Metadata

Mirror

http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/schmem_spiritual.aspx[1]

Specifications

Property	Data
Name	problems_of_orthodoxy_in_america.odt
Type	OpenDocument Text 1.2 (ODT)
Size	50.3KiB
Pages	13

Description

This ODT file contains a copy of Problems of Orthodoxy in America, an essay primarily about secularism and its effects on the American Orthodox. Despite being nearly half a century old, this work is still extremely relevant today in warning about the dangers of creating and serving the idea of a parish (such as the governance, finances, programs, and so on) instead of Christ. Fr. Alexander also warns about the secularization of the person: dividing life up into distinct and disjoint spheres (almost living multiple, parallel lives together) and thus pretending that Christ and His teachings are not addressed to every aspect of us. Instead, he reminds us that Christ must inform (and really, direct) every part of our lives and our parishes; we must be certain we are serving Him, not an organization (which is really a mental construct) or something else we're taught to value, such as a career (which, too, is an idea—and a fairly questionable one). I've had a copy of this essay since the late 2000s.

Authorship

Problems of Orthodoxy in America was originally written as part of a series by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, an American Orthodox theologian, in 1965 for St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly. I have no idea what the copyright/left status of this essay is.

I created this metadata on December 24, 2012 and last modified it on August 23, 2013.

Footnotes

1. 1. This is the original source of my file, though it is in a different format.