Serbian Orthodox Fundamentals: The Quest for an Eternal Identity

I find this work by Christos Mylonas somewhat controversal, but it is a very scholalry study. I quote from a review published in the American Historical Review, Volume 10, No. 3, June 2004 by Thomas A. Emmert of Gustavus Adolphus College: "Christos Mylonas has constructed a dense and fascinating analysis of the relationship between Serbian Orthodoxy and Serbian national identity. It is based on a panoply of sources and is intent on demonstrating the validity of the author's main hypothesis that "Orthodoxy is the sacralisation of the Serbian national identity" (p. xii) Mylonas is convinced that Orthodoxy provides the common denominator upon which Serbs construct their identity. Certain of this hypothesis, he carefully directs his sources and his arguments to make a case for it.....In the end, one is left praising the extraordinary depth of Mylonas's analysis and eager for a response from and dialogue with Serb scholars. It is not clear to me that most Serbs would recognize themselves here. The Serbian population was profoundly influenced by more than four decades of communism. Modernization, education, consumerism, travel, and many other factors also contributed to a profound turning away from Orthodoxy and from the so-called Kosovo ethos that, with Orthodoxy, has arguably contributed most to Serbian identity. The many years I spent among Serbs during the Communist era did not convince me that Serbian Orthodoxy "anchors the emotions and consistency of Serbianhood" (p. 56) in any profound and conscious way—at least among most Serbs in the post-1945 generations."

See Central European University Press

Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources in Four Volumes

"Worship in the Early Church is a four-volume collection of excerpts from early Christian writings illustrating the Church’s liturgical practice in both East and West, from its Jewish beginnings through the end of the sixth century. Source material includes doctrinal and historical treatises, scriptural commentaries, sermons, letters, synodal legislation, early church orders, monastic rules, baptismal and funeral epigrams. Each author or major selection is preceded by a short introduction containing such information as dates, country of origin, and various other background details. A bibliography of pertinent periodical and liturgical literature is given as well as a bibliography referencing standard encyclopedias of religion and manuals of patrology.

Lawrence J. Johnson is the former executive secretary of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions and the former editor/director of The Pastoral Press. He has written several books on the liturgy and its music, including The Mystery of Faith: A Study of the Structural Elements of the Order of the Mass."

See Liturgical Press

Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holiness

"By Roman Cholij, this is the first modern study in English of the life and thought of the ninth-century Byzantine theologian and monastic reformer, Theodore the Stoudite. Cholij provides a guide to and a complete analysis of all the primary source material attributed to Theodore. If the monastic leader is considered in the context of the tradition to which he belonged, it is clear that his religious formation occurred within a widely established school of Basilian and Palestinian Christian thought. This encourages a fresh engagement with the subtleties in Theodore's behaviour towards the Byzantine religious and secular leaders of his time and provokes new conclusions concerning the religious and secular issues which involved Theodore in controversy. Cholij refutes the established view of Theodore as a breaker of the traditional; Byzantine church and state relationship and provides new insights into Theodore's true understanding of the involvement of the Emperor in church affairs. In his analysis of the rites of holiness that belonged to Theodore's church, the author identifies a false tradition of sacramental mysteries in a misreading of Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite and so offers a radically new definition of the origins of the Orthodox sacramental tradition."

See Oxford University Press

Bulgarian Orthodox Church May Return to Julian Calendar

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church may decide in favor of restoring the Julian Calendar, which means that Christmas will have be celebrated on January 7 instead of December 25.

Senior bishops have made it clear that in 2009 Bulgaria might celebrate Christmas on December 25 for the last time, if the Church decides to renounce the Gregorian Calendar.

On December 20, 2009, the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is going to hold a meeting to consider the plea of a group of believers and their priest from the village of Chelopechene, asking that Christmas be celebrated on January 7. The plea was filed on November 20, 2009.

The local priest Mariy Dimitrov has been serving according to the Julian Calendar for the last 20 years in his parish with the special permission of Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim.

Those who filed the plea remind that a similar case for the restoration of the Julian Calendar in 1997 attracted the support of five bishops.

Bulgaria switched to the Gregorian Calendar in 1916, and has been celebrating Christmas on December 25 since it was restored as an official holiday after the end of the communist regime.

December 1, 2009

See Novinite.com