The catalyst for this issue of The Wheel was provided by the theme of the 2024 annual meeting of the Orthodox Theological Society in America “Who Am I? Who Are We? Orthodox Christian Tradition and Questions of Identity.” 

“God loves you and created you for a purpose.” Many of us might see such a phrase as a trite response when someone is suffering from any sort of identity crisis. But perhaps there is a deeper reason why such a saying does not really strike us as meaningful: Deep down, we do not actually believe it. For most of us, lurking underneath such a saying is the possibility that within God’s eternal providential plan for John or Sally, he may have foreseen that they would reject Him for all of eternity and therefore experience endless suffering...

How the Church understands itself, and how it manifests itself is inseparably bound to tradition. Tradition is the “way of existence”– the τρόπος ὐπάρξεως—by which the Church identifies itself. Tradition is the rudder that steers the Church through the often turbulent and challenging waters of social and cultural change. Tradition provides the foundation upon which the Church lives, interacts, and enriches itself within any given historical context...

The formal focus of Mikhail Bakhtin’s critical work is the realist novel, and this proves an excellent horizon in which to examine the forms of lived existence which comprise tradition...

In the 1994 Disney film The Lion King, a particular scene speaks to the importance of recognizing and coming to terms with one’s identity. The scene renders, through the deceased lion king’s verbal exhortation to his son, the protagonist, three of the most insightful theological statements ever made in animation...

How do we understand ourselves as Christians, especially when we gather as a community in liturgy? This essay will briefly explore how the Monks and Nuns of New Skete Monastery have understood and enacted their ecclesial identity through their liturgical expression over the course of their over fifty year history. I will begin by highlighting the aspects of worship that have spoken and still speak to their multifaceted identities (e.g. baptismal, ethnic, cultural, ecclesial, and monastic) and show how this expression has changed as they moved from Eastern Rite monastics in the Roman Catholic Church to their entry into the Orthodox Church and through to the present... 

Our society is in the throes of identity politics. Debates about what constitutes identity, what are “acceptable,” “assumed,” and “constructed” identities often reach war-like intensity. The pressure to self-identify within prescribed parameters and the social consequences of choosing a governing identity create a form of social neurosis. And the neurosis is compounded by the currently fashionable academic concept of intersectionality. Instead of providing a healthy alternative to the atomized identity narratives, intersectionality compounds the neurosis by supplying sociology with the lens of privilege and victimhood, furthering the fragmentation of the social fabric...

And once again, you are joined to the eternal source...

This article examines two important religiously based movements within Orthodoxy in terms of their relationship to fascism: the Legion of the Archangel Michael (better known as the Iron Guard), which flourished in Romania between 1927 and 1944; and the ideology of Russkii mir (the Russian world), the official policy of the Russian State and the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Identity is defined as “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is; a close similarity or affinity; and in mathematics, a transformation that leaves an object unchanged.” (Oxford Dictionary) How do these definitions help us understand Orthodox Christian tradition and the question of identity? In particular, how can an authentic Orthodox identity be lived and expressed in the American context? ..

To believe that there will ever be a singular American Orthodox Church is, in light of the past half century’s worth of evidence, the same as believing that you will one day receive a letter from Hogwarts: A fun and childish fantasy that comes from reading comforting fiction. Moreover, Eastern Orthodox Christianity will never be an American religion. If Orthodox in America accept this as fact, they can direct their energy to contribute to a constructive American civic religion...

There is perhaps no more pressing issue in each of our lives than responding to the core question, “Who am I?”. It is the question that binds all human beings together, regardless of our diverse backgrounds of culture, religion, and social upbringing. Part of the adventure of life, what continues to be a source of fascination, is the ongoing process of discovering who we are. It strikes me that for each of us identity is a dynamic reality, one with continuity to be sure, but at the same time ever unfolding...

“Piety, piety, but where is love that moves mountains? More and more I realize and accept that it is the only measure of all things,” wrote Mother Maria Skobtsova in her notebook after a discussion with nuns who were advocating a vision of Christian life as a set of pious practices...

Dear Editors,

I am writing to respond to Katherine Kelaidis’s article in the 31/32 edition of The Wheel, “Gnosticism and the Limits of Gender Theory” and perhaps more so to Bryce Rich’s June 2024 response to it at Public Orthodoxy, “Transgender Experience and the Theological Limits of “Gnosticism.”