Tensions of Church T(t)radition and the African Traditional Cultures in the African Orthodox Church of Kenya: Justifying Contextualization

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-170
Author(s):  
Evanghelos Thiani
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Traditional Cultures ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Church ◽  
Local Cultures

"Abstract The African Orthodox Church of Kenya was formed as an African Instituted Church in 1929, with considerable cultural and liberative connotations, before officially joining the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa in 1956. The journey of being faithful to the rich and ancient Eastern Orthodox tradition, history, and heritage as well as grappling with the local cultures is been an ongoing tension for this church. The tension is better appreciated from the eye view of non-Kenyan Orthodox and young theologians in comparison with that of the locals. Some contextualization practices within this church were ecclesiastically sanctioned, while others have never been reviewed, even though both are practiced with no distinction. This Orthodox Church in Kenya continues to be regarded as one of the staunchest and first growing Orthodox Church in Africa, influencing many upcoming African dioceses and the theologians they form in the main Patriarchal seminary based in Nairobi. This paper seeks to document this tension and struggle of the church and local community traditions and cultures, and with it seek to justify some of the contextualization that is realized and practiced in this church at present. Keywords: African Orthodox Church of Kenya, contextualization, tradition, culture, mission"

Church and Patriarchate and the Limits of Americanization

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-246
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
New Era ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The Church

This chapter focuses on the state of Greek Orthodoxy in America at the end of the twentieth century. It assesses whether the Church under Archbishop Iakovos overreached in its efforts to Americanize, which alienated the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It analyzes the patriarchate's intervention, which illustrated the administrative limits the Greek Orthodox Church in America faces in its efforts to assimilate. The chapter describes the patriarchate's ability to invoke the transnational character of Orthodoxy in the new era of globalization. It explores the end of the evolution of Greek Orthodoxy into some form of American Orthodoxy through its fusion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The Greek Orthodox Church in America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
American Institution ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
Greek Immigrants ◽  
The Church

This sweeping history shows how the Greek Orthodox Church in America has functioned as much more than a religious institution, becoming the focal point in the lives of the country's million-plus Greek immigrants and their descendants. Assuming the responsibility of running Greek-language schools and encouraging local parishes to engage in cultural and social activities, the church became the most important Greek American institution and shaped the identity of Greeks in the United States. The book digs into these traditional activities, highlighting the American church's dependency on the “mother church,” the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the use of Greek language in the Sunday liturgy. Today, as this rich biography of the church shows us, Greek Orthodoxy remains in between the Old World and the New, both Greek and American.

Assimilation and Respectability in the 1950s

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
Religious Identification ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the Greek Orthodox Church against the background of the 1950s. It highlights the rise in religiosity and the upward social mobility of the Greek American second generation. It also explains how the Greek Orthodox church, which was on the margins of conversations about religion in America, found ways to become more relevant and somewhat mainstream. The chapter analyzes the unexpected development and importance of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to the Cold War policies of the United States. It also looks into the combination of powerful causes, such as the Cold War, social dislocation in suburbia, anxieties of the atomic age, and deliberate religious marketing that led to a remarkable spread of religious identification in postwar America.

Mary in the Hymnody of the East

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
John Anthony McGuckin
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Unbroken Line ◽  
The Church

Beginning with a notice of the major Marian hymnal elements in the New Testament text, this study goes on to consider how the most ancient Christian tradition of celebrating the role of the Virgin Mary in the salvific events the Church commemorates at prayer runs on in an unbroken line into the earliest liturgical examples from the Byzantine Greek liturgy. The study exegetes some of the chief liturgical troparia addressed to the Theotokos in the Eastern Orthodox Church ritual books. It analyses some of the more famous and renowned poetic acclamations of the Virgin in Byzantine literary tradition, such as the Sub Tuum Praesidium, the Akathist, and the Nativity Kontakion of Romanos the Melodist, but also goes on to show how the minor Theotokia (or ritual verses in honour of the Virgin), taken from the Divine Liturgy and from the Eastern Church’s Hours of Prayer, all consistently celebrate the Mother of God’s role in the salvific work of Christ in the world.

The ‘Dosografa’ church in the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca

1979 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
Roderic H. Davison
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Turkish Text ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

By the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774, which marked a disastrous defeat of the Ottoman empire by Russia, the Russians were accorded the right to build a church in Istanbul, in the Galata quarter. The treaty further specified that the church was to be under the protection of the Russian minister, who could make representations concerning it to the Sublime Porte. This church, and the Russian right to protect it and to make representations about it, furnished much of the basis on which Russian governments, in later years, built a claim to a broader right to protect the Greek Orthodox Church, even the Greek Orthodox people, in the Sultan's domains. The claims were exaggerated, but since the church in Istanbul was to be ‘of the Greek ritual’, as article 14 of the treaty said, the connexion seemed logical. The Turkish text of the treaty, however, as Cevdet Pasa reproduces it in his history, makes no mention of a church ‘of the Greek ritual’. Instead, his article 14 specifies that this church is to be called the dusugrafa or dosografa church ().

scholarly journals ICONS, SMUGGLING AND MCDONALDIZATION OF CULTURE

Muzealnictwo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (0) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Joanna Tomalska-Więcek
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
The World ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Polish Culture ◽  
The Church

Culture undergoes constant changes. Although today, Poland is an almost ethnically homogenous country, ages ago, the dialogue of cultures took place not only on the borderlines of the First Polish Republic but also in the then capital city of Cracow. In 1390, Slavic Benedictine monks who used Old Church Slavic language settled in the church of the Holy Cross in Krakow. Francis Skaryna (Francysk Skaryna), a pioneer of Belarusian printing and later the founder of the first printing house in Eastern Europe in Vilnius, published the first Cyrillic prints in the world in Cracow and in the early 16th c. also studied there. Poland was a great example of a multicultural society. In the early 16th c. the Catholics and the Protestants, the Jews and the Armenians, the Tatars and the Karaims lived in Poland. After the Union of Lublin, the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania formed one of the biggest countries in Europe at the time; it was inhabited by the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians and the Belarusians. In the mid-16th c. Poland became a shelter for multitudes of religious dissenters in Western Europe, such as the Lutherans, the Calvinists, and other Protestants. Today it is useless to seek traces of such multiculturality in many museums. In museums which collect paintings related to the Eastern Orthodox Church, places of monuments connected with Polish culture are frequently occupied by late icons of mediocre artistic value smuggled from Russia. The article attempts to explain this phenomenon in the context of the transformation of modern museology.

Implementasi Algoritma Raita Pada Aplikasi Hukum Kanonik Berbasis Mobile

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 455
Author(s):  
Efidoren L Nainggolan ◽  
Muhammad Syahrizal ◽  
Saidi Ramadan Siregar
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
String Matching ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Matching Algorithm ◽  
Church Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
Eastern Orthodox Church

Canonical law is an internal church law governing the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion. How the laws of the church are governed, interpreted and sometimes examined differ fundamentally between the three church bodies. in all three traditions, a canon was originally a rule accepted by an assembly, these canons formed the basis for canon law. Raita algorithm is part of the exact string matching algorithm, which is matching the string exactly with the arrangement of characters in the matched string that has the same number or sequence of characters in the string. Matching strings on the raita algorithm is done through a shift from the right of the character then to the left of the character and to the middle of the character. The problem in this research is the content of canon law in general consists of a very large number of pages of books, this makes it difficult for canonical law users to find the contents needed, then in the search it takes time to find the contents of canonical law that are searched for too many search problems. that is, too much time must be needed to find the contents of the canonical law sought

Secularization of Family Law in Greece

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-376
Author(s):  
Michael P. Stathopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Family Law ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Byzantine Era ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
The Church

As our subject is the secularization of Greek Family Law, we may presume that this part of our legal system is not as yet secular or at least not exclusively so. Indeed, the strong influence of religious conceptions, particularly those of the Greek Orthodox Christian Church is an historical feature of Greek Family Law. This tradition is explained by the close relations in general between Church and State in Greece, relations which are rooted in the Byzantine era. The determinant importance of the Church in Greek society reached its peak during the period of the Ottoman occupation (1453-1821), when there was no Greek State and the Orthodox Church was its substitute. I think that we may find a parallel here between the Greek people and their religion and the Jewish people and their religion. After the national revolution of 1821, and with the regaining of their independence, the Greek people were organized in a secular state, retaining, however, important features of a religious character, in accordance with the nation's historical tradition.

scholarly journals Ecumenical Convergences: Romanian Evangelicals Exploring Orthodoxy

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 398
Author(s):  
Cristian Sonea
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Theoretical Possibility ◽  
Ecumenical Dialogue ◽  
Romanian Orthodox Church ◽  
Inclusive Theology ◽  
Romanian Orthodox ◽  
Published Research ◽  
The Church

Historically, in Romania, the relations between the Romanian Orthodox Church and the evangelical communities have been characterized by tension and mutual distrust. That is why, unfortunately, there has been no official dialogue between the two communities so far. The present article investigates the theoretical possibility for such an ecumenical dialogue to occur by analysing the contributions of several evangelical theologians who published research studies on theological topics specific to Eastern orthodox theology. Their positions were analysed from the perspective of an inclusive theology which allowed us to identify some common themes for both traditions: the authority in interpreting the Scriptures, salvation as a process, and the Church understood through the application of a perichoretic model. All these convergent themes could constitute the basis for a future official ecumenical dialogue between the evangelicals and the orthodox from Romania.

scholarly journals The Effect of the Greek Enlightenment on the Greek Revolution and the position of the Eastern Orthodox Church

2021 ◽  
Vol 04 (09) ◽  
Author(s):  
Evi Psarrou ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
National State ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Decisive Effect ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Church

The present study aims to discuss the connection between the Modern Greek Enlightenment and the Greek Revolution. It reveals the decisive effect of this intellectual movement upon the Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire supporting that the Greek Enlightenment contributed to the awakening of the Greeks who eventually revolted against the Ottomans establishing a new independent national state. Additionally this paper reveals the position of the Orthodox Church and its reaction towards the Enlightenment and moreover highlights certain actions taken by the Church against the Enlightenment thinkers. Finally, an attempt is made and to the reasons that led the Church to adopt this position against the Enlightenment movement and the Greek Revolution. This paper derives from an in-depth study of the bibliography relevant to the aforementioned issues.

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