Civilization Needs Unity Between Religion and the Secular State
The great divide between the secular state and religion has grown substantially during my lifetime. Gone are the days when our nation was based on Christian values and where religion played an important role in the public life of this country. The notion that we must separate Church and State has gained such momentum as to have emboldened many to a state of Christianophobia. It was never the intent of the Founding Fathers for religion to be kept quiet and forced into the back streets of our nation’s political life. Rather, they simply intended that no one religion would gain the status of a State Church.
As we get closer to the celebration of the Birth of Christ, we are seeing increasing attacks by avowed atheists, bent on destroying any form of public display of the historic meaning of Christmas. Books being written by atheists, along with public mocking of the beliefs of Christians as being myths, has become more and more militant. The atheists have turned their radical beliefs into another form of religious bigotry. In their attacks on Christians, they’ve turned atheism into a militant form of religion, with the demand that it become a sort of state church, not unlike that which happened during the militant atheism of the Soviet Union.
The response of Christians can not be to simply surrender, for this is truly a wholesale assault on Christianity. Our society would no more sit back and allow billboard attacks on Judaism or Islam, and the slander of their beliefs, or billboards promoting racist attacks on minorities. Yet our government and judicial institutions are allowing slanderous attacks on the beliefs of millions of Christians. This will continue until we Christians decide enough is enough. We must stand firm in our witness to Christ, and take hold of our constitutional right for free expression of our faith, including the right to bear witness in the public square.
If our nation is to justly care for its poor and disenfranchised, Christians must be allowed to continue to influence our governmental and legal institutions in the light of our Christian Faith . The separation of religion from the public square is breeding defeat, and undermining the very values that have made our nation strong.
We must reclaim our vision as one nation under God. Our focus on consumption and personal comfort, together with a low birth rate that is the direct result of selfish me-first secularism, has been made manifest by a disenfranchised Christianity that can no longer offer religious input and leadership in promoting moral and biblical values. This is dooming our nation to utter collapse.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that so much of American protestant Christianity has itself become secularized. In an attempt to become more relevant to today’s culture, they’ve lost the leaven that can truly transform lives and make a difference with how the greater culture around us can be brought back to the basic values and religious standards that have kept America morally and spiritually strong. We’ve lost our way as a nation because the majority of our denominations have lost the pure essence of Christianity.
While this has happened, our Orthodox Church is often so caught up in just trying to survive as ethnically centered communities, we’ve failed to reach out with the same power and authority of our forefathers in the faith. Satisfied with doing the services correctly, and meeting the needs of our people, we’ve forgotten our duty to the greater community around us. We’ve fallen down on the job of transforming the society around us with the leaven that resides within the Church. We fail daily to reach out to the society at large with the truth of Ancient Christianity, preserved fully within the Orthodox Church.
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Thursday December 16, 2021 / December 3, 2021
26th Week after Pentecost. Tone eight.
Nativity (St. Philip’s Fast). Fish Allowed
Prophet Zephaniah (Sophonias) (635 B.C.).
Venerable Sabbas, abbot of Zvenigorod, disciple of St. Sergius of Radonezh (1406).
New Hieromartyr Andrew priest (1920).
New Hieromartyr Nicholas priest (1930).
St. Gregory confessor (1960).
Venerable Theodulus, eparch of Constantinople (440).
Venerable John the Silent of St. Sabbas’ monastery (558).
Hieromartyr Theodore, archbishop of Alexandria (606).
Venerable Gregory of Chernik (Romania).
New Hieromartyr Gabriel, bishop of Ganos (1659) (Greek).
St. Birinus, bishop of Dorchester (649-650) (Celtic & British).
New Martyr Angelos of Chios (1813) (Greek).
Venerable Cosmas of St. Anne’s Skete, Mt. Athos.
St. Sola, Anglo-Saxon missionary priest under St. Boniface (790-794) (Germany).
St. Nicetius, bishop of Lyons (Gaul).
St. Lucius, king of Britain who requested missionaries for his people in A.D. 187.
Martyrs Agapius, Seleucus and Mamas (Greek).
The Scripture Readings
1 Timothy 3:1-13
Qualifications of Overseers
3 This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work. 2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach; 3 not given to wine, not violent, [c]not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; 4 one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence 5 (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?); 6 not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. 7 Moreover he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
Qualifications of Deacons
8 Likewise deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money, 9 holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience. 10 But let these also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless. 11 Likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. 12 Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. 13 For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.
Luke 20:9-18
The Parable of the Wicked Vinedressers
9 Then He began to tell the people this parable: “A certain man planted a vineyard, leased it to vinedressers, and went into a far country for a long time. 10 Now at vintage-time he sent a servant to the vinedressers, that they might give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the vinedressers beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 Again he sent another servant; and they beat him also, treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. 12 And again he sent a third; and they wounded him also and cast him out.
13 “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. Probably they will respect him when they see him.’ 14 But when the vinedressers saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.’ 15 So they cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore what will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and destroy those vinedressers and give the vineyard to others.”
And when they heard it they said, “Certainly not!”
17 Then He looked at them and said, “What then is this that is written:
‘The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone’?
18 Whoever falls on that stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”