Month: February 2008

February 19, 2008

Kosovo: Pandora’s Box

Nearly two years ago, in “Who Will Protect Kosovo’s Christians?” I wrote: Dozens of churches, monasteries and shrines have been destroyed or damaged since 1999 in Kosovo, the cradle of Orthodox Christianity in Serbia. Continue Reading...
February 19, 2008

Washington Times on green candidates

Presidential front-runners and Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are lacking environmental leadership by failing to pay for offsets to cover their campaign carbon emissions. An article in the Washington Times titled, Green Crusades Lot of Talk, by Stephen Dinan, notes John McCain and Barack Obama aren’t leading by example. Continue Reading...
February 19, 2008

Orthodoxy and economic globalization

AGAIN Magazine has published my “Conflicted Hearts: Orthodox Christians and Social Justice in an Age of Globalization.” The magazine is produced by Conciliar Press Ministries, Inc., a department of the self-ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church of North America. Continue Reading...
February 18, 2008

A note on social and intellectual history

Speaking of the history of morality and moral judgments in historiography, Alister MacIntyre makes a pointed observation about a complementary distinction that arises between what might be called “intellectual” and “social” history: Abstract changes in moral concepts are always embodied in real, particular events. Continue Reading...
February 18, 2008

Climate change food for thought

“The challenge of climate change is at once individual, local, national and global. Accordingly, it urges a multilevel coordinated response, with mitigation and adaptation programs simultaneously individual, local, national and global in their vision and scope”, stated Archbishop Celestino Migliore, representative of the Holy See, at the 62nd session of the U.N. Continue Reading...
February 15, 2008

The cost of good intentions

Interesting: Backed by studies showing that middle-class Seattle residents can no longer afford the city’s middle-class homes, consensus is growing that prices are too darned high. But why are they so high? Continue Reading...
February 15, 2008

‘A Patriarch in dire straits’

Bartholomew I My commentary this week looked at “Encountering the Mystery,” the new book from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Orthodox Church. In 1971, the Turkish government shut down Halki, the partriarchal seminary on Heybeliada Island in the Sea of Marmara. Continue Reading...
February 15, 2008

World to church: “Well done.”

If there’s anything that the church should really be striving for, it’s approval from secular groups: “An official with the One Campaign, the global anti-poverty program backed by rock star Bono, said that his organization strongly supports the Christian Reformed Church’s Sea to Sea 2008 Bike Tour.” Continue Reading...