

I might of just well ask it, why do people actions seem like they want the Church to go soft on the issue of Sodomy as a unrepented sin, and a disorder, and seem like they want to just commune these folks? Just a question I have.  I also find it ironic those who aren't Orthodox want the Church to change it position on Sodomy. Fr. Josiah is talking about a political, and social movement in homofascism, he not like calling for the persecution of these folks, after all he grew up in a City where this movement was born.

 

[Mor Ephrem]

We are not talking about homosexuals per se, but about the political pressure group which calls itself the 'gay rights movement'.

This movement calls right wrong and wrong right. This movement leads people astray. Why shouldn't it be denounced? Why should any deacon find fault with people denouncing this movement?

He did not say we could not denounce.......'demonize and attack' are not a denunciation.....they go further than that.

What's the difference between attacking and denouncing a movement?

I think you're hitting on something that deserves more attention.  It's easy to point to this or that tactic of Fr Josiah (or anyone similar) and condemn it as wrongheaded or unloving or what have you.  But what is the alternative?  How ought the Church respond to such societal movements?  Ought it respond at all?

A couple things need to be considered here, namely, what our priorities are, what is the most charitable way to pursue them, and what is the most effective way to pursue them. Fr. Josiah's antics fail on all three counts. Singling out these hot-button culture war issues mutilates the gospel. The Christian prohibition on homosexuality grows increasingly unintelligible throughout the world, because the worldview on which it is based has been so thoroughly eroded in society, even among Christians, for a variety of reasons for which gays can't be blamed.

As one of the primary modes of Christian engagement with wider society, the strident anti-LGBT agitation puts the cart way before the horse. It ignores some fundamental questions, as if the answers were self-evident for everyone. They're not. Why should someone give up the world for Christ? Why should someone deprive himself of any joy, for the sake of unintelligible injunctions? And why particularly should gays subject themselves to such rigors when heterosexual Christians commit so many sins with apparent impunity, and other things once deemed sinful for them no longer are? Why don't premarital sex, contraception, and divorce inspire such vitriol (sure, they may be denounced in general terms, but they are widespread in the parishes and routinely overlooked)? And why, perhaps most importantly, are these sexual sins so emphasized, while graver injustices, doing far more damage to society, are ignored or even justified by our clergy?

The rhetoric about "homofascists" is not only ridiculous, but represents a defensive mentality, an urge to cling to a fast-fading cultural and political hegemony. Instead of engaging the world with the gospel, we want to preserve our privileges or, if that's not possible, have the "religious freedom" to isolate ourselves in self-contained safe spaces ("the Benedict Option"). This strategy is failing and will continue to fail, because we continue to assume what we have not demonstrated, and demand respect where we have shown none and earned none.

I agree with your first sentence and much of your criticism of Fr Josiah, but the rest of your post still sounds more like "what not to do" and less like "what we ought to do".  Do you or like-minded people have some sort of plan or outline for what our response ought to be? 

It sounds to me like the options are "Fr Josiah" or "Since we can't/don't/won't fix everything, fix nothing".  Neither of these is appealing IMO.     

 

[Mor Ephrem]

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.  Clearly, he implies that small families, single parenthood, and childlessness are ungoldly and the sign of the apocalypse. 

"Sounds like...we can see...clearly he implies..." sound more like projection than clarity. 

I'd like to see him take that one up with the Mother of God, who like many gay people was not a breeder.

Disrespect is OK as long as you're disrespecting the right people?

 

[TheTrisagion]

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.  Clearly, he implies that small families, single parenthood, and childlessness are ungoldly and the sign of the apocalypse. 

Demography is destiny.

 

[Daedelus1138]

I'd like to see him take that one up with the Mother of God, who like many gay people was not a breeder.

Disrespect is OK as long as you're disrespecting the right people?

No, disrespect is not OK... and that's my point.  Fr. Josiah is engaged in a basic disrespect of homosexual persons by labelling the movement for their equality as "homofascist".  It's only fitting that his grandstanding with his ten children and his basic Quiverfull ideology be characterized as one of "breeders".  One that the rest of humanity finds largely incomprehensible, even in developing nations (where the average woman only has about 2-3 children today).  Quiverfull, homophobic morality is not the Gospel.    His entire ideology, on the contrary, has more in common with Presbyterian theonomism than the Good News that God has reconciled himself to the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.  Clearly, he implies that small families, single parenthood, and childlessness are ungoldly and the sign of the apocalypse. 

Demography is destiny.

This is just a slightly more inclusive version of Blood and Soil.  This is not the Gospel

 

[Iconodule]

We are not talking about homosexuals per se, but about the political pressure group which calls itself the 'gay rights movement'.

This movement calls right wrong and wrong right. This movement leads people astray. Why shouldn't it be denounced? Why should any deacon find fault with people denouncing this movement?

He did not say we could not denounce.......'demonize and attack' are not a denunciation.....they go further than that.

What's the difference between attacking and denouncing a movement?

I think you're hitting on something that deserves more attention.  It's easy to point to this or that tactic of Fr Josiah (or anyone similar) and condemn it as wrongheaded or unloving or what have you.  But what is the alternative?  How ought the Church respond to such societal movements?  Ought it respond at all?

A couple things need to be considered here, namely, what our priorities are, what is the most charitable way to pursue them, and what is the most effective way to pursue them. Fr. Josiah's antics fail on all three counts. Singling out these hot-button culture war issues mutilates the gospel. The Christian prohibition on homosexuality grows increasingly unintelligible throughout the world, because the worldview on which it is based has been so thoroughly eroded in society, even among Christians, for a variety of reasons for which gays can't be blamed.

As one of the primary modes of Christian engagement with wider society, the strident anti-LGBT agitation puts the cart way before the horse. It ignores some fundamental questions, as if the answers were self-evident for everyone. They're not. Why should someone give up the world for Christ? Why should someone deprive himself of any joy, for the sake of unintelligible injunctions? And why particularly should gays subject themselves to such rigors when heterosexual Christians commit so many sins with apparent impunity, and other things once deemed sinful for them no longer are? Why don't premarital sex, contraception, and divorce inspire such vitriol (sure, they may be denounced in general terms, but they are widespread in the parishes and routinely overlooked)? And why, perhaps most importantly, are these sexual sins so emphasized, while graver injustices, doing far more damage to society, are ignored or even justified by our clergy?

The rhetoric about "homofascists" is not only ridiculous, but represents a defensive mentality, an urge to cling to a fast-fading cultural and political hegemony. Instead of engaging the world with the gospel, we want to preserve our privileges or, if that's not possible, have the "religious freedom" to isolate ourselves in self-contained safe spaces ("the Benedict Option"). This strategy is failing and will continue to fail, because we continue to assume what we have not demonstrated, and demand respect where we have shown none and earned none.

I agree with your first sentence and much of your criticism of Fr Josiah, but the rest of your post still sounds more like "what not to do" and less like "what we ought to do".  Do you or like-minded people have some sort of plan or outline for what our response ought to be? 

It sounds to me like the options are "Fr Josiah" or "Since we can't/don't/won't fix everything, fix nothing".  Neither of these is appealing IMO.   

Fair enough. It's not entirely a question of what do we need to do differently, but we are doing now that we should do more. Our witness to society needs to start with the assumption that people, even those raised as Christians, don't really know God or how to relate with him. They don't know who Jesus Christ is. They don't understand why someone might die rather than renounce his name, or forsake worldly possessions for him. We need to demonstrate the fundamentals. The two highest commandments are about love, toward God and neighbor- everyone knows this, abstractly, but it is obfuscated by the noisy grasping for continued political and cultural relevance. Let's start as people with no relevance, with no country, sojourners. Christendom produced many great things but it had fundamental flaws, so stop trying to revive it. Stop trying to preach through laws and armies and police.

We need to preach with deeds on the ground, from one person to another, with no coercion. Near where I live there's an Orthodox man who, with family and friends, feeds the homeless at great expense to himself, to the point where he chronically faces foreclosure on his own home. He gets support from the Church but not enough. People know he's a Christian, and he demonstrates Christ, but he isn't leaning on this label of "Christian" or shoving it down anyone's throat. He also has the courage to identify, name, and condemn the root causes of poverty. He is not afraid to alienate wealthy parishioners and clergy who might be more sympathetic if he kept his mouth shut about these things. There are people like him in a lot of places in the Church, doing different things too, but expressing that courageous Christian love that comforts the weak and discomforts the powerful. 

If we want people to adopt Christian ideals of sex and family, these need to be meaningfully demonstrated. If we expect society to respect our standards, we need to show some actual respect for them ourselves. Things which were traditionally abhorred in Christian tradition, such as premarital sex or contraception, are routinely condoned or winked at in our churches. As far as I can see, we can look at this two ways: 1. We need to be far more rigorous with our standards on these issues, and demand a far-reaching conformity to them which would involve profound and perhaps traumatic changes in parish life around the world; we can't expend the injunction against homosexuality to be rigorously maintained when these other standards are so lax- project purity from within or stop demanding it from outsiders; or 2 we need to recognize that this laxity has a strong pastoral motivation of preserving chastity without causing despair, of bending certain outward standards to preserve a kernel of purity, in which case we also recognize that tradition is far more flexible that many would care to admit, and this flexibility should be applied in other places, recognizing that chastity remains the same ideal but expressed differently in the modern world. Until we do either of these, as a Church- and I'm not simply talking about clergy imposing something, but as a movement of all Orthodox Christians- we really don't have anything to say to outsiders.

There's a lot more to be said but I'll stop here for now. 

 

[ialmisry]

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.

No, evidently you can't.

Compare the commercials, and their ideology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FX6wh6wr9g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxEoj_k97HI

Single parenthood and childlessness are evils, not evil. Causing that is evil doing.

 

[ialmisry]

One that the rest of humanity finds largely incomprehensible, even in developing nations (where the average woman only has about 2-3 children today).

Source? on it's incomprehensible among the rest of humanity, that is.

Quiverfull, homophobic morality is not the Gospel.

Neither is Pride, homophilic immorality.

His entire ideology, on the contrary, has more in common with Presbyterian theonomism than the Good News that God has reconciled himself to the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

He did not reconcile Himself to sin.

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.  Clearly, he implies that small families, single parenthood, and childlessness are ungoldly and the sign of the apocalypse. 

Demography is destiny.

This is just a slightly more inclusive version of Blood and Soil.  This is not the Gospel

The Gospel says that "from the beginning He Who made them made them male and female...so a man cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh....what God has joined let no man draw asunder," the same God Who said "Be fruitful and multiply." THAT is the Gospel.

 

[TheTrisagion]

Demography is destiny.

This is just a slightly more inclusive version of Blood and Soil.  This is not the Gospel

The quote has nothing to do with Nazism. It is from two statisticians who did studies on election results. Let's not go down the road of Reductio Ad Hitlerum.

 

[Daedelus1138]

The Gospel says that "from the beginning He Who made them made them male and female...so a man cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh....what God has joined let no man draw asunder," the same God Who said "Be fruitful and multiply." THAT is the Gospel.

No, it's not the Gospel.  The Gospel is the Good News about Jesus Christ, not about the books of Moses, because there is no Good News in the Law of Moses, only bad news.  Jesus is the interpreter of Moses.  This is why it is rightly said the Bible must be interpreted through Christ alone.

 

[Daedelus1138]

The quote has nothing to do with Nazism. It is from two statisticians who did studies on election results. Let's not go down the road of Reductio Ad Hitlerum.

Same thing.  The Right wants their "godly society" no matter how many human lives are fed masochistically into the gristmill.  Ironic that we are talking about the "image of God", I can't think of anything more degrading than to evaluate somebody's worth in terms of whether or not their basic, natural biopsychology is oriented towards reproduction.

 

[TheTrisagion]

The quote has nothing to do with Nazism. It is from two statisticians who did studies on election results. Let's not go down the road of Reductio Ad Hitlerum.

Same thing.  The Right wants their "godly society" no matter how many human lives are fed masochistically into the gristmill.  Ironic that we are talking about the "image of God", I can't think of anything more degrading than to evaluate somebody's worth in terms of whether or not their basic, natural biopsychology is oriented towards reproduction.

I think you completely missed my point because that has nothing to do with what I was saying.

 

[Mor Ephrem]

I'd like to see him take that one up with the Mother of God, who like many gay people was not a breeder.

Disrespect is OK as long as you're disrespecting the right people?

No, disrespect is not OK... and that's my point.  Fr. Josiah is engaged in a basic disrespect of homosexual persons by labelling the movement for their equality as "homofascist".  It's only fitting that his grandstanding with his ten children and his basic Quiverfull ideology be characterized as one of "breeders". 

I agree with you that disrespect is not OK, but responding to disrespect with disrespect doesn't really help accomplish anything without compromising it.  Maybe you can live with that, I don't know. 

What I do know is that, whatever one might say about "Quiverfull ideology", Scripture seems to uphold a positive view of childbearing and childrearing.  It doesn't seem to hold a similar view about homosexuality.  Calling Fr Josiah a breeder demeans things Scripture values.  If we're still within the realm of Christianity, that matters.     

One that the rest of humanity finds largely incomprehensible, even in developing nations (where the average woman only has about 2-3 children today).

 

I doubt that has much to do with a repudiation of "Quiverfull". 

Quiverfull, homophobic morality is not the Gospel.    His entire ideology, on the contrary, has more in common with Presbyterian theonomism than the Good News that God has reconciled himself to the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

That's hardly the Good News.