Worship Spaces: St. Antony Antiochian Orthodox Church

 I ran across St. Antony Antiochian Orthodox Church one morning about a week ago on my morning bike ride. The small church is located at the corner of 6th and Columbia in Tulsa, just off the University of Tulsa campus. What caught my eye was the beautiful icon portraits of the Four Evangelists on the outside of the building.

St. Antony was founded in 1934 by members from St. George Church in Wichita. In 1976, the Old Cedar Club building was donated to the (up until then) itinerant congregation. It was subsequently remodeled, and the icons were added in the late nineties by Janet Jamie from Oklahoma City. Father George Eber (who is quite the prolific tweeter) has served the parish since 1981.

St. Antony supports the Righteous Joseph of Egypt Prison Ministry, a project of the Orthodox Christian Churches of Oklahoma administered by St. Antony. The church also runs the St. Euphrosynos Kitchen, providing a lunch to the community every Thursday.

Re-Examining the Responsiblity of Free Speech: Charlie Hebdo and Draw Mohammed

In the wake of the terrible shooting deaths in Texas this weekend at a "Draw Mohammed" event, I thought back to the words I wrote after the Charlie Hebdo shootings earlier this year. I think they are relevant today:

This argument quite gratuitously ignores the value of prudence, of evaluating our actions in light of how it treats others. Such sentimental musing is dismissed as the worst of that great sin, political correctness. Exploring the responsibility of our stewardship of free speech, of the bounds which we choose to police upon ourselves, is categorized into the same class as reading Bin Laden's declaration of jihad in wake of the 9/11; the horrific nature of the acts disclaims any possibility of understanding what provoked such a response. Never mind that we could learn how to prevent future tragedies by learning what causes such acts; so many would rather ignore all rational cause and effect in favor of keeping our own hands clean and just telling ourselves they hate our freedoms, our shopping malls, our tolerance. And so we invade their countries and mock their religious icons, and we disaffect an entire generation, and then we wonder why they lash out.

This isn't an argument that lays the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo at the feet of said magazine; but it also doesn't make them innocent martyrs. It's an argument that asks that same question as above: just because we can run those cartoons, does that mean we should?

Freedom of speech in a civilized nation means more than acknowledging the limitless bounds of our rights to say things. It means speaking with a self-imposed sense of propriety or respect. It means understanding that just because we can say something doesn't mean we should, not because a government tells us not to, but because we know that with great privilege comes great responsibility. It means that we know that tact and restraint, respect for others and their beliefs, is not a weakness or capitulation, but the ultimate example of civilization. It is the hope for a peaceful and tolerant future.

As Christians, we are called to a life full of respect and love for others. Every Christian who felt deep offense and anger at something like Piss Christ should innately understand the anger Muslims feel over depictions of the Prophet. We can acknowledge the right of persons to display these images while also calling on them to show the restraint to not do so, in the name of tolerance and respect. This isn't giving in to terrorists; it's coexisting with others in a diverse world. It's self-governance in it's highest and more virtuous form.

My prayers go out to the families who lost loved ones this week, that they might find peace and comfort. They also go out to humanity, in the hope that we can coexist peacefully and respectfully. Amen.

From My Bookshelf: Egalitarian Leadership in the Early Church

From Christianity: the First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch, pg 242:

Thus from a very early date comes that peculiar Ethiopian arrangement which persisted for sixteen hundred years, as late as 1951: the presiding bishop (abun) in the Church of Ethiopia was never a native Ethiopian, but an import from the Coptic Church hundreds of miles to the north, and there was rarely any other bishop present in the whole country. 

This has meant that the abun rarely had much real power or initiative in a Church to which he came usually as an elderly stranger with a different native language. Authority was displaced elsewhere, to monarchs and to abbots of monastaries; monasticism seems to have arrived early in the Church of Ethiopia and quickly gained royal patronage. Around these leaders are still numerous hereditary dynasties of non-monastic clergy who, over the centuries, might swarm in their thousands to seek ordination on the abun's rare visits to their area. The education of the priests, deacons and cantors might not extend far beyond a detailed knowledge of how to perform the liturgy, but that was a formidable intellectual acquisition in itself. They were ordinary folk who thus shaped their religion into that of a whole people rather than simply the property of a royal elite. Over the centuries of trials and bizarre disasters that afflict the Ethiopian Church, they are the constant underlying force which has preserved its unique life against the odds.

What a great and rare example of widely shared leadership and knowledge in the early church.

Being the Light in Our Failing Public Schools

In the most recent issue of Plough Quarterly, Catherine McNiel wrote a thoughtful piece about her and her husband's decision to place their three children in the Chicago public school system, instead of a private Christian school or homeschooling. She focuses on the trepidation she felt at this decision, and the Christian imperative they felt to place their children where they did. The piece struck a chord with Arianna and I. As parents of Julian, age 2, and Evelyn, 6 months, this is a subject on our minds as we begin to near that decision ourselves.

Catherine begins by considering the view prominent among many Christian parents, that public schools are unsafe places for families who try to raise their kids with a Christ-centric worldview. She cites a local Chicago newspaper that reported that 76%  of students in Chicago-area public schools are from low-income homes, and then touches on the increasing trend for parents to not consider public schools as a viable option. She then asks the money question:

But what about the children who are left behind, in increasingly darker places as each Christian light is removed? Should the Christian response be to abandon troubled public schools - or should our answer rather be to infiltrate them?

Catherine and her husband elected to send their children to the local public school. She says,

I understand why so many families seek other options. But when we visit our sons' elementary schools, and see the at-risk, English-as-a-second-language, first-generation American children working hard to make their way, I think of all the resources that are lost through educational white flight. My heart aches each time I meet a strong Christian family whose talents, resources and faith will never intersect with the children in our public school - including my own children. When I hear the well-intentioned advice, "If you move there, don't send your kids to the public school," my heart cries, "But that's where we need you!" 

We recently moved to Tulsa, OK. It's Arianna's hometown, and we love it here. I plan on starting seminary in the fall at Phillips Theological Seminary here, so we will be here for the next three-four years at the very least. Julian will start school in that time, and Evelyn will be very close. This is a subject fresh in our mind as parents.

Tulsa schools, while not terrible, are still part of the public school system of Oklahoma, ranked 49th in the nation. Public education is under constant attack from our state legislature, and private Christian schools are found in abundance. This includes high quality institutions like Cascia Hall and Heritage Hall. The continuing cuts to education funding in Oklahoma has weakened already over-burdened schools and educators. Classroom sizes are rising, resources are shrinking, and standardized testing is destroying the little remaining faith many Oklahoma parents have in public schools.

So, the question is: why would we want to subject our kids to this? I am a strong proponent of the concept of public education. I believe quality education to be a right of all children, and I think the state has a duty to provide that to all children. I am also a strong believer in the absolute separation of church and state, and so I want secular schools, where there is no teacher-led prayers or Bible study and well taught, empirically-based physical and social sciences. I believe we have a duty to support public education and fund it adequately. I believe the increasing diversity of our schools is not something to be feared, but prized in the experiences it will bring our children.

But, I also understand schools are more dangerous than ever, that public education is in bad shape, that the education our kids receive in public schools is increasingly substandard and headed in the wrong direction. Julian and Evelyn don't deserve to play the role of guinea pigs, or to be the tools with which we prove a point. So again, why would we put our kids in public schools?

The other thing we wish to avoid is the idea of the "White savior." I don't want us to be misunderstood as saying we can save all the poor (read:minority) students by infusing more white kids back into public schools. Diversity and difference will help our children grow, but not specifically because our kids are there; our kids will benefit just as much from the diversity they encounter and the other kids will benefit from our kids.

The point is, in all honesty, me and my wife come from privilege, and we have resources we can sink into a public school that will help every kid enrolled there, along with what everyone else brings to the table. When parents such as us decide to send our kids to a private faith-based school or homeschool, we are in a small way taking substantial resources away from kids who don't have the benefit of that option.

I come down on the side that Catherine articulates: because it is where we are needed. Jesus calls us to be like salt, like yeast, like light: to permeate everything, everywhere, in order to bring the Kingdom on Earth here and now. She writes:

Choosing public education-even in a troubled school district-is my Christian act of hope, justice and redemption. I choose public school not because I don't care, but as a commitment to care and invest even more. My husband and I see this as a kingdom-building opportunity, in our own small way adding what we have to the wellbeing of the city. And we are not alone-beyond the discouraging statistics and failing test scores we have found committed teachers, administrators, and parents working together to make a difference. God is always found working in even the darkest of places.

This is what we must do. We can't let those without the resources to place their children in private or charter schools suffer from a lack of resources and diversity. By working together, we can make all schools places of exceptional teaching, learning and growing. That is why we are choosing a secular public school. We want to be a light, to help make schools a great place again, in any small way we can. In Catherine's words, "let's acknowledge the problem and respond with infiltration rather than abandonment."