Orthodox Church in America

So Holy Transfiguration Monastery has been so gracious with us.

Some of our other monasteries, the OCA or the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, they've all been so gracious with us because what we found was you can find something attributed to a church father online and the only place you can find it to verify it is like a pillow on etsy that's being sold so we want to make sure that we're actually learning from the fathers of the church so that is that is a good call out to make sure that you don't just um pick things off of the internet because oh yeah they're not verifiable it's it is dangerous

Oh, yeah.

It's the Wild West, as you know, out there.

My methodology for this debate is pretty simple.

I identified 219 elements of modern Orthodox belief and practice using official Orthodox sources, including the OCA's Orthodox faith and materials from GoArts, which is the Greek Orthodox Arts Diocese of America.

And I compared them against the New Testament, early Christian writings, councils, archeological evidence, and historical scholarship from the first century to Nicaea in AD 325.

What we see is that if we freeze this debate in the first century, we find that only 16 of the 219 elements of modern Eastern Orthodoxy are attested, or about 7.3%.

You are born again, you are forgiven by the very act of having undergone that ritual.

Or the Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, this is what it says, their website, Orthodox Church in America, In the Christian church, the practice of baptism takes on a new and particular significance and no longer remains merely a sign of moral change and spiritual rebirth.

It becomes very specifically the act of a person's death and resurrection in and with Jesus.

The Orthodox Church says later, through the act of immersion, which they administer immersion to infants also, the baptized person dies and is born again in the resurrection of Christ into eternal life.

And they are almost all becoming pro-Russian.

The Russian Orthodox Church now controls the American Orthodox Church, unfortunately.

And it's turned it into a device for the Russians.

And this is a general thing.

$5.

How does OCA compare to Rocor? I mean, you're going to have good and bad priests everywhere, but I mean, I'm in Rocor, so I'm partial to that.

Wild lettuce, $20.

I'm using my husband's account.

Worry more so about what the actual priest says and teaches.

That's more important than is it OCA or GOARC or whatever.

But look, guys, you just gotta be-- Like, you're gonna encounter Boomer stuff.

You're gonna encounter liberal stuff.

... let me just jump in.

One of the articles that I brought with me today is directly from the OCA, the Orthodox Church in America's website, and-

So don't come after her

So don't, yeah-

I mean, we tried to find out when all the other Orthodox services were in the Twin Cities.

The OCA had one at 8.30 in the morning, one at 11.

So we tried to do that so that our kids would really see that we feel it's important.

That's right.