Joseph Clarke

Few endeavors test a parish’s collective determination and mutual goodwill like the construction of a new building, or the renovation of an existing one. Even a modest building is a tangible manifestation of a community’s distinctive character and of the public face it wishes to present. Like liturgy itself, the church structure plays a crucial[…..]

Establish a national church led by your head of state and call this individual “Defender of the Faith”: to some contemporary ears this might sound like a recipe for a coercive, farright form of Christian nationalism. When King Charles III was crowned in Westminster Abbey on May 6, 2023, in the first explicitly Christian coronation[…..]

“We will rebuild it”: Even before the April 15, 2019 fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris had been extinguished, French President Emmanuel Macron had already defiantly promised to lead a major reconstruction project. But what rebuilding means is a complicated technical, artistic and political question.

The most consequential medium for English-language discourse about Orthodox Christianity today is internet-based audio. Church-themed podcasts, YouTube channels, and even online call-in shows have mushroomed over the past few years. Many hours’ worth of free spoken content is now produced every week, enough to suit virtually every cultural temperament within the Church.

To “transcend the textual and plunge into the rich sensorial realm of the past culture of Byzantium”: this is the alluring promise of the recent album by the vocal ensemble Cappella Romana. The recording presents a series of chants for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross selected to demonstrate the stylistic breadth of[…..]