A Holy Difference
Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church
by Stephen O. Presley
Christendom is dead. In North America and Europe, church attendance is down, budgets are strained, and church buildings are being repurposed as gyms, boutiques, and dance clubs. In films and television, pastors have devolved from the heroic (Fr. Barry in On the Waterfront), through the well-meaning but marginal (Father Mulcahy in MASH), to today, when, if they appear at all, clergy are either mouthing fashionable clichés about social justice and psychological well-being, or else, by the time the credits roll, discovered to be corrupt and hypocritical.
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L. Joseph Letendre is the author of the recently published primer When You Pray: A Practical Guide to an Orthodox Life of Prayer. His writing has also appeared in The Reformation and Revival Journal and St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly. He holds an M.Div. from St. Vladimir's Seminary and is a parishioner at All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago.
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