VIDEO: Hieromonk Gabriel – Orthodox Christianity & Politics

30 thoughts on “VIDEO: Hieromonk Gabriel – Orthodox Christianity & Politics”

1. So…here it is…finally! The premiere function wasn't working, so I just went ahead and published it… thanks so much for your patience!

2. "To speak the truth in love …" (@ 11:52+) Amen!

3. Who are the “lots of Christians” who are “bigoted and hateful?” Westboro Baptist? Pastor Stephen Anderson? Anyone else? Name them. Frankly, the “bigoted and hateful” meme is one that is spread by people who’ve firmly rejected Christ. But all too often Christians, even “pious” Christians who have “rejected” modernity, run roughshod with this laughable line, ceding ground to the secular worldview. Fr. Gabriel spends a good portion of the beginning of this video rejecting secularism, but then jumps right on the bandwagon. He's either uniformed or subversive.

   Why are we responsible for what people believe? As a Christian, I’m likely to lose my ability to provide for my family if my particular Christian views are aired publicly. Therefore I have to go around on eggshells in my work environment and online. So how am I being “bigoted and hateful?” I would argue that my case is the default case for most Christians today in our post-modern society. Fr. Gabriel on the other hand, has no such concerns. Yet he’s going to lecture Christians, collectively, that we’re somehow reinforcing “hatred and bigotry.” This is delusional.

   Our failure to be “filled with the Love of God” is more to blame for our current state? When is the last time Fr. Gabriel waded into throngs of BLM/Antifa or homosexual pridesters to share his love for them? You can look on youtube and see many protestant street preachers who are actually brave enough to do so and see what happens when one shares “truth in love” with these people. It's not pretty.

   This is Fr. Gabriel’s MO. He does this in his blog posts as well as in this video. Out of one side of his mouth he denounces secularism. Then he goes on to discourage the handful of Christians who are actually willing to resist the oppression of the Church. In this tact he’s actually very similar to modern protestants. Never mind the fact that ROCOR sprang from the White Russians who fought a literal war against these same Bolsheviks.

4. “We should not look for a savior among the princes of men.” Psalm 146:3. Deep !

5. "The world will never encounter Christ if they don't encounter Christ in us." Well put and 100% true.

6. I was just texting this to my Orthodox friends and family tonight!

   "I do not put my trust in princes, in sons of men in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs he returns to his earth; on that very day his plans perish."

   And now I'm sending this video to them. 🙏☦️

7. My friend, don't despair: secularism and faith are not necessarily antithetical to one another, and the way in which they resolve themselves to each other may be seen as part of the mysterious workings of God.

8. Awesome …

9. Based.

10. There is nothing new that the Church hasn’t seen before. What is shocking to me isn’t what those without Christ do, but the lack of love for all from within our own Church even for each other.
    I have been called a demon, told I’m going to hell because I’m a pro-life Democrat. I choose to stand in a place with others like me to create change, and so far 37% of the party are pro-life.
    I am compelled to love as Christ has commanded us to love without judgment.
    This is hard, but we are told not to judge or we will be judged.

11. Support from Pittsburgh.
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12. This was so helpful as someone who has gotten a bit too caught up in the election recently. Thank you!

13. Good timing. "The Faith ultimately will not stand or fall based on the political order around us." And that sums up this whole video. You know what's interesting? The current political climate in the US has actually helped me INCREASE my prayer. So tell me, which is better for the spiritual life, a time of peace, or a time of persecution? (Rhetorical)

14. Thanks for the words Fr. Gabriel. I have a question. Did the Orthodox Church in Russia warn people about Communism and not to vote for them?

15. Moscow dupes discourage us from understanding that the US is at War with seditious Bolsheviks. 2016 and 2020 weren’t ordinary elections. The Orthodox farmers were disarmed, but we’re not, and will fight to the last patriotic man and woman. If we are defeated, they’ll come for you and your monastery next, Batko!

16. Bless Father Gabriel, a kind monk who serves the Holy Cross Hermitage with faithfulness.

17. I think you likely misstate the options that are in front of us today in the "culture wars". There is not a "Christian option" versus an "Anti-Christian option", but, in the political sphere, a mangled Christian option that has abandoned all sense of truth and virtue in order to seek power in a corrupt and immoral political leader. Personally, I see almost no truly Christian witness at all left in the "culture wars", but many misusing the name of Christ to try to get power.

    Second, I think that your assertion that "there is no reasoning with the other side" is problematic. I have heard other make the same argument in order to dehumanize liberals, and to justify their support in immoral methods to merely grab power. After all, if there is not reasoning with the other side, the only thing left to do is take power by force… That is at least their reasoning. Instead, we must continue to make a reasonable case, but not with immoral means.

18. A timeless message and much needed. A message I need to apply to my own spiritual life. Thank you!

19. I'm glad I found this. This video is answering a question big on my mind after talking with another Orthodox Christian who supports some very worldly policies that stand against things we believe in. There is honesty here, away from both the lie that we should compromise with the modern world, and the other extreme of active resistance and the ends justifying the means. The answer is found in Jesus Christ himself.

    Thank you for this video, Hieromonk Gabriel.

20. The expensive school of experience is the best teacher.

21. The Jews in Russia turned the table against church through communist party.

22. 🔥

23. Words of wisdom. Thanks so much!

24. In a way father Gabriel speaks about Christians like the Letter to Diognetus does. There always was a dichotomy between the world and the Church, even in more conservative societies, however I believe we ourselves must not be dichotomical, as there is a certain degree of work that Chyrstians can do to affect the world, not just through an isolated good wittness, but from positions of political or civic power (in case of the latter I mean the influence of artists, entrepreneurs, academics or educators, etc). Each of us have God given talants and in His plan some of us are born for one role, while some for another. I am writing this from Romania (where most people still give lip service to Christianity, but it's visibly eroding), while also running for a public office, so you can call me biased, but also more experienced (also in a certain measure in the Church apologetic life, as a laymen); anyway, I have met a whole lot of priests and monks and simple believers who are just temperamentaly biased to be more reclusive and simply view most worldly things, positions and roles as impure somehow and I believe (and witness how) in the end this retreat of Christians from things that seem worldly only causes a vacuum, which is filled with the lowliest people. On the other hand, it remains true that our hypocrisy and lack of love and joy has made people walk away from Christianity and our good deeds are not a convincing enough wittness for our faith. My two cents is that these things (good works as a witness BUT also civic and political involvement of Christians) should go together.
    However, there were times when nobles and Kings were living the Faith, in a glorious Byzantine style and even became Saints, but in the same periods you could also have virtual monsters in these roles in not so glorious Byzantine corruption Game of Thrones style affairs (don't discount your founding fathers, which took some insight from Christianity). The final point here is that it matters what kind of people have political and also civic power and that in current times, people of good faith stay away from the Ninive of Politics, only to find themselves in the bellow of the Whale 🐋 and do not understand why this is happening to them and to the world around them, which seems to go to shambles, and this is also in part because – maybe, just maybe – they were afraid to respond to God's calling and go use theirs Talants to do something for the niniveteans from a position that felt uncomfortable for them.

25. It’s pretty clear to me that political abstemiousness is Christian observance. And quite honestly, if you take that understanding to its logical ending then you collide with the epiphany that any idea of the state and Christianity joining forces in a protracted salvific sense is extremely delusional, counterproductive and sad.

    If that is true then it stands to reason that the attitude most conducive to otherness (“come out from among them and stand apart, and touch no unclean thing”) is a sort of sublunary anarchism (as distinct from cosmic or eternal or categorical ideas of anarchy as the refusal of all conceivable hierarchy).

    In the practical sense the Orthodox Church is fundamentally anarchic anyway. Realistic anarchism is the rejection of compulsion based systems. Hierarchy is congruent so long as it is entered into volitionally and can be rejected at a later date according to our free will. Being that we reject hyper-Calvinism entirely, no one forces you to become Orthodox. No one forces you to be baptized, etc, into the Church. No one threatens you with violence for squandering the faith once handed down in favor of your damnation by leaving it. So it is purely voluntary order which is all anarchism purports to be.

    The word anarchy scares the dickens out of the Orthodox but I have no idea why. Anomie is the rejection of order whereas anarchy is the rejection of coercively wrought notions of order because these actually produce disorder (e.g. endless wars, economic cataclysm, social enmity and bellicosity, moral relativity, all of which are present in the state lead order prevailing today). Hierarchy is not the enemy of anarchy if it comes about through a voluntary process of deliberation. As stated here, 99% of the time the state has been the scourge of our faith even as it masqueraded about as its valiant champion.

    Is it really so outlandish to suggest that holiness and eschewing the political/coercive means which the state thrives upon are fundamentally interrelated?

    Obviously ours is an anarchy quite distinct from that of the 19th and 20th century radicals, most of whom saw religion and God as a hurdle. Nevertheless the same basic goal is implied insofar as we see the state in the light of history as an engine of repression, heresy, murder, degeneracy and expropriation.

    In any case, politics is a secular deviation from Christian means. Christ certainly took no part in trying to roll back recriminations by coercion or harness the powers of the state on behalf of the gospels.

    St. Maximus articulated the reason for this some centuries hence:

    “Truly he is wise who, having forsaken what is corruptible, comes to belong wholly to what is incorruptible.”

    What is more corruptible than this current apparat called politics?

    But of course persuasion, admonition and resonance is incorruptibly sound insofar as it moves us to self denial without intimidation.

    Today the state has predictably created a rift throughout our Church regarding health measures (back of which is the threat of violence) and compromised the faith of numerous bishops by way of the scientism it steadily promotes as the picture of sagacity and benevolence.

    May the state and the faith be utterly divided.

26. 9:10 I think Jordan Peterson made some good arguments for religion using secular frame works. Got me to be at least interested in Christian ideas.

27. "As the judge of the people is himself, so are his ministers; and what manner of man the leader of the city is, such are all they that dwell therein. An unwise king destroyeth his people; but by the rulers' prudence the city shall be inhabited. The power of the earth is in the hand of the Lord, and in due time he will set over it one that is beneficial." (Sirach 10,2-4)

28. GOD GENE – VMAT2 VACCINE- "KILLING SPIRITUALITY" – Bing video

29. "Cannot present Orthodoxy or Christianity in any way that is going to be palatable to a secular society."

30. Adding to this the "other side" is promoting dangerous ideas like critical race theory and radical transgenderism. There can't be a compromise with this. Gabriel is right, we're the counter culture now.

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