[immoceefe]

A new political paradigm these days. I do not understand it. It seems like madness to support the formation of a new country that will cetainly be anti-Christian, not to mention anti-Orthodox. But then the backers of this new country aren't supporters of the Christian worldview, but something entirely secular and ultimately anti-Christ.

But what can you expect? Outside of the RC Church (which ,as a direct competitor to Orthodoxy, is hostile), I think the West generally isn't particularly hostile to Orthodoxy. It's far too ignorant of it to have any real opinion about it. It's not on the Western radar screen at all. So they are not going to consider that Orthodoxy counts for anything politically or religiously. I would say that the US government is even more ignorant about Orthodoxy and Orthodox history as they were about Islam and muslims (before 9/11). Our politicians (federal or state) never visit Orthodox churches or church leaders, whereas you can see swarms of Protestant or Catholic leaders visiting them or receiving them. I would guess that western European politicians are no better.

Rather than see ourselves as poor, pitiful victims of supposed Western hostility, it would be far more constructive to make our presence much better known to the West. So far, Orthodoxy in the West has been too content to hide itself in ethnic enclaves, while Orthodoxy in the home countries has been suppressed by their governments up until recently. In either case, Orthodoxy is invisible to Westerners. Only rarely is Byzantine history taught--and when it is it's on the graduate level only for specialists--instead our entire school system is geared toward Western history, religion and Western ideologies. So of course the West is ignorant of the Orthodox and the Orthodox home countries and their concerns.

Because of all this, absolutely NO non-Orthodox will begin to take the Orthodox into consideration until the Orthodox themselves begin to make a strong case for themselves and do so often and consistently. So far that hasn't been done very well. The work was begun by Fr. Seraphim Rose, but it needs to go a lot further on. What are you doing in England to foster understanding among the ordinary folks there? How can this be done in either England or the US?

It would help also for Orthodoxy to present itself a unified front, which doesn't seem to be the case now with all the divisions (both nationalistic, political and theological) that are creeping in.

As the saying goes, it's the squeaky wheel that gets oiled.