The parish library
Library of Articles
8 full articles on the Orthodox faith, its history and its worship — written to be read at length rather than skimmed, and given in English and Russian alike.
What the Church believes
The faith itself — what is confessed, and why the words were chosen with such care.
The history of the Church
How the one Church of the apostles came to be many Churches in one communion — and where it was torn.
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History · From the apostolic sees to the parish in Orlando
The Local Orthodox Churches
Fourteen or so self-governing Churches, one faith, one chalice — where each of them came from, what autocephaly actually means, and how a mission in Florida fits into a story that begins in Jerusalem.
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History · Constantinople and Rome, 800–1965
The Great Schism of 1054
On 16 July 1054 a cardinal laid a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia. Almost nothing about that sentence is what people think it is — and the real division took centuries, and was sealed not in 1054 but in 1204.
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Our patron · A captive woman and a whole kingdom
Saint Nina, Enlightener of Georgia
She came into Georgia alone, with a cross bound out of grapevine and her own hair, and lived in a gardener’s hut. Within her lifetime the king, the queen and the kingdom were baptised — the second country on earth to take the Christian faith as its own.
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Worship and the house of God
Where the service came from, and why an Orthodox church is built the way it is.
Worship · From the upper room to Sunday morning
A History of Orthodox Worship
The service you attend on Sunday can be traced, piece by piece, to the synagogue, the upper room, a second-century description that still fits, the great churches of Constantinople and the monasteries of Palestine.
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Worship · What an Orthodox church has in common with the tabernacle
The Temple, Old and New
Three courts, a veil, a lampstand, incense, a priesthood, vestments, blood. Almost everything a visitor finds strange about an Orthodox church is a deliberate quotation of the Old Testament sanctuary — and one thing is utterly different.
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The Christian life
What the faith asks of a life — in the monastery, and in an ordinary week with a job and a mortgage.
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The Christian life · From the Egyptian desert to Spruce Island
Orthodox Monasticism
It began when one young man in Egypt took a verse of the Gospel literally. What followed shaped the Church’s prayer, its theology, its music and its books — and everything asked of a monk is asked of every Christian in another form.
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The Christian life · What we do with what we were given
Stewardship
A steward owns nothing and answers for everything. What the New Testament actually says about money and possessions is more demanding, and far more freeing, than the word “stewardship” usually suggests in a parish bulletin.
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