| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Navigation Open Doors: Every Two Hours a Nigerian Christian Is Killed for ‘Following Jesus’ Pravmir.com team 10 March 2022 Photo: hcef.org The Christian aid group Open Doors revealed Wednesday a Christian is violently killed for their faith in Nigeria every two hours on average, 365 days a year. “That’s nearly 13 people a day, 372 a month and almost 5,000 a year,” writes Lindy Lowry, the managing editor for Open Doors USA, in an email. “And the reality is that each of these numbers is a man, woman, father, mother, son or daughter.” “Research for the 2022 World Watch List reveals that in Nigeria, more Christians were murdered for their faith than in any other country,” Lowry writes, adding that “Nigeria accounted for nearly 80% of Christian deaths worldwide.” These data confirm that currently Nigeria is “the world’s most violent place for Christians,” the message states. “Believers live each hour under threat of attack, kidnapping or death from Islamic extremist groups — simply because they walk with Jesus.” Tweet Donate Share Code for blog Open Doors: Every Two Hours a Nigerian Christian Is Killed for ‘Following Jesus’ Pravmir.com team The Christian aid group Open Doors revealed Wednesday a Christian is violently killed for their faith in Nigeria every two hours on average, 365 days a year. “That’s nearly 13 people a day, 372 a month and almost 5,000 a year,” writes Lindy Lowry, the managing editor for Open Doors USA, in an ... Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. |
| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Navigation Triumph of Orthodoxy Sunday Along with the essential trio of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, our Lenten effort, as average people, might be summed up in the words of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, “Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility.” Archpriest Thaddaeus Hardenbrook 13 March 2011 Glory to God, Lent is underway! For many of us, the challenges of Clean Week have been very practical: targeting distractions and cares that compete with Lent, prioritizing attendance at services, cleaning out the refrigerator and refreshing our fasting-food shopping lists while squeezing in a few power naps to balance Lent’s natural draw on our energy. Clean Week is a sprint wherein we break free from the congestion of daily life and then set a bit slower yet calculated pace—one that can be maintained until the final push of Holy Week. Icon of Triumph of Orthodoxy For many of us, also, the lenten demons got an early start this year. Illness, car trouble, family crisis, or some good old-fashioned irritation. Our spiritual tradition is clear that whenever a Christian sets a spiritual goal, embraces personal asceticism, or just sits down to make a spiritual plan, the temptation to irritability confronts us almost immediately—perhaps because we’re that easily wearied, perhaps because we so quickly feel proud of ourselves. Along with the essential trio of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, our Lenten effort, as average people, might be summed up in the words of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, “Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility.” |
| A statement signed by signed by the heads of all recognized churches in the Holy Land later denounced the “awful scenes of the brutal treatment to clerics, average people and pilgrims in Jerusalem during Holy Saturday,” lamenting that clergymen and average people “get beaten brutally and indiscriminately and be denied access to their churches under the pretext of keeping order.” Israel later officially apologized to Egypt after Israeli police officers attacked Egyptian diplomats and a Coptic clergyman at a church in Jerusalem during Orthodox Easter. In a report published in 2012, the US State Department made similar observations. “Strict closures and curfews imposed by the Israeli government negatively affected residents’ ability to practice their religion at holy sites, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, as well as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,” the report said. “The separation barrier significantly impeded Bethlehem-area Christians from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and made visits to Christian sites in Bethany (al-Eizariya) and Bethlehem difficult for Palestinian Christians who live on the Jerusalem side of the barrier.” East Jerusalem, including the historic Old City, was occupied by Israeli forces in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognized by the international community. There are around 200,000 Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and inside Israel in total, while hundreds of thousands more live abroad. Tweet Donate Share Code for blog Archbishop condemns Israeli restrictions on Easter pilgrims Natalya Mihailova " It is the right of every Christian to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre without facing any obstacles, or impediments, " Hanna said in a statement. " The Israeli security pretexts are unacceptable in every way, " he added, calling on Orthodox and Christian institutions to ... Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. |
| The share of one-time donations to nonprofit organizations traditionally increases in December. Moreover, the growth is noted in all areas of charity. In December donations to socially unprotected groups increased by 96%, by 34% – to doctors, by 220% – to the environment compared to November, 2020. After the New Year’s holidays, the number of donations was greatly reduced. Donations to the environment increased The growth of charitable donations to the environment occurred after the environmental disaster in Kamchatka. There, in September 2020, a massive death of sea animals was recorded. The topic of ecology became the main topic in the media. Last October, the number of donations to the environment increased by 21% compared to the previous month, while one-time payments more than doubled – they increased by 113%. This was the highest rise in donations for this line of philanthropy in an entire year, excluding New Year’s. Although people also supported environmental projects last spring, there was no such leap. The average donation to the environment in 2020 was 539 rubles. Human rights During the pandemic, human rights became one of the areas that people supported the least. One-off donations to this area increased in May. A sharp rise in donations to human rights support was recorded in January, 2021. The rise in donations was 200% compared to December, 2020. Meanwhile, December, as noted above, is one of the most successful months for fundraising activities of nonprofit organizations. One-time donations to human rights increased by 8 times in January 2021 compared to December, 2020. The average donation to human rights support in 2020 was 1,001 rubles. Tweet Donate Share Code for blog What Russians Donated Money To in 2020 Taisia Sidorova How did the pandemic change charity? Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. |
| The lengths of the canonical gospels suggest not only intention to publish but also the nature of their genre. 68 All four gospels fit the medium-range length (10,000–25,000 words) found in ancient biographies as distinct from many other kinds of works. 69 A «book» was approximately what one could listen to in a setting. The average length of a book of Herodotus or Thucydides is about 20,000 words, which would take around two hours to read. After the Alexandrian library reforms, an average 30–35 feet scroll would contain 10,000 to 25,000 words–exactly the range into which both the Gospels and many ancient bioi fal1. 70 Also seeking popular analogies, Moses Hadas and Morton Smith compared the Gospels with aretalogies. 71 Aretalogies do have some features in common with some Gospel narratives, but they are normally brief narrations or lists of divine acts, hence do not provide the best analogies for the Gospels as whole works. 72 These narratives may support the hypothesis of early circulated miracle-collections (such as Johns proposed signs source), and indicate the degree to which narratives could be employed in the service of religious propaganda. They do not, however, explain our current gospels and their length; aretalogy was not even a clearly defined genre. 73 2. Novels and Drama Not all literary works concerning specific characters were biographies. Yet all four canonical gospels are a far cry from the fanciful metamorphosis stories, divine rapes, and so forth in a compilation like Ovid " s Metamorphoses. The Gospels plainly have more historical intention and fewer literary pretensions than such works. The primary literary alternative to viewing the Gospels as biography, however, is not entertaining mythological anthologies but to view them as intentional fiction, 74 a suggestion that has little to commend it. First-century readers recognized the genre of novel (the Hellenistic «romance»), 75 including novels about historical characters, 76 but ancient writers normally distinguished between fictitious and historical narratives. 77 As some literary critics have noted, even when historical works have incorrect facts they do not become fiction, and a novel that depends on historical information does not become history. 78 Talbert argues that not all biographies were basically reliable like Suetonius and Plutarch; but his examples of unreliable biographies, Pseudo Callisthenes» Alexander Romance and Lucian " s Passing of Peregrinus, do not make his case. 79 The former is more like a historical novel, and the latter resembles satire. This is not to deny some degree of overlap among categories in historical content, but to affirm that what distinguishes the two genres is the nature of their truth claims. 80 |
| These trends are obvious, but there are some less noticeable developments that are just as significant. Along with the continued decline of the Christian population in Europe and North America, there is an explosive expansion of the Catholic and Protestant population of South America, Africa and Asia. In the generations to come the average citizen of Christendom will be darker-skinned, poor or of the lower middle-class. And what is more important, this average Christian will have little historic allegiance to European or Russian culture.. As a result, Europe and the West will become mostly non-Christian, while the Christian population will largely be made up of Hispanics, Africans and Asians. Western society continues to become more reliant upon technology for daily life. The modern culture, in its addiction to false images and entertainment, has become " disengaged " from the original design for human life. As a result, our young person will becoming " less-connected " with other people and with their natural world. He is becoming, in the terminology of the Holy Fathers, increasingly " insensitive " to the beauties and truth of God " s Creation. Society continues to push religion - especially the Holy Orthodoxy - out of the public square and into the backstreet alleys. Religious belief has been demoted to the status of " private opinion " . Ethics and morality have become matters of personal taste, instead of reflecting the eternal constants of truth and goodness. Society continues to ignore the moral witness of the Church, and has adopted only one simple value: the materialistic satisfaction of people who can speak for themselves. This means that society will increase in moral permissiveness. It will be liberation for those who have power and wealth. But those who are poor, or who cannot speak for themselves - they will be the ones who will have lows heaped upon them, and will lose their right even to live. You may be asking yourself what these trends have to do with the Holy Orthodox Church, this Diocese or our families. We are even now seeing the effects of these trends in our parishes. By the time our young people reach adulthood, there will be no doubt about the reality of these developments: |
| Out of two hundred and eighty letters by Archimandrite John (Krestiankin, +2006) collected in a volume published during the author’s life by the monastery where he lived and worked, 182 are replies to women correspondents, compared with 82 addressed to men and 16 that either cannot be positively identified or are addressed to married couples. That is more than double the number! Similarly, in a truly fundamental research work on Fr. John of Kronstadt (+1908), Nadieszda Kizenko writes that “women twice as often as men wrote him long letters asking for spiritual counsel, describing their lives in great detail” (127). A collection of letters written by Hegumen Nikov (Vorobiev, +1963) contains 334 letters, 237 of which are replies to female correspondents, only 72—to men, and 25 could not be identified or are addressed to couples. Lest anyone think that the publishing establishment harbors an anti-male bias, a collection of letters of Saint John Chrysostom contains only 32 letters to women compared to 82 to men. Of those 82 letters, however, many can be classified as “business” rather than “letters to spiritual children”: 28 are to bishops, 21—to presbyters, and of the remaining 33 many are to government officials, and are of a character strikingly different from that of the 17 letters to Deaconess Olympiada (or Olympias), for example, which average more than nine pages per letter. We can also recall the letters of Archpriest Avvakum Petrov (+1682) to his spiritual daughters Theodosia Morozova, Evdokia Urusova, and Maria Danilova; the letters of Elder Paisios (Eznepidis, +1994) to the sisters of Saint John the Evangelist Convent; and the special spiritual bond that Saint Seraphim of Sarov shared with the sisters of the Diveyevo convent. However, leaving the intricacies of monastic relationships to those who possess a personal first-hand experience with the angelic life, we shall return to the discussion of matters parish life. In a rather unscientific and unreliable way based mostly on almost eight years of personal experience as a parish priest, I shall propose that women typically have a richer spiritual life than men, at least, if we gauge this on the length and content of their confession. This may draw the attentions of some parish priests who are usually also—at least based on the vocational choice they have made—predisposed to having a somewhat richer than average spiritual life. Noting another intriguing connection between parish priests and women (nuns, in particular), Kizenko asserts that |
| Thus some scholars have even compared them with a typical «retainer» class. 1520 With the demise of the leading priests in Jerusalem during the Jewish revolt, the Pharisees were well-positioned to have their interests represented in a new coalition of power. The increasing power of some Pharisees after 70 would thus not be surprising. Yavneh was one of the Judean cities controlled by the Herodian family with Romés approval, 1521 and there Vespasian settled Judeans willing to submit to Rome, who would have included many aristocrats with vested interests. 1522 Some argue that the leading citizens among those settled there were especially Pharisees; 1523 others suggest that the leaders were scribes in general, including but not limited to Pharisees. 1524 In any case, many of the leaders (such as Gamaliel and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus) were Pharisees–which fits the otherwise probably inexplicable portrait of their role in a hostile Judean leadership in the Fourth Gospe1. The Pharisees and Jewish Christians probably had a more amicable relationship in the sixties, 1525 but some factors surrounding the Judean revolt–perhaps the need to consolidate influence afterwards, perhaps the social class or just idiosyncrasies of Yavnehs surviving elite–seem to have changed the relationship to what appears presupposed in Matthew and John. 1526 That the rabbis spoke and wrote with authority does not indicate that everyone observed or even understood their legal rulings, even where they were accepted as experts; 1527 they achieved only gradually the status they held by medieval times. 1528 As late as the fourth century, archaeological evidence shows that observant Palestinian Judaism did not abide by rabbinic norms, 1529 although the same evidence shows that popular legal practice and rabbinic opinion often coincided, perhaps because rabbinic opinion often reflected existing legal traditions. 1530 Because they became the «winners» in subsequent Jewish history, however, their perspective has often been read as normative. 1531 Of course, the average Jewish Palestinian peasant, while influenced by more educated classes, was probably influenced more by the popular trends of the culture than by rabbinic rulings. This need not mean that the rabbis were disrespected, but that untrained people then, like most people today, were eclectic and synergistic; sharing a common basis of morality, popular ideology, and popular stories in folk religion, they may have been no more skilled in the intricacies of rabbinic disputes than the average U.S. citizen is in the details of U.S. case law. Roman legal scholars were likewise heeded at times–and usually ignored. 1532 Especially before the abortive Bar Kokhba revolt, apocalyptic ideas must have flourished on the popular level as in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Such ideas probably influenced revolutionaries like the Zealots, though Josephus " s Hellenistic apologetic excludes such ideas from mention. |
| One third of Russians give up drinking Moscow, April 9, 2013 According to research carried out by the World Health Organization, Russians are in reality far from being the greatest lovers of alcohol in the world, in spite of existing stereotypes about them, reports the Sdelano u nas website. Thus, in the 2012 report devoted to health care issues in Europe, it was stated that Moldova was recognized as the heaviest drinking country. On average, each Moldovan drinks over 20 litres of alcohol per year. Luxembourg comes second and Estonia closes the top three. But it is noteworthy that Russia is in the middle of this list—in the twentieth place. It appears that Russian citizens, on average, consume just over 10 liters per year. Approximately the same amount is consumed annually by citizens of Denmark, Great Britain and Croatia. Turkey and Tajikistan were mentioned among the countries that drank the least. Also, little alcohol is consumed in Scandinavian countries—Sweden, Norway and Iceland. And the Russian president Vladimir Putin is himself an example for imitation. The head of state allegedly hardly drinks at all. The Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is indifferent to alcohol as well. On State visits he is usually seen with a glass of mineral water or, very seldom, with a glass of white wine. At present the Russian authorities are engaged in a serious campaign against the excessive consumption of alcohol. Thus, the sale of alcoholic drinks has been banned at night while a ‘ " zero per thousand " standard has been introduced for motorists. Now the deputies of the State Duma are discussing introducing a ban on the consumption of strong drinks on airplanes. These measures are already beginning to bear fruit. According to World Health Organization " s information, the number of Russians who drink several times a week has declined to 5%. Also, the number who drink several times a month has declined to 33%. It may now boldly be said that for Russians sobriety has become the norm. Pravoslavie.ru 10 апреля 2013 г. ... Комментарии Мы в соцсетях Подпишитесь на нашу рассылку |
| Putin took the occasion of his annual State of the Nation address to issue a call for more children. “The three child family should become the norm in Russia,” he declared . Since the average Russian woman has only one child, this would mean a considerable increase in fertility. Along with encouraging Russian women to have more children, he said, Russia must also look for ways to support and help them once they have had the children. Putin was vague about what this additional support might entail, but his administration is in discussions with pro-life and pro-family groups on this point. For their part, hundreds of pro-life and pro-family organizations, together with large families and activists from all over the Russian Federation, are joining together into a National Parents Association (NPA). The CEO of the fledgling NPA, Alexey Komov, says that “President Putin, in his inaugural address, gave a clear message to everyone: Three children must become the norm in Russia or the country will face a serious demographic challenge going forward. We at the NPA are promoting the natural family—a husband and wife and their natural or adoptive children—and are in dialogue with state authorities to define effective family and demographic policy.” One major obstacle to raising the Russian birthrate is the prevalence of abortion. The average Russian woman has seven abortions in her lifetime. As long as society fails to recognize the value of human life, and wantonly destroys it in large numbers, it will be difficult to establish a new three-child norm. Abortion must cease being a way of life in Russia if her people are to survive. Putin has given Russian families a tangible incentive, the baby bonus, to have children. He and his administration are now attempting to shift cultural norms in favor of the three-child family. But whether or not he succeeds will depend upon pro-life and pro-family advocates like Alexey Komov, and their efforts to turn Putin’s exhortations and financial support into a nationwide movement. On their success hinges the fate of the Russian people. |
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