Happy to have Fr. John here. 
Clergy & Monastics Father Andrew Damick
- Thread starter The Black Russian
- Start date
Finished the audiobook yesterday. It was absolutely amazing. Starting on his book Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy now. I saw his interview also and was very disappointed with his obvious attacks on Fr Peter Heers (tho I admit his criticism of online laity wasn't totally without merit in my opinion). I think this comes down too Clergy who are against the vaxx, masking, and Church shut downs vs those who support these things. I love his work thus far but I'll ignore warnings about Fr Peter Heers from Priest who ignore the increasing persecution of the flock or worse even support it.
His books are good. But it seems like the ship of Ancient Faith Ministries is going to sink under his direction.
Have you read his latest book, “Arise O God”? And yea, AFM is a sinking ship, especially now that Jay Dyer is on the offensive.
So his newest book is a thumbs up?
I haven't, I read Orthodoxy And Heterodoxy and the one about St. Ignatius of Antioch (It was called "The God Bearer" or something like that).
I listened to it in audio book format. It's very short at 2hrs 48mins... almost hate to say it with everything going on but I thought it was amazing. It really grounds you anew in the Gospel with the proper view of exactly what the Gospel is. I'd classify it as a perspective adjustment along the lines of the book "Everywhere Present". It crash courses you through entire Bible and tells what each event means and by extension what it means for you. That said I'm still quite new to Orthodoxy and old timers looking for deep theology likely won't be as impressed.
I am trying to get him to remove Angela Carlson’s books from his site, given that she vocally and publicly declares her belief that abortion should be legal.
He’s not going to do it. Says she promotes the legality of abortion but still believes it’s a sin so therefore it’s not a problem for Ancient Faith. Very sad.
Sad! I reckon they’d be ok with someone who believes in the legality of pedophilia but also believes it’s a sin.
I asked if someone calling themselves Orthodox promoted the legality of murder while claiming they still believed it was a sin, whether that would prevent him from selling that person’s book. He ignored the question.
Yes, that is the right question to ask. I see no way to hold an Orthodox position on human life, support legal abortion, and not support legal murder in cases where some other person is inconvenient to you.
I have liked much of Father Andrew's stuff, and I didn't see his treatment of Abbot Tryphon's essays as necessarily unfair as long as the decision was applied consistently towards political content. In catechesis, it does seem impossible to ignore politics at least in the context of church history, and there is at least some precedent for clergy teaching laity on the interaction of politics and faith both in sermons and other contexts.
However, from the perspective of AFR being an "entry point" for inquirers, maybe one could argue that you want to eliminate discussion of politics in order to prevent someone being pushed away from inquiring because of their knee-jerk reaction to a political view. Or alternatively, you may not want someone to come to Orthodoxy only because it appears to validate their political views. I don't know if he's applying the rule on political content consistently, but it's at least possibly a reasonable rule.
Permitting the publication of the books of an author who supports legal abortion, however, is dishonest. That is much more troubling to me than the treatment of Abbot Tryphon's essays.
He probably ignored you because it was the basically the same question you asked before and he already answered that yes he would keep selling it...
The weird thing is that, according to him, the amount of money these books bring in is negligible. It’s not even like he, or Carlson, is getting rich from this.
It's sad. Hopefully he will repent and decide to remove his support for it. Sometimes people double down when they feel attacked and then when it sinks in they realise their errors and repent. I pray that this is the case here.
As far as I am concerned it's a no brainer. We as human beings no less, let alone Orthodox Christians should not go anywhere near anything that has remotely anything to with abortion or its promotion.
This is the post made by Angela Carson, whose books are sold by Ancient Faith, which I sent to Father Andrew to ask why he sells her books. He told me he was “satisfied,” after asking her about this, that she isn’t actually promoting abortion. Draw what conclusions you will.
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That’s double speak.
As you say, she is clearly saying here (albeit by quoting someone else) that we should just trust women that if they choose to do murder it's okay because that is their choice, and forbidding it is worse than not trusting them somehow. Substitute ex-utero murder and it is an absurd position. It's a clear defence of the indefensible.