THE GREAT DIVIDE

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.

We are seeing increasing attacks by avowed atheists bent on destroying any form of public display of Christianity. 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 her 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

Monday September 13, 2021 / August 31, 2021
13th Week after Pentecost. Tone three.
The Placing of the Cincture (Sash) of the Most Holy Theotokos (395-408).
New Hieromartyr Alexander priest and Vladimir deacon (1918).
New Hieromartyrs Michael and Myron priests (1937).
New Hieromartyr Demetrius (1938).
Hieromartyr Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (258).
St. Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople (471).
New Martyrs of Jasenovac (1941-1945) (Serbia).
St. John, metropolitan of Kiev (1089).
St. Paulinus, bishop of Trier (358).
St. Gennadius Scholarius, patriarch of Constantinople (1372).
St. Eanswythe, abbess, of Folkestone (England) (640) (Celtic & British).
St. Cuthburga, abbess of Wimborne (Celtic & British).
St. Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne (651) (Celtic & British).
Four Martyrs of Perge in Pamphylia (Greek).
oMartyrs: Menas, Faustus, Andrew, Heraclius, Phileortus and Diadoch (Greek).
Martyr Phileortus (Greek).
Martyr Diadoch (Greek)
Eight Virgin-martyrs of Gaza (Greek).
366 Martyrs of Nicomedia (Greek).

The Scripture Readings

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

7 But as you abound in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all diligence, and in your love for us—see that you abound in this grace also.

Christ Our Pattern

8 I speak not by commandment, but I am testing the sincerity of your love by the diligence of others. 9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.

10 And in this I give advice: It is to your advantage not only to be doing what you began and were desiring to do a year ago; 11 but now you also must complete the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to desire it, so there also may be a completion out of what you have. 12 For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have.

13 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; 14 but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack—that there may be equality. 15 As it is written, “He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.”

Mark 3:6-12

6 Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him.

A Great Multitude Followed Jesus

7 But Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea. And a great multitude from Galilee followed Him, and from Judea 8 and Jerusalem and Idumea and beyond the Jordan; and those from Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard how many things He was doing, came to Him. 9 So He told His disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for Him because of the multitude, lest they should crush Him. 10 For He healed many, so that as many as had afflictions pressed about Him to touch Him. 11 And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw Him, fell down before Him and cried out, saying, “You are the Son of God.” 12 But He sternly warned them that they should not make Him known.