ROAC pronounces verdict on grace?

[Alyosha]

Thanks, Peter. I guess, I just wanted to make sure we, Russians, get credit where it's due. So many bad things are said about Russia today, at least we can compliment the dress style. After all, people invest their entire salaries in clothes, etc.

Although the fact that people are so preoccupied about outward appearances back home definitely disturbs me, always has. This is what I remember: people are poor, they don't have cars, they don't even strive to own homes, but it's soooo important that they wear the latest fashion boots, jackets, fur hats. The new immigrants that come here, often illegally, are obsessed with looking better than the neighbor. They clean toilets and spend the hard-earned money on designer clothes, furniture, fancy cars.. Many of my friends are like that - it's a whole mentality, I can never break through it. I was like that when I was young, but years spent in the US change the priorities - so when I finally return home, I'll be the frumpiest one, I'm sure

[尼古拉前执事]

The comments on clothing and praxis have been split off and moved to the praxis section as it was taking this thread off topic.

[ania]

just deleted my post to move it to the Praxis thread

[TomS]

You bring up a good point Joseph; what food tastes good with Kool-aid? Maybe some hot dogs?

I'll be honest, Tom. You're scaring me.

I'm scaring you? No reason for me to scare you -- the ones who should scare you are the ones mixing up the brew!

[Joseph D]

Maybe I scare myself.

[CGW]

Since my original reply got taken to the cleaners, as it were, let me try again without clothes. But modestly.

One should think that either Jordanville or DC should do as evidence of ROCOR life. Or perhaps both together. At any rate, in DC I see a lot of people who aren't converts, and it isn't all that easy to tell them from the people at St. Nick's OCA. Well, maybe the clerics at St. John's have longer beards, but then again, the only one I remember is a deacon, who is an Anglican convert.

Anyway, the point is that a lot of people are ROCOR simply because they always have been. They don't necessarily have this impetus to pick at jurisdictional issues (though doubtless a lot of their ancestors were ROCOR rather than what-is-now-OCA because of reaction against the DCs), and they aren't all mad at someone now.

The internet presence of ROAC in the USA, in constrast, seems to mix a posture of anger at the MP (and while they're at it, most of the rest of Orthodoxy) and especially at ROCOR with a lot of what seems to me to be convert-trolling. By this last I mean that the material they set forth seems to be aimed at acquiring the already churched, especially the disaffected already churched.

I remember some seven years ago arguing with Fr. John Morris about some of this. By that time I had already been closely exposed to Orthodoxy for some years, and the issue of jumping ship from my current church already weighed upon me, but at the same time I felt something fundamentally wrong about the way he approached his old church.

At any rate, the implicit question here seems to be, "how should a Protestant dare to criticize an Orthodox churchman's talk of Orthodoxy?" And I suppose I must answer, "which is a better guide: one who has been Orthodox a short time, or one who has been in close contact with Orthodoxy for many years?" Both are answered the same; it isn't years or fervor that are important here, but perspication.

[Seraphim Reeves]

Now I'm getting a clearer understanding of why the Islamists are eating our lunch.

Seraphim