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Friday, July 8, 2022

Announcing a New Book from Robert Spencer

 

NEW! From Uncut Mountain Press

Available in paperback and eBook formats

The Church and the Pope

The Case for Orthodoxy

by Robert Spencer


OVERVIEW


Today, the place and authority of the bishop of Rome in the first millennium has become a matter of great interest and importance not only for the official dialogue but for all serious seekers of the true Church. One such seeker is the prolific New York Times Bestselling Author Robert Spencer, who applied his analytical acumen to a thorough examination of The Church & The Pope.

From the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers through the Oecumenical Councils and the filioque controversy in the time of St. Photios the Great, on up to the Great Schism, all of the “flash points” of church history indicate the same conciliar nature of the Church as witnessed in Acts: “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”

The whole “cloud of witnesses” give testimony to the truth of the Church vis-a-vis the post-schism papal claims: the Apostle Peter himself and the choir of the Apostles, St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Athanasius the Great, St. John Chrysostom, Blessed Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Photios the Great and others.

Viewing the life and nature of the Church throughout the first millennium through the spiritual vision of these great saints, Spencer first walked, and now walks us, out of the weeds of innovation and division and back into the garden of the Church Fathers where unity and continuity shine.

Full info and online ordering...


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of twenty-three books including two New York Times bestsellers. Spencer is a regular columnist for PJ Media and FrontPage Magazine and has written hundreds of articles about Islam and other issues. He is also a regular on major news media outlets and speaker at universities across America.


DETAILS

First published: July 2022

Length (softcover): 112 pages

Size (softcover): 6 x 9 inches

ISBN (softcover): 978-1-63941-005-7


Thursday, July 7, 2022

Fr. Alexey Young - On the New Martyrs under the Turkish Muslim Yoke

On the third Sunday after Pentecost, the Church honors the memory of the Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke. The following article is condensed from a lecture delivered at the St. Herman Summer Pilgrimage, Platina CA, August, 1982, and first printed in Orthodox America.


'Where are the Mighty of the Earth?' - Sunday of the New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke

by Fr Alexey Young

OrthoChristian.com



On May 29, 1453, the troops of the Moslem leader, Mohammed II took the great city of Constantinople. For more than 1000 years Orthodox Christians had assumed that the Byzantine Christian Empire would stand until the Second Coming of Christ. They had always called their city the “God-protected City,” and indeed, until now it had been protected by Heaven. But when their Emperor, Constantine XI, fell in battle, the holy city of Byzantium became the capital of a new empire, the Ottoman Empire, ruled by a pagan people, enemies of Christ and Christianity, the Moslems. It was a dark, dark time for Orthodox Christians in that part of the world.

In their violent hatred of Christianity, the Moslem Turks embarked on a course of persecution designed to effectively muzzle the flock of Christ. Their strategy was no less cruel than that of atheist communists in the Soviet Union; the parallels are striking. Most of the churches of Constantinople (whose name was changed to Istanbul, just as years later Petersburg was changed to Leningrad) were converted to mosques. Their movable icons were destroyed and whole walls of inspiring and radiantly beautiful mosaics were covered with paint or plaster. Crosses were torn off domes and broken off the roofs of churches. The Moslems guaranteed Christians a definite place in Turkish society; but it was a place of guaranteed inferiority. Orthodox Christians were required to pay an annual head tax, like cattle. To the Turks they were unbelievers, and they had absolutely no rights of citizenship. They even had to wear distinctive dress. They could not marry Moslems, nor could they engage in missionary work of any kind; in fact, it was a crime, usually punishable by death, to convert a Moslem to the Christian Faith.

As if these measures were not enough, the Moslems actively undertook to control the Church itself. The Sultan ironically considered himself the “protector” of Orthodoxy, supposedly guaranteeing the existence of the Church, but actually keeping it in the vise of a terrible stranglehold. Under this system each Patriarch had to pay a stiff fee to the Sultan before he could be enthroned. Unable to raise the funds himself, the Patriarch was forced to exact a fee from each new bishop before installing him in his diocese, and this burden was eventually placed on the flocks. Taking advantage of this financially lucrative situation, the Turks forced re-elections of the Patriarch with undue rapidity. The majority of the Sultans themselves were sick, demon-ridden men, whose irrational rule and unbridled power only heightened the already demoralizing effect of Turkish rule on the Church. It is not without reason that an Englishman living in Istanbul in the seventeenth century wrote these words: “Every good Christian ought with sadness to consider and with compassion to behold this once glorious Church tearing and rending out her bowels and giving them as food to vultures and ravens."

The aim of Orthodoxy in the Ottoman Empire became, simply, one of survival. Little could they know, in 1453, that the heavy sword of Islam would weigh upon them not for a generation or two, but for five hundred years, five long centuries of darkness and difficulty. But even under such ruinous circumstances, God did not allow the light of Christianity to be extinguished. It was kept alive through the courageous confession of the New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke.