For the Life of the World

You are invited to join a series of reflections and conversations with Andrew Bingham and David Goa on For the Life of the World, Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church.

“For the Life of the World, Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church” is the title of a recent publication edited by David Bentley Hart and John Chryssavgis under the auspices and with the blessing of His All Holiness, Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch.

This document, long awaited, is a welcome opportunity to discuss Orthodox “social doctrine in terms appropriate to modern reality.” It provides general parameters, avoids nebulous abstractions and sweeping generalizations, simplistic, pietistic, or legalistic pronouncements. Anchored in the Gospel it calls us to consider and think about major issues facing the life of our fragile and struggling world with the mind of Christ, free of fear, ideological preoccupations and to do so both for our own healing and for “for the life of the world.”

Our first discussion will frame the theological background of the document and speak to the difficult and demanding challenges we face in this moment in history and the gifts, at the heart of the Orthodox ethos, to speak a healing word far beyond the confines of the church. It is a word many in our word are hungry to hear. Following David and Andrews remarks highlighting the first chapter in For the Life of the World you are invited to engage those who gather in conversation about the radical life of loving communion at the heart of our common vocation to “bless, elevate, and transfigure” our fragile and wounded world.

Work on issues and themes of religion and public life over many years it has been obvious that when religion and public life cross paths there is often an accident. The tragedy is this accident usually leads to public rhetoric which gives us the worst of religious and civil thinking when we need the best. Perhaps we can turn that corner and call forth our better angels. Many issues will be addressed and discussed in this session. What is the Christian’s proper allegiance as a citizen? What do we make of “Christian nationalism”? How may Christians understand a secular society? What is the Christian citizens’ responsibility in the face of pluralism? Join us for conversation.

In the course of human life, from conception through childhood, adulthood, and the final stages of life there are significant moral and spiritual questions that arise. Those who marry, monastics, and single persons all face challenges and make decisions with implications both personal and which shape and reshape our common social life. How do we care for children and nurture them given our particular context? What constitutes a healthy understanding of our body and the sexual life; of the “identities” under public discussion including matters of gender; of abortion, and medically assisted dying; and, of how men and women see and engage each other? Compelling matters all. What may we learn from the sometime surprising ways the church thinks and encourages us to think about these matters? Join us for this conversation.

“When the eternal Son became human, divesting himself of his divine glory and exchanging the “form of God” for the form of a servant, he elected thereby to identify himself with the most marginal, politically powerless, and socially disadvantaged persons of his age.” So opens section IV of the document we are discussing. The Church’s concern for the poor – provision for the oppressed through charity – and, this is also central, doing all it can in pursuit of “social justice and civil equity” is seen as a “necessary means of salvation”, of our essential vocation in the healing of the life of the world. A full range of themes anchors our refection: systemic poverty, the dignity of work, the dangers of unhinged capitalism, access to healthcare, and the challenges of climate change. Compelling matters all. What may we learn from the sometime surprising ways the Church thinks and encourages us to think and respond to these matters? Join us for this conversation.

The beauty of creation is disfigured by all forms of violence, physical, psychological, fiscal and social. While those who perpetrate violence harm others, they also shrink their own soul. Their very being suffers a moral injury. What is the Orthodox Church’s understanding of war and violence, of acting to defend against violence, of “Just War Theory” and pacifism? Is capital punishment ever justified? What does the Church pull forward to help us understand the roots of violence and hold fast to the Gospel of love and mercy? What may we learn from the sometime surprising ways the Church thinks and encourages us to think and respond to these matters? Join us for this conversation.

At no time in human history are the issues of ecumenical and interfaith relations more important than now. What is the stance of the Church? What does it call us to do and be in our relationship to the great variety of Christian churches? What does it invite us to do in relationship to the women and men of other faiths and to what end? What is the Orthodox teaching about the relationship with the Jewish faith and community, the community into which Jesus Christ was born? Does the Orthodox Church have a special relationship to Islam, the faith with which it has shared a landscape since the sixth century? On what ground ought we stand “for the life of the world” given we understand the Spirit of God to “be everywhere present”?

The language, policy, and law of human rights, deeply rooted in the Jewish and Christian traditions of the absolute dignity of the human person, is a singular social advancement of the twentieth century. It ameliorates the “divine right of the majority.” It highlights, even if it does not complete, the teaching that “humanity is the priestly presence of spiritual freedom within the world of material causality and organic process... offering up the life of the world to God.” It opens the gate for human flourishing. What is the stance of the Orthodox Church toward freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of the press; freedom of association, the right to vote, freedom from discrimination and equal protection under the law, the right to free universal health care, and the list continues. While the language of human rights may be a minimal language it helps to “shape and secure rules of charity, mercy, and justice that the Church regards as the very least that should be required of every society.” And, how does the Church think about situations when fundamental rights compete and collide with each other?

“Thine own of thine own we offer to you.”

The twentieth century was “the age of physics.” It bequeathed many gifts to human life. It also bequeathed nuclear weapons. The twenty-first century is likely to be called, “the age of biology.” Science, and certainly the new breakthroughs in genetic, brain, and ecological sciences, offer the most striking gifts as well as the deepest capacity for making “our common home” no longer a human habitation. What we make of what science offers, the judgements we make and the uses we put to this knowledge, will be determined by our conscious or unconscious response to the question: “What does it mean to be human?” This question stands at the centre of religious traditions and thus, the twenty-first century will also be the age of theology calling forth the finest thinking from all quarters and out of the depth of religious traditions.

“Let us the faithful rejoice, having this anchor of hope.”

We have come to the concluding session of thinking together “For the Life of the World, Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church.” We invite you to speak about what you have taken from our study and thinking together. What in the document spoke in a particularly compelling way? What, perhaps, did you expect to read and did not find in the document or in our thinking together? How does this document speak to your stance and ways of addressing the many and varied issues we face in our moment in history and in our various cultural contexts? We invite you to speak in a fulsome way without hesitation. This session will not be made public. How our times together sits in your mind and heart, personally and within your communities of commitment , are important and will inform our on-going work.