My Church

I attend an Orthodox church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Every Sunday, I also attend churches in Moscow and K’yiv, in London on the banks of the Thames, in Sydney Down Under, in Atlanta and Chicago and New York and Pittsburgh, and Paris and Warsaw and Tokyo and Nairobi and Buenos Aires and Mexico City and Vancouver and Toronto and Winnipeg and Jerusalem and Damascus and Athens and Belgrade and thousands of churches around the world. Every Sunday. I got a lot of frequent flier miles.

My Church is kinda big. About 215 million baptized members are in my church. We get new members every week but a lot of the established members don’t come as often as I would like. Ah well, I will see them for the Nativity of Our Lord and Pascha each year! This is disorganized religion at its finest. Several million come out to coffee hour each Sunday.

We also get a lot of unique established members. They have been members since oh let’s see…the beginning of time? They are messengers, aka Angels. They come in nine ranks: the Thrones, Principalities, Authorities, Powers and Dominions, Angels, Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim. They are so beautiful how they worship God. This is Orthodoxy.

The saints are also there. St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, St. Vincent of Lerins, St. Ignatius of Antioch, the Apostles, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Nikolai of Japan, St. Mary of Egypt the list goes on and on…the Innocents, St. Tikhon, St. Raphael of Brooklyn, the list runs into millions. This is Orthodoxy.

Every week, the Liturgy is chanted in every language…at once. From Aleut to English to Japanese to Portuguese to Ukrainian to Zulu…the Pentecostals don’t know what speaking in tongues is! This is Orthodoxy.

And there is the laity. Glorified in their sainthood, yet at the same time known only to God. From tiny house churches in Asia Minor the first century after Christ, to the Cathedrals of Russia in the 21^st century and beyond…everyone is here. During coffee hour, the Greeks argue with the Russians over who organizes coffee hour next week, the Serbians caught in the middle, the Ukrainians off to the side, sipping horilka. The Arabs shower everyone with love and affection and food, as only the Arabs can. And so it goes on, each group and nationality with their own quirks and issues and their own unique expression of the One True Church of Christ.

The Church. My Church. I love it.

My Political Views

I have struggled to put a label to my political views. Tradional Conservative, Old Right Monarchist, Counter Enlightenment Monarchist…I am all of the above and something more.

So here goes.

1. I believe that a monarchist political system provides the best opportunity for a stable government.
2. Loyalty to one’s nation and the institutions of that nation (i.e. Monarch, Church, Armed Forces) is of paramount importance.
3. Each person, from natural conception to natural death, is a Creation of God and is a subject of the Crown, bound to the Monarch and protected under the Law.
4. The family unit is of paramount importance to the existence of society. Marriage (between one man and one woman) is protected by the Crown and the other institutions of the State.
5. Respect towards the past and communal institutions is integral to preserving society. Care must be taken to preserve that which is beneficial from the past and to build on it, creating a lasting legacy for future generations.
6. Equality of all Crown subjects is acknowledged before the law courts and before God Almighty.
7. Each individual is a product of society and can not exist in a vacuum. As a result, moral and social norms are not the product of the individual, but are defined by the greater society, in accordance with the Will of the Monarch and God.
8. The freedom of the individual is guaranteed. This is not the freedom of classical liberalism, but freedom which is a product of Man’s experience in society, with assistance of the State and other communal institutions.