The theme of this year’s Clergy-Laity Conference (4-7 July) was “Legacy, Renewal, Unity.” In his remarks during the opening ceremony the Archbishop urged all of us to recognize the great legacy our Greek forefathers and mothers created for us. He spoke of our individual as well as collective responsibility to honor that legacy not merely by preserving it in “museum quality” but to renew it in the light of the current challenges we face in our society today. And lastly, he beseeched us to take up this renewal in a spirit of unity. This spirit of unity stands in stark contrast to the radical divisions we see here in America, the land which our forebears came to build their dreams leaving everything behind in their home countries.
When they arrived here in America our forebears faced their own set of challenges of language, prejudice, and a mixture of culture much of which was alien to what they grew up with in their villages. One of the first things they did in the face of these challenges was to recognize that their faith in the one true God was their source of strength to overcome these challenges and that faith led them to build Orthodox churches…