orthodoxy

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Term applied to the religious beliefs and practices of those Jews in Central and Western Europe who, from the late 18th century, opposed the changes brought about by the Emancipation, Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), and the innovations of Reform Judaism. Traditional Judaism is distinguished by "orthopraxy", faithful adherence to the established practices (laws and customs) of the Torah as a Divinely ordained "way of life."

In positive terms, therefore, Orthodoxy is synonymous with classical rabbinic Judaism as developed and reflected by the rabbis through the ages. The Orthodox Jew believes that the Written Law (Torah) is Divinely revealed, that the halakhic process of the Oral Law is Providentially guided and therefore authoritative. However, even more than creedal affirmations, Orthodoxy stresses practical adherence to the Shulḥan Arukh code, involving a high degree of religious observance in daily life.

In negative terms, Orthodoxy sees itself as the only legitimate bearer of the Jewish tradition, rejecting all other modern Jewish trends as deviations.

Trends in Orthodoxy (1800-1939) The radical changes in Jewish life resulting from the Emancipation were both social and intellectual. For Jews, the most important consequence of the Napoleonic era was the possibility of gaining admission to the social and political life of the outside world, together with the opportunities which this afforded both to escape from the poverty and constrictions of the ghetto and for economic and cultural betterment. In the intellectual sphere, the Haskalah, in its early phases at least, sought to replace the authority of religion with the spirit of free rational inquiry. While offering vastly attractive opportunities to the Jew as an individual, this new age clearly threatened the traditional Jewish way of life. As emancipated German and Hungarian Jews moved into the wider society, their traditional dress, mannerisms, and religious obligations (e.g., the dietary laws and abstaining from work on the Sabbath) became socially burdensome and embarrassing, while various aspects of the traditional mode of worship were viewed as esthetically and intellectually unacceptable.

Still more alarming to traditional Jewish leadership was the development and growth of the Reform movement. Its most radical exponents, Abraham Geiger and Samuel Holdheim, not content with ritual and liturgical changes, proceeded to challenge the halakhic basis of Judaism. In the view of the outraged traditionalists, the very essence of Judaism itself was being systematically distorted and misrepresented. Thus, the self-definition of Reform's opponents as "Orthodox" Jews had a twofold significance: the repudiation of what they regarded as an unauthentic version of the Jewish faith coupled with a conscious decision to uphold traditional belief and practice even if this meant forfeiting some opportunities in the new age. The religious hallmarks of Orthodoxy therefore include strict adherence to Jewish law and to the traditional Hebrew liturgy; rejection of modern Bible criticism; a ban on Organ music at Sabbath and festival prayer services; and separate seating for men and women in the synagogue.

From the very beginning, there was little agreement among the Orthodox as to how these various challenges might be countered. Some, rejecting Enlightenment values altogether, proclaimed a ban of Excommunication against the Reformers and urged the faithful to withdraw into even greater isolation from the world around them. This approach was advocated by R. Moses Sofer of Pressburg (Bratislava) and characterized much of Hungarian Orthodoxy as well as the Ḥasidic communities and East European Jewish masses who were not reached by the Emancipation until after World War I. It also found expression in the anti-Zionist Agudat Israel world movement.

Others, while aware of the dangers, also recognized the validity of the values of the modern world and endeavored to incorporate them within the framework of traditional Judaism. Rabbinical leaders of this type, who included Samson Raphael Hirsch, Azriel Hildesheimer, and members of the Breuer and Carlebach families, created the Neo-Orthodoxy from which modern or "centrist" Orthodoxy was to emerge in the West. A parallel line of development in Eastern Europe can be traced from Elijah the Gaon of Vilna, R. Ḥayyim of Volozhin (1749-1821), and the Berlin and Soloveichik families, to R. Isaac Jacob Reines and Abraham Isaac Kook, who pioneered modern religious Zionism.

The human losses and general destruction wrought by the Holocaust proved especially damaging to Orthodoxy, which had its major demographic resources in those areas (such as Poland) in which the Jewish communities were exterminated. The religious faith of Holocaust survivors was often shattered by the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women, and children. During and after World War II, some eminent heads of yeshivot and leaders of ḥasidism managed to escape to North America and Palestine, where they set about reorganizing and rebuilding their institutions.

American Orthodoxy By 1880, the American Jewish community (then numbering about 250,000) was mostly of German origin, economically well placed but religiously on the decline. Of the approximately 200 major congregations then in existence, perhaps a dozen were still nominally Orthodox; the rest were Reform. Over the next four decades (1880-1920), some two million Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Most had lived traditional Jewish lives, but they came without religious leaders or teachers, and were concentrated in New York and other large cities, where economic subsistence and adaptation to American life became their primary concerns. Jewish learning yielded to public school education, which was both compulsory and the key to Americanization; Sabbath observance gave way to economic necessity, Jewish values to those of the dominant society. By the late 1930s, most Jews had left the "ghetto" areas of first settlement for less "Jewish" neighborhoods. The process of assimilation was already under way, and after the Holocaust it seemed to most observers that Orthodoxy in the New World was doomed.

However, Orthodoxy experienced a revival, as a result of a combination of two factors: the arrival of militantly Orthodox scholars, heads of yeshivot, and Ḥasidic leaders coming from Europe immediately before and after World War II; and the growth of an American-born Orthodox vanguard which had survived the "melting pot" process with its traditionalism intact. This was largely due to a number of pioneering yeshivot in New York, one being the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan (Etz Chaim) Theological Seminary (1897), the forerunner of Yeshiva University; and also the Young Israel congregational movement (1912). Subsequently, from 1944, Torah Umesorah, an Orthodox body established by Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlovitz of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, organized a network of Hebrew day schools and post-high school yeshivot throughout the United States and Canada. Today, in addition, there are more than 40 yeshivot for advanced talmudic studies in the U.S.

The most important institutes for the training of Orthodox rabbis and scholars are, first and foremost, New York's Yeshiva University and the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago (1922). The largest Orthodox synagogue body, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, is responsible for the international "OU" certification for reliable kosher food.

As elsewhere, Orthodoxy in the United States comprises two distinct camps, institutionally as well as philosophically. Unlike the "right wing" (ultra-Orthodox) or traditional group, the modern or "centrist" Orthodox believes in:

(1) Participation in such aspects of general culture as university life, the arts, and science.

(2) Cooperation with all Jews, Conservative, Reform, and secular, in matters of mutual community (but not religious, theological, or practical) concern, e.g., through the Synagogue Council of America, the New York Board of Rabbis, and the Presidents' Conference.

(3) Recognition of the State of Israel and participation in the World Zionist Organization.

(4) A more flexible perception of the halakhah than previously exercised.

Modern Orthodoxy's religious leadership is to be found in the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), whose members long considered the late Joseph B. Soloveichik to be their guide and mentor.

The institutions of Orthodox Jews in the traditional ("Torah-true") camp include the Union of Orthodox Rabbis (Agudath Harabbonim, 1902), the Rabbinical Alliance (1944), Agudat Israel, all of the Ḥasidic communities from Lubavich (ḥabad) to the extreme anti-Zionist and anti-Israel Satmar group, and the traditional Lithuanian-style yeshivot. Fortified by an exceptionally high birth rate and reducing their involvement in general culture to a bare minimum, they have established large, economically viable communities, each with its own network of social and educational facilities. Current trends suggest that they have not only adapted themselves successfully to the American environment but are also overtaking the modern Orthodox, who are themselves undergoing a shift to the religious right. See ḥaredim.

Other Diaspora Communities Whereas Orthodox Jews constitute the smallest religious "trend" in the United States (perhaps as many as 500,000 worshipers among the country's 2.8 million synagogue-affiliated Jews, the proportion elsewhere in the Diaspora is much higher, sometimes reaching 80 percent. Traditional Judaism retains its hold among Sephardi-Oriental communities, and in places such as Latin America and certain East European communities, the Orthodox predominate among religious Jews, although in these countries most Jews have no religious affiliation whatsoever.

Alongside the old-established École Rabbinique (1829), three or four traditional yeshivot have sprung up in France, which now boasts the world's third largest Jewish community (521,000 Jews in the year 2000) after the United States and Israel. Divisions within European Orthodoxy are now more organizational than ideological, and one sign of growing unity and cooperation has been the Conference of European Rabbis established in 1957.

Since the Victorian era, a decorous type of modern Orthodoxy has characterized most synagogues throughout the British Commonwealth. Greater London's United Synagogue (1870) maintains a large network of congregations, a prestigious bet din (rabbinical court), nationwide kashrut supervision, and a Chief Rabbinate. Parallel bodies, within the same religious framework, are the Federation of Synagogues (1887), the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation (1701), which now also represents various Oriental synagogues, and other congregations and batté din outside the capital. On the traditional right stand the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (1926), a few Ḥasidic groups, and the yeshivah community of Gateshead in northern England. About 65% of Britain's synagogue-affiliated Jews belong to synagogues with an Orthodox commitment although this is not always reflected in their lifestyle. The British pattern is largely reflected in the communities of the British Commonwealth (present and past).

For the State of Israel, see Israel, Religion in the State of.

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Orthodoxy has been an integral part of Russian civilization from the tenth century to the present.

The word Orthodox means right belief, right practice, or right worship. Also referred to as Russian Orthodoxy or Eastern Orthodoxy, all three terms are synonymous in Orthodox self-understanding. Orthodoxy uses the vernacular language of its adherents, but its beliefs and liturgy are independent of the language used. The Russian Church is Eastern Orthodox because it maintains sacramental ties (intercommunion) with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. This differentiates it from Oriental Orthodox groups such as the Nestorians, Monophysites, and Jacobites who broke with Byzantium over doctrinal and cultural differences between the fifth and eighth centuries. The distinctive characteristics of Orthodoxy in comparison with other expressions of Christianity explain some unique features of Russian historical development.

Theology

Orthodox theology is generally characterized by a strong emphasis on incarnation. It upholds Christian dogma related to the life, teachings, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as expressed through Christian tradition shaped by the Bible (both Old and New Testaments), the earliest teachings of the Christian leaders in the second to fourth centuries (the Church Fathers), and the decisions of seven ecumenical or all-church councils held between the fourth and eighth centuries. God is understood to be creator of the universe and a single being who finds expression in the Trinity or three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Although the essence of God is unknowable to human beings, they can gain knowledge of God through nature, the revelation of Christ, and Christian tradition. God is described as eternal, perfectly good, omniscient, perfectly righteous, almighty, and omnipresent.

Human beings are described as possessing both body and soul and having been originally made in the image and likeness of God. The image of God remains, although the divine likeness is seen as corrupted by original sin, a spiritual disease inherited from Adam and Eve, the first humans. Thus, Orthodox doctrine does not support the idea of total human depravity as defined by the fourth-century western theologian St. Augustine of Hippo. The goal of human existence in Orthodox theology is deification, often described using the Greek term theosis. Humans are understood to be striving for the restoration of the divine likeness, becoming fully human and divine following the example of Christ.

Incarnational theology is expressed in popular practice as well as in dogma. Holy images or icons express incarnation through religious paintings that provide a window into the redeemed creation. The subjects of icons are God, Jesus, biblical scenes, the lives of saints, and the Virgin Mary, who is referred to as Theotokos (God bearer). Icons are holy objects that are always venerated for the images they represent. Some icons also are believed to have divine power to protect or heal. Miracle-working icons are sites of divine immanence, where the energies of God are physically accessible to the Orthodox believer. Immanence is also seen in holy relics, graves, and even natural objects such as rocks, fountains, lakes, and streams.

Liturgy and Worship

The Orthodox faith is expressed through the Divine Liturgy - a term synonymous with Eucharist, Mass, or Holy Communion in Western Christianity - and other services. All Orthodox services center around the prayers of the faithful; for Orthodox believers, worship is communal prayer. Monasticism had a particularly strong influence on the Russian liturgical tradition. From the sixteenth century, worship in parish churches imitated the long, complex forms found in monasteries. The structure of the Orthodox liturgy has unbroken continuity with the earliest forms of Christian worship and has remained basically unchanged since the ninth century, just before the conversion of Russia. Russian as a written language traces its origins to the work of two brothers, Cyril and Methodius, who were missionaries to the Slavs in the ninth century. The Russian Orthodox Church has maintained the language and forms of worship that it received from Byzantium during the tenth century, including the use of Old Church Slavic as a liturgical language. As a result, the Russian Orthodox liturgy sounds archaic and at times even incomprehensible to modern Russians.

Orthodox worship includes the seven sacraments defined by the Roman Catholic Church (baptism, chrismation, Eucharist, repentance, ordination, marriage, and anointing of the sick). Orthodox theologians frequently note, however, that their church's sacramental life is not limited to those seven rites. Many other acts, such as monastic ton-sure, are understood to have a sacramental quality. Baptism is the rite of initiation, performed on infants and adults by immersion. Chrismation, also known as confirmation in the West, involves being anointed with holy oil and signifies reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Eucharist lacks any theological interpretation of transubstantiation or consubstantiation. Instead, the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is explained as a mystery beyond human understanding. Communicants receive both bread and wine, which are mixed together in the chalice and served to them by the priest on a spoon. Repentance involves confession of sin to a priest followed by an act of penance (in Russian, epitimia). Ordination is the sacrament for inducting men into clerical orders. The Orthodox ceremony of marriage is distinctive in its use of crowns placed on the heads of the bride and groom. Anointing of the sick, as known as unction, is not reserved for those who are dying but can be used for anyone who is suffering and seeks divine healing.

Clergy

Orthodox believers are served by three types of clergy: bishops, priests, and deacons. All clergy are male and are differentiated by the color of their liturgical vestments, which are in turn related to their form of ecclesiastical service. Married priests and deacons who serve in parishes are called the white clergy (beloye dukhovenstvo), while those who take monastic vows are known as the black clergy (chernoye dukhovenstvo). Men who wish to marry must do so before being ordained. They cannot remarry, either before or after ordination, and their wives cannot have been married previously.

Marital status decides clergy rank. Married clergymen can be either priests or deacons who are ordained by a single bishop and can serve in either monasteries or parish churches. Priests assist bishops by administering the sacraments and leading liturgical services in places assigned by their bishop. Deacons serve priests in those services. As long as his wife is alive, a member of the white clergy cannot rise to the episcopacy. Should his wife die, he must take monastic vows and, with very rare exceptions, enter a monastery. Bishops are chosen exclusively from the monastic clergy and must be celibate (either never married or widowed). A new bishop is consecrated when two or three bishops lay hands upon him. He then becomes part of the apostolic succession, which is the unbroken line of episcopal ordinations that began with the apostles chosen by Jesus. Bishops can rise in the hierarchy to archbishop, metropolitan, and patriarch, but every bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church is understood to be equal to every other bishop regardless of title.

History

The rise of Kiev in the ninth century as the center of Eastern Slavic civilization was accompanied by political centralization that promoted the adoption of Orthodox Christianity. The process of Christianization began with the conversion of individual members of the nobility, most notably Princess Olga, the widow of Grand Prince Igor of Kiev. Her grandson, Prince Vladimir, officially adopted Orthodoxy in 988 and enforced mass baptisms into the new faith. Vladimir's motives for this decision to abandon the animistic faith of his ancestors remain unclear. He was probably influenced both by a desire to strengthen ties with Byzantium and by a need to unify his territory under a common religious culture. The story of Vladimir's purposefully choosing Orthodox Christianity over other faiths - a story that is difficult to substantiate despite its inclusion in the Russian Primary Chronicle - plays an important role in Russian Orthodoxy's sense of divine election. Christianity spread steadily throughout the Russian lands from the tenth to thirteenth centuries, aided by state support and clergy imported from Byzantium. Close cooperation between political and ecclesiastical structures thus formed an integral part of the foundations of a unified Russian civilization. Slavic animistic traditions merged with Orthodox Christianity to form dvoyeverie ("dual faith") that served as the basis for popular religion in Russia.

The years of Tatar rule (the Mongol Yoke, 1240 - 1480) gave an unexpected boost to the spread of Orthodox Christianity among the Russian peoples. The collapse of the political structure that accompanied the fall of Kiev forced the church to become guardian of both spiritual and national values. Church leaders accepted the dual task of converting the populace in the countryside, where Orthodoxy had only slowly spread, and promoting a new political order that would avoid the internecine political squabbles among princes that had led to the Mongol defeat of Russia. The church accomplished its political goals by backing leaders such as Prince Alexander Nevsky for his defense of Russia against western invaders (he was canonized for his efforts). Conversion of the masses took place largely through the efforts of monastic communities that spread throughout Russia during the period of Mongol domination. Hesychastic or quietist spirituality based on meditative repetition of the Jesus Prayer fed the proliferation of monasteries under the influence of St. Sergius of Radonezh (1314 - 1392), founder of the Holy Trinity Monastery outside Moscow. Monastic leaders gained significant political influence, as evidenced by St. Sergius's blessing of Prince Dmitry Donskoy as he marched his army to victory over the Mongols at Kulikovo Pole in 1380.

Moscow emerged as the true political and religious center of Russia by the middle of the fifteenth century. The senior bishop of Russia acknowledged his support for the Muscovite princes and their drive to reunify the Russian state by moving to Moscow in 1326. The Russian Orthodox hierarchy declared independence from Byzantium after the Council of Florence-Ferrara (1439 - 1443) where Constantinople tried in vain to solicit western military aid in return for acceptance of Roman Catholic policies and dogma. Church leaders promoted a messianic vision for Muscovite Russia after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Having broken Mongol domination, Muscovy understood its role as the only independent Orthodox state to mean that it must defend the true faith. The description of Moscow as "the Third Rome" captured this messianic mission when it came into use at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Russian political power grew increasingly independent from Orthodoxy in the Muscovite state, however, and church leaders struggled with the consequences. During the early 1500s, a national church council sided with abbots who argued for the rights of their monasteries to accumulate wealth ("possessors") and against monastic leaders who advocated strict poverty for monks ("nonpossessors"). The possessor position promised greater political influence for the church. Tensions between secular and ecclesiastical power increased under Tsar Ivan IV ("the Terrible," 1530 - 1584), although the Stoglav Council held in 1551 issued strict rules for everyday Orthodox life. The struggle for succession to the throne following Ivan's death also brought religious instability by the end of the century. Success in elevating the Moscow metropolitan to the rank of patriarch in 1589 added to the church's influence in defending Russia from foreign invaders and internal chaos during the Time of Troubles (1598 - 1613). Rivalry developed between secular and ecclesiastical powers by the middle of the seventeenth century when Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich disagreed with the prerogatives claimed by Patriarch Nikon. Nikon's position was undermined by the Old Believer schism (raskol) that resulted from his attempts to reform Russian Orthodoxy following contemporary Greek practice. Nikon was exiled and eventually deposed on orders from the tsar, who with other Russian nobles of the time became fascinated with Western lifestyles and religion. Limitations on the power of institutional Orthodoxy increased through the second half of the seventeenth century.

Orthodoxy in the imperial period (1703 - 1917) was heavily regulated by the state. The authoritarian, Westernized system of government implemented by Peter I ("the Great") and his successors meant that secular Russian society lived side-by-side with traditional Orthodox culture. The Moscow patriarchate was replaced with a Holy Synod in 1721. Church authority was limited to matters of family and morality, although the church itself was never made subservient to the state bureaucracy. Western ideas had a striking influence on the clergy, who became a closed caste within Russian society due to new requirements for education. Church schools and seminaries were only open to the sons of clergy, and these in turn tended to marry the daughters of clergy. The curriculum for educating clergy drew heavily on Catholic and Protestant models, and clergy often found themselves at odds with both parishioners and state authorities. Monastic power declined due to government-imposed limitations on the numbers of monks at each monastery and the secularization of most church lands in 1763. Monastic influence recovered in the nineteenth century with the emergence of saints embraced by Russian believers who saw them as models for piety and social involvement. An intellectual revival in Orthodoxy took place at this time, when writers including Alexei Khomyakov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Vladimir Soloviev sought to combine Orthodox traditions and Western culture. Various leaders in church and state also embraced pan - Slavism with an eye toward Russian leadership of the whole Orthodox world.

Twentieth-century developments shook Russian Orthodoxy to its core. The revolutions of 1905 and 1917 weakened and then destroyed the governing structures upon which the institutional church depended. The emergence of a radically atheistic government under Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised to undermine popular Orthodoxy. Nationalization of all church property was quickly followed by the separation of church from state and religion from public education. Orthodox responses included the restoration of the Moscow patriarchate by the national church council (sobor) of 1917 - 1918 as well as an attempt by some parish priests to combine Orthodoxy and Bolshevism in a new Renovationist or Living Church. In reality, the institutional church was unable to find any defense against the ideologically motivated repression of religion during the first quarter century of the Soviet regime. Neither confrontation nor accommodation proved effective within emerging Soviet Russian culture that emphasized the creation of a new, scientific, atheistic worldview. The Stalin Revolution of the 1930s accompanied by the Great Terror led to mass closures of churches and arrests of clergy.

Orthodoxy remained embedded in Russian culture, however, as seen by its revival during the crisis that accompanied Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Soviet policy toward the Russian Orthodox Church softened for nearly two decades during and after World War II, tightened again during Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign (1959 - 1964), and then loosened to a limited extent under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev (1964 - 1982). Mikhail Gorbachev turned to the church for help in the moral regeneration of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. This started a process of reopening Orthodox churches, chapels, monasteries, and schools throughout the country. The collapse of the Soviet Union accelerated that process even as it opened Russia to a flood of religious movements from the rest of the world. Orthodoxy in post-communist Russia struggles to maintain its institutional independence while striving to establish a position as the primary religious confession of the Russian state and the majority of its population. It faces the dilemma of accepting or rejecting various aspects of modern, secular culture in light of Orthodox tradition.

Bibliography

Belliustin, I. S. (1985). Description of the Parish Clergy in Rural Russia: The Memoir of a Nineteenth-Century Parish Priest, tr. and intro. Gregory L. Freeze. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Cracraft, James. (1971). The Church Reform of Peter the Great. London: Macmillan.

Cunningham, James W. (1981). A Vanquished Hope: The Movement for Church Renewal in Russia, 1905-1906. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Curtiss, John S. (1952). The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917 - 1950. Boston: Little, Brown.

Davis, Nathaniel. (1995). A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Fedotov, G. P. (1946). The Russian Religious Mind. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fennell, John L. I. (1995). A History of the Russian Church to 1448. New York: Addison-Wesley.

Florovsky, Georges. (1979). Collected Works: Vols. 5 - 6, Ways of Russian Theology, ed. Richard S. Haugh; tr. Robert L. Nichols. Belmont, MA: Nordland.

Freeze, Gregory L. (1977). The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Freeze, Gregory L. (1983). The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth - Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Husband, William B. (2000). "Godless Communists": Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1971 - 1932. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

Levin, Eve. (1989). Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900 - 1700. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Meehan, Brenda. (1993). Holy Women of Russia. New York: Harper San Francisco.

Michels, Georg B. (2000). At War With the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Ouspensky, Leonid. (1992). Theology of the Icon, 2 vols. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Ware, Timothy. (1993). The Orthodox Church, new ed. New York: Penguin.

—EDWARD E. ROSLOF

Quotes:

"All orthodox opinion -- that is, today, revolutionary opinion either of the pure or the impure variety -- is anti-man." - Wyndham Lewis

"Universal orthodoxy is enriched by every new discovery of truth: what at first appeared universal, by wishing to stand still, sooner or later becomes a sect." - Edgar Quinet

"Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste." - Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

"When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, if afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest." - Alexis De Tocqueville

For a list of words related to orthodoxy, see:

• Practice and Doctrine - orthodoxy: correct religious belief according to specific doctrine

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See words rhyming with "orthodoxy."

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - rettroenhed, ortodoksi

Nederlands (Dutch)
orthodoxie, rechtzinnigheid, orthodoxe joden/ christenen

Français (French)
n. - (gén, Relig) orthodoxie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Orthodoxie

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (θρησκ.) ορθοδοξία, (μτφ.) ορθοφροσύνη

Italiano (Italian)
ortodossia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - ortodoxia (f)

Русский (Russian)
ортодоксальность, православие, общепринятность

Español (Spanish)
n. - ortodoxia

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ortodoxi, renlärighet

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
正统说法, 信奉正教, 正教

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 正統說法, 信奉正教, 正教

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 정교, 정교신봉, 정통파적 관행

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 正説, 正統性, 正統的慣行, 正統派の信念

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) المذهب الأرثودكسي‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אדיקות בדת, אורתודוכסיות, כלל היהודים או הנוצרים האורתודוכסים, תורה או תיאוריה סמכותיות ומקובלות‬

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