www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology How many Greeks left in Constantinople?

Dr. John,

Well put! I share your commitment to speak out for the remnant of our peoples slaughtered by the Turkish Government and those like them. Not to mention the many human rights abuses these governments continue untill today.

Trusting In Christ's Light,
Wm. DerGhazarian
Armenian Catholic Christian
www.geocities.com/derghazar [geocities.com]

Off the subject, but linked to Brendan's labelling 'Where Angels Fall' a diatribe.

Although this book is full of inaccuracies, particularly where the author writes about my personal friends, it has to be said that the identification of the disastrous combinations of ethnic messianic mentality and Orthodoxy are TRUE.

A major weakness of Orthodoxy IS its narrow association with race and nationalism. It has lead to historical disaster, a lack of mission in some quarters and a mentality which precludes foreigners from being 'really' Orthodox. I say this as an Orthodox monk, an Old Ritualist and sworn Slavophile.

Spasi Khristos -
Mark, mok and sinner.

I enjoyed the book very much, and I thought that it was rather insightful, considering that the writer was a British journalist, without any previous eastern connection herself.

Yes lets all put presure on the Turks to restore Hagia Sophia to the Patriach.
God grant him many years!
Stephanos I

Mmm, that book was not well received. I do know that Metropolitan Anthony was highly displeased. It was an extremely bad book, not well reaserched and highly biased. She even begins it with a diatribe against the Holy Monks on Athos. Even those she interviewed argued that she had misled them, and she speaks from a secular point of view as well. I think that she also went to look for the bad things in the Church. The reviews in the British papers, esp. The Times and Telegraph noted that it was very much lacking in style and coherence and full of bias.

Anton

She began with the diatribe, but then answered her own argument convincingly. The secular west was the starting point of her journey, but she ended in a very different place. I don't think one can be criticized for one's "starting place", and in my reading, she seemed really open to learn from the truth she encountered. If she remained critical of some of the nonsense that co-exists with the faith in the Balkans, she may have a point.

I guess for me Clarke's book was inherently biased. Yes, she was fascinated by her topic, but she seemed determined to present it as yet another group of religious whackos. I think a part of the message was "Gee, we secularists are going to have some trouble in the East, look at these whackos", which was a message that played well at the time due to what people were being fed on CNN and in the NY Times about Serbia and Kosovo. In this sense, I think it was an opportunistic book.

The positive side is that it probably exposed some folks to Eastern Christianity who hadn't previously had any exposure to it. But, boy, it could have been so much better.

I very much agree with Fr Elias. I also continue to have a lot of sympathy with the author. Perhaps those of us in Europe have a different perspective and a different experince of the messianic ethnocentric Orthodoxy that Victoria Clarke considers the angels' downfall. Part of the problem is that the book is not comfortable reading for the 'official' bodies of Orthodoxy - what traditionalists often call 'world Orthodoxy or 'the social club'.

Having said that, she seems not to have made a good enough effort to find out the spiritual wonders of Orthodoxy in its traditional homelands: she didn't look to far from her determined path.

Spasi Khristos -
Mark, monk and sinner.