ORTHODOX PERSPECTIVES ON MISSION (original) (raw)
2013
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Abstract
Collection of contemporary Orthodox contributions on mission
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“New Wine into Old Wineskins?: Orthodox Theology of Mission Facing the Challenges of a Global World”
Regnum Studies in Mission are born from the lived experience o f Christians and Christian communities in mission, especially but not solely in the fast growing churches among the poor o f the world. These churches have more to tell than stories o f growth. They are making significant impacts on their cultures in the cause o f Christ. They are producing 'cultural products' which express the reality o f Christian faith, hope and love in their societies.
Russia's Mission in the World: the Perspective of the Russian Orthodox Church
“Problems of Post-Communism”, 2019
This paper presents a reconstruction of the Russian Orthodox Church’s narrative on mission, including the evolution and most characteristic features of its content and context. The notion of mission employed in this article combines components of both messianism and missionism. In short, mission is understood as the conviction that a certain community (state/nation) is exceptional and that this exceptionality manifests itself in its special destiny (Russian: osoboe prednaznachenie). As such, it represents a specific component of the identity of a state. In contemporary Russia, mission is seen as a crucial attribute of civilizational distinctiveness and of a major power.
Do the Orthodox Churches Have a Theology of Mission Aldous
Salt: Crossroads of Religion and Culture , 2024
Salt: Crossroads of Religion and Culture 2 (2024) Benjamin Aldous Do the Orthodox Churches have a Theology of Mission? diocese of Thyateira and Great Britain in the Ecumenical Patriarchate in June 2019 could be seen as a new era of openness and engagement in ecumenical mission. I offer this an atypical example of diaspora Orthodox mission. Drawing on a speech from Archbishop Nikitas to the Group for Evangelization in October 2020, and my reflections on Nikitas, and a new generation of younger priests in the diocese I ask what missiological postures and themes are revealed as an embodied missiology in the Orthodox Diaspora. I identify this embodied missiology as rooted in transnational experience of border crossing, hospitality, and the pursuit of ecumenical relationality.
Mission(s) and Politics: An Orthodox’s Approach
Politics, Society and Culture in Orthodox Theology in a Global Age
continue to exhibit a premodern mentality. This image of Orthodoxy is readily cultivated by conservative circles even within Orthodox Christianity but is almost more pronounced in Protestant Christianity, for example, where Orthodoxy is quickly and easily viewed in this way. This overlooks the fact that the challenges posed to Christianity today as a whole by postmodernity, secularisation, and globalisation, need to be dealt with urgently in Orthodox Christianity as well and are indeed being actively discussed. Drawing attention to this is also one of the intentions of this volume of essays. These challenges include questions such as the compatibility of the Orthodox Church and its theology with modern moral concepts and democratic values or the acceptance of human rights in Orthodoxy. While such questions used to be quite often met with great scepticism in Orthodox churches and were deliberately left ambiguous, things began to change in recent times when it became clear with, among other things, the publication in March 2020 of the document For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church. The document was composed by a special commission of Orthodox scholars appointed by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and blessed for publication by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This highly significant document, already translated into fifteen languages, addresses-along with its social sensitivity and its concern for inclusion-contemporary social and moral issues, challenges, and other issues in an unusual way for the Orthodox Church. These issues include poverty, racism, human rights, democratic values, reproductive technology, new forms of marital and family life, and the environment.10 They are issues that are ever-present on a 9 Cf. the recent "Declaration" by eminent Orthodox theologians who oppose the "
Eastern Orthodox Church and the Christian Mission in the Twenty-First Century
Mission Studies, 2015
The Orthodox Church is present today all over the world, due to its mission and to the migration of the members of this church from their motherlands to the Western world. This migration took place so that its people could live in freedom, during the period of totalitarianism, or to have better conditions of life, particularly after the fall of Communism. Its mission has to be seriously taken into account in the context of Christian world mission, in order to have a relation with the living tradition of the church, on the one hand, or to know and have a vision of the doctrine of Christianity in its unity and witness in Christian history, on the other hand. By migration, the Orthodox Church became a factor in universal witness to the world as, for example, the Orthodox Romanian diaspora in the eu or usa.
ACTA MISSIOLOGIAE, 2018
There is an internal connection between ecclesiology, the teaching about the Church that we call academic ecclesiology, and mission, which is the inner heart of the Church and becomes visible through different practices. For the Orthodox Church involved in the ecumenical movement, there is a struggle to balance ecclesiology (theology) with ecumenical mission and dialogue (practice) in a divided Christian world. Nevertheless, the recent Synod of Crete (June 2016) addressed some important elements of this struggle. I have in mind, for example, the act to accept the historical name of other non-Orthodox Christian Churches and Confessions that are not in communion with it. Also, this is the first Synod of the Orthodox Churches in modern times at which ecumenical dialogue, especially in the World Council of Churches, is officially affirmed. Because of mission dialogue has to continue, "if we wish never to 'put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ' (1 Cor 9:12). " The present paper highlights those statements of the Holy and Great Council which have direct relevance for discussing the relation of ecclesiology and mission. I assert that we should understand firstly the document Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the of the Christian World and only then reflect upon The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today's World (MOCT). Furthermore, I will make some references to the other texts which were central for this conference: The Cape Town Commitment (CTC), Together Towards Life (TTL) and Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (EG). I conclude by exposing briefly my reflections after reading these mission documents and by formulating some agenda points for further work in theology of mission .
Byzantine Heritage and the Orthodox Mission Today
Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference "The Byzantine Heritage Today - What is the Roman Empire to Us?" held on 7-9 June 2023, 2025
The traditional Orthodox missionary method was based on the Byzantine missionary practice and its most ideal example - the mission of Saint Cyril and Methodius in Moravia. This method includes the spread of literacy, translation, and indigenization (encouraging the development of theology in accordance with local culture, as well as forming the local clergy that should eventually take over the administration of the newly-formed ecclesial community). This is why Saint Cyril and Methodius' mission might be termed inculturation, which is a modern missiological term that describes the respect toward and the Christianization of the local culture, without the enforcement of the cultural norms of the Church that sent the missionary. Nevertheless, the traditional Byzantine missionary method has gradually adopted the features of imposition and spiritual colonialism, thus producing meager results in the modern Orthodox Church's mission. Instead of traditionalist imposition of the Byzantine heritage, which has always presupposed the dialogue between the "superior" Byzantine and "inferior" barbarian cultures, the Church must go back to its original missionary methods that resulted in the Christianization of Hellenism. Such an approach is necessary due to the virtually de-Christianized postmodern culture in formally Christian countries, but also due to the great degree of cultural development of the nations that receive the word of the Gospel today.
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