Cult of Personality

The devotion below has been circulating the internet in the day s since it was posted, particularly among the Orthodox.  It is, frankly, quite nice to have such sympathetic attention drawn to Orthodox liturgical practice.  I suspect much of its popularity is precisely because of such sympathetic attention on an otherwise quite Protestant website.  In addition, it highlights a number of aspects of Orthodoxy which are true, or, more honestly, which some of us would like to be true.  So while I appreciate elements of its characterization of Orthodoxy, and certainly resonate with the danger inherent in cults of personality, there is quite a bit here that is disingenuous.  I wouldn’t think the more disingenuous elements worthy of comment except that they are rhetorical descriptions which are voiced by many Orthodox, and I am not at all sure they are true.  They feed into a construction of ourselves, and a construction of us by others, which seems more about how we want to portray ourselves (or be portrayed) than about how we really are.

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