Orthodox Biz Blog

New Pascha Basket Covers at http://www.shop.bestorthodoxgifts.com/Pascha-Basket-Covers_c42.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

heck out our new items for CHRISTMAS 2011. over 80 new items including Orthodox Icon jewelry - necklaces and bracelets, New icon ornaments from russian, Orthodox Prayer bears with wood crosses, new Original Men in Black items. copy and paste the link below to see all the new items

Web stores should be redesigned in order to keep up with current technology in order to achieve sale growth.  With more people using smart phone and Ipods and the ever changing standards of code language, you periodically need to “remodel your website.”  What worked last year will be obsolete next year.   

E-retailers must meet the needs of its customers who are using an ever-changing array of computers equipment to access the web.   With the rise of Facebook and Twitter web designers are rearranging the look, feel and functionality of their sites. And the growing use of video has had a similar impact on web designs.

 

We are proud to announce new items at Best Orthodox Gifts.

Introducing our new Orthodox Cross jewelry at Best Orthodox Gifts. New Stainless Steel Military Issue Orthodox Cross with chain. New variety of hand carved Olive Wood Crosses from Jerusalem with your choice of chain.

Now available at

http://www.shop.bestorthodoxgifts.com/Feast-of-the-Nativity_c13.htm

Hand painted, Hand Blown Inge-Glass Ornaments, Cloisonne Egg Ornaments, Mini-Botanical Eggs, Tiny Enamel Eggs w/Stands, Preoteasa, Presbytera, and Presvytera coffe cups. Got Tuica? Coffee Cups, Orthodox Wreaths, A full line of Christmas and Theophany Embroidered Items.

As time goes on technology get better. If you run an online store your top priority is managing your business. Like most business owners you would fine little time to keep up on the latest improvements to keep your site current. Why not find a "Technology Partner"?

A technology partner can ease the burden by integrating some new features, letting you focus on what you do best.

"Ecommerce is a mature market now and retailers need to think about technologies that will help them service the customer better." says Glen Chancy CIO of Corfun Inc ., provider of components, modules, and plugins for Joomla Content Management System.

Content Management is a prime example of a technology that takes on added importance as retailers acquire more inventory to meet consumer demand. Store owners want to organize inventory category pages so that the product they are promoting will appear prominently. Some category may be new arrivals, close outs and seasonal items.

E-commerce is about selling but retailers don't think about tying content management to marketing and merchandising. effective retail sites need to put the right information in front of shoppers quickly. Delivering content that helps consumers answer questions they have with just a few clicks.

Retailers can't afford to be saddled with infrastructure management if they are to growing their business. What retailers need is a technology partner that not only can manage their infrastructure, but also provides them with the tools to excel in their marketing and merchandising.

Corfun Inc would be the partner for you if you are using the Joomla platform. Not only do they offer custom and standard website, they also have a team of professional coder who have developed some twenty eight components , modules, and plugins for Joomla CMS. Corfun has the capability to build their own applications allowing them to create marketing and merchandising strategies that keep them out in front of the competition. For a low monthly fee, CorFun can also provide Website management services. Corfun even offer training to assist clients in learning the ropes of the Joomla system.

Because technology vendors are increasingly crucial to e-commerce, retailers must do their due diligence before partnering with vendors. The basic steps would include testing or getting a demo of the application and talking to existing clients.

Since 1992, International Orthodox Christian Charities has provided more than 330 million in services to some of the world's most vulnerable people in 33 countries.  The organization reaches out to victims of poverty, war, natural disasters, to orphans, school children, refugees, the elderly, and people with disabilities.  On average 92% of IOCC's resources are used for their humanitarian relief and development programs such as providing education, job training and disease prevention to many communities throughout the world.  Check out the website: http://www.iocc.org/dayofsharing/index.aspx

No matter how you feel about politics or the military, please give thanks to the men and women in uniform. Xerox is offering to send cards to the troops but needs you to write a thank you.  Here is the site: http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1280.html

I was watching Nick Junior with my kids in my parents' living room when I saw a police officer walking across the yard. I went out the backdoor, and realized that three more were already roaming around my parents' ten acres of property. I walked up to the police officer that had just arrived.

As a lay person of Orthodoxy, I cannot instruct a person on what to do other than discuss with your priest and loved ones about what you want to happen if you are unable to communicate.  As much as we would like to think that we will live uneventful ends of life, we cannot predict how the end will be like. 

With All Souls day coming on November 2^nd, have you considered your own mortality?  Where are you going to rest your body while we wait for Our Savior's return?  The Benedictine Fellowship of St. Laurence (BFSL) by Tallahassee Creek is a very peaceful, natural beauty that whispers serenity.  Even though the cost is $1,000 for the plot, most commercial cemeteries charge a lot more.

Antiochian Orthodox Christsian Diocesse is raising money for Special Olympics on Sunday to fund the 2011 Special Olympics Sports Camp to be held at the Antiochian Village August 12-20, 2010. Next summer we will celebrate our 30th Annual Special Olympics Sports Camp. This ministry is sponsored by the North American Council of Teen SOYO. Our teens work very hard for this ministry and rely on the generosity and support of the faithful of our Archdiocese and the Order of St. Ignatius.

 

 

Newly debuted at the Diocese of the South 33rd Annual Assembly, a line of "For Her" items. We now have gorgeous pashminas, embroidered with an orthodox cross that can be worn as a head scarf during services, but it is also wide enough to be worn as a shawl on a cool night, or wrapped around the neck. These scarves fit into every occasion of an Orthodox lady's life and are a great conversation starter about the beauty and meaning of the Orthodox triple bar cross.

When potential customers come to your site and they do not see any product reviews and or ratings, the thought come. “Maybe it’s not a very popular item.” “If no one leaves reviews, maybe I shouldn’t be shopping here.” There are risk in the lack of reviews. If customers see no reviews for product after product , they may go to another site where they can read reviews. You may have just lost that sale. Experts say that 59% of consumers use product reviews to help them make a decision on their purchase.

Successful Strategy



It is common to see a retail site with a larger number of products and not a single review. So how does one get customers to write a review? Run a contest. “Write a review and win a chance for a $100 gift card.” Everybody loves a contest.  You must ask customers to write reviews in order to get the process going. To kick off your customer review program email every customer who has made a purchase in the past year and ask them to write a review. After the review start coming in place the products with the highest rating in a highly visible area on your web site.

Following Up

Three weeks after your order has been shipped is a good time to send your customer an email asking them to write a review. This give your customer a voice in influencing other shoppers and helping you determine the quality of your products.

Sample follow up letter

Greetings --------
We would like to thank you for your recent purchase from www.corshops.com
We also would like to know your thoughts on our products and or service.
By submitting a product review you help us decide which products are best, giving you a forum to influence our product selection.

Kindest Regards

Best Orthodox Gifts displayed new products at the OCA Diocese of the South Clergy Assembly  the week of July 19th. Over 160 people attended. New products included embroidered head scarves, The Original Men in Black Clergy T-shirts and coffee mugs, embroidered icon apparel, new baptism towel sets, musical "God Grant You Many Years" birthday cards, and some of our regular items.

Can Baseball, America's game, have a Greek accent?

 

This was a few years ago but appropriate for Memorial Day

 

 

In an article on Orthodox Biz in May 2010, I predicted the demise of Protestantism. That seemed outrageous to many of my readers, who were not at all shy about sending me emails questioning my sanity. Of the approximate 2 billion Christians in the world today, 648 million or so are Protestants, with most of those being Evangelicals. The idea that hundreds of millions of Protestant Christians will convert to some other religion seems far-fetched in the extreme. Over the short term, I agree that this is impossible. But I think the trend is there, and the next hundred years is going to see a massive shift in Christianity around the globe. That shift, in my opinion, will be away from Protestantism and towards Orthodoxy on a massive scale.

Protestantism in the United States is under relentless, sustained attack. An attack so serious that it threatens to sweep Protestantism, as a movement, into the dustbin of history. Unfortunately for the various Protestant Churches, many of their own Theologians are inadvertently providing aid and comfort to the enemy in this struggle. Of course, it doesn't help at all that the men attacking Protestantism so ferociously have been dead for almost 2,000 years.

Stories of Answered Prayers: we will be starting an inspiration page, a blog or maybe a book on Inspirational Stories of Answered Prayers. Share your story with others to inspire them to prayer. Send them to we2rone@cox.net.; with answered prayers in the title.

Also, we all know that some prayers are not answered "in time", or "in the manner we'd like", or some are answered by "no". Please include these stories to show how these answered prayers helped you grow spiritually.

 

While environmentalists focus on Earth Day celebrations and public policy debates and initiatives, the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation is announcing a new initiative, “Resisting the Green Dragon,” that will sound the alarm about dangerous environmental extremism and bring a Biblical viewpoint on environmental issues and creation stewardship to evangelical churches, ministries, and schools.

Read More

Human exceptionalism advocate and author Wesley J. Smith speaks with host Kevin Allen of the Illumined Heart radio program on Ancient Faith Radio about the animal rights-animal liberation movement and its insistence on the "moral equivalence" between animals and humans! How does this compare with Orthodox teachings about the "brotherhood" of humans, animals and inanimate nature (St Gregory Palamas)?

I get a lot of questions about using Facebook and Twitter for promoting businesses and ministries. In this brief blog, I'm going to sum up some of the advice I often give clients on how to leverage the Social Media trend.

Social Media are sites like Facebook and Twitter where people share information and interact with each other. On sites like this, people talk to each other via instant messaging and interact using posts, rather than passively consuming content that has been prepared for them. The trick is to get them talking and interacting about you.

We now have Orthodox Baptism Towel sets and Embroidered Pascha Basket Covers available at www.shop.bestorthodoxgifts.com

The explosion of web content has led the major search engines to change the way they present search results. Revisions of how search results appear now include news, images, video, blogs, and other content besides the standard web site. One can take advantage of the blended search and to gain prominence in their ranking.

Joe Carter's article "Sympathectomy of the Soul" deals with what's happening in Holland regarding euthanasia.

 

 

 

 

 

Children's PAscha baskets, Chrismation robes, Fire Thursday Lamps, Ukrainian Hand Painted Wood Eggs, Orthodox Bears and much more!

 

 

I just got in a whole collection of children's books from Potamitis Publishing, and found myself blown away!

We've all heard of people who consider themselves "spiritual but not religious." Some, for sure, are sincere about believing in a higher power to which they should submit their will, but others are more concerned about making up their own religion to suit their own preferences. We're addressing this issue because most discussion is around the "religious" versus "secular humanist" divide. It's pretty easy to distinguish between those who believe in God and those who don't. A special problem occurs with those who believe in a God of their own making.

We lived for a time in California and here are some of the ideas and their implications.

There is only one God: Christians believe this, too. However, the 'spiritual' believe there is only one God and he has many names, e.g., Jesus Christ, Yaweh, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Gitchee-Manitou, Gaia, Seth, etc. Implication: Since every religion points, ultimately, to the same diety, one can pick and choose which rituals and moral orders to follow from day-to-day and change them as easily as one changes clothes. It's spiritual relativism.

God made the world out of himself: Selecting the very beginning of "in the beginning... " and ignoring what the first couple did in paradise, the 'spiritual' rationalize a blameless world. Implication: Since God is only good, the world is only good. There is no evil in God, therefore there is no evil in the world. Since terrorist masterminds like bin Ladin were made by God, they are not evil. The 'spiritual' rationale for the existence of terrorism is that America is reaping its own 'bad karma.' This plays into the hands of the hate-America-first crowd.

The world is a reflection of yourself: Since the world is only good, evil is only a distortion of good. Implication: Only those who are themselves "distorted" would perceive evil. Naturally, 'spiritual' people are aghast (and smugly superior) when President Bush speaks of the "Axis of Evil."

There is no hell: Since the world is only good, the afterlife must be even better. Implication: It is OK to put some people "out of their misery" because the mercy killers are merely "letting them go" to a "better place." What really matters is living with dignity and all suffering should be eliminated. Those who don't believe this have a 'distorted' view of the world.

There is no devil: Since everything supernatural is, by definition, divine, then any mystical revelation (e.g. voices in your head) could only be from God. There are no temptations from the Devil. Implication: Whoopee! Anything goes. Feel empowered to "experiment" with any sort of degraded behavior because it's just a "learning experience" and "it's all good" isn't it? And if it happens to turn out badly, just take a pill to end it all and go off to somewhere better.

So what's the danger in this self-serving, superficial spirituality? Their proponents view these bumper-sticker slogans as "progressive" in contrast to the archaic "superstitions" of Christians and the religious of other traditions. They imagine that the world is ready for a forward leap of evolving consciousness and that it is only the superstitious that are holding back the rest of the would-be "enlightened". While it's not widespread, there is a growing segment of this movement that suggests it would be better for "the world" to get rid of those who are holding back the enlightened, holding back "progress." If that sounds ridiculously paranoid, harken back to the Communist era of the 20th century for a little perspective. Recall the millions who died to make way for Mao's "Great Leap Forward."

Peter and Helen Evans, "http://peterandhelenevans.com.

Pagan Spirituality Go to www.peterandhelenevans.com for the whole articles.

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.” Even though they talk almost obsessively about the Founding Fathers, this simple truth has been totally lost on Republicans for decades. The trend has accelerated since 9/11, but "law and order" as a Republican wedge issue dates back to at least Nixon.

 

My son is eight. Our normal bedtime routine is to read chapters from great novels and have short discussions on them before turning out the light. We recently finished up Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. The book deals with a lot of grown-up topics, and we used it as a springboard to discuss all kinds of issues, but especially the nature of crime, punishment, and torture.

In the book, Esméralda is accused of killing Captain Phoebus and of witchcraft. Since she refused to confess, she was taken to the dungeon to be tortured into confessing.

Knowing that she was just a young girl, my son sat up and asked, “Dad, who is going to torture her?”

“They’re Catholic priests,” I replied.

“They can't be real priests,” my son replied, “Real priests couldn't do that.”

 

 

 

 http://www.bestorthodoxgifts.com/. Now there is a website devoted to Orthodox Christians and their pursuit to give specialized Orthodox Gifts to their family and friends of the faith.

"Pilgrimage to Prayer.  Peter and Helen Evans will be holding a prayer vigil on January 21 after vespers until midnight.  Come (by yourself or in a group) and read Psalms or for silent prayer.  Some will be preparing for the March for Life, others will be giving Thanks and gratitude in prayer for their lives, others may be asking for a relief of troubles for themselves or others. "http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/theveil_allicandoispray.aspx"

Orthodox or non-Orthodox, members of St. Nicholas  "http://www.stnicholasdc.org/" or not - all are welcome.  As the church is lit softly with candles only, it is a perfect atmosphere to "lay aside all earthly cares" and pray, or walk around and make a prayerful connection with the Saints in the icons, or make prostrations before the relics and feel their power. 

If you would like to read the Psalms, e mail <we2rone@cox.net> to schedule a time; approximately 8:30 to 11:30.    And if you just want to come yourself or with a group, please e mail us also so we can be sure the Mass Avenue door, which will be the only entrance during the night, will be open to you.
Also, we ask you to buy several candles to keep the church softly illuminated." 

This article was written in 2003, but it just shows that truth never goes out of style. 

We had a private tour of the Leland House in DC by Dr. Land.  He explains how the separation of church and state made it into the constitution of our country. 

Fr. Valery (Shemchuk), Assistant Priest at St Nicholas Cathedral, Washington DC

http://peterandhelenevans.com/manhattan-declaration/

Here is a chilling account of what it is like to live in a country where there is no freedom of religion:

Please visit our new and improved website with lots more articles and interviews.  While there please be sure to sign up for email updates http://peterandhelenevans.com/.  On the Manhattan Declaration page we will be adding many, many more signers.  Keep up to date on what they are saying.

Christian Patriots ? You see, it isn't that Americans have lost their Christian roots, it's that Christians have lost their American roots. They don't know that the American story, and the larger story of Western Civilization, is their story. No wonder they don't vote. They don't understand America was and is the great...http://townhall.com/columnists/FrankPastore/2007/01/28/why_so_few_christian_patriots

Why I signed the Manhattan Declaration by Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA, plus see our new website which has other signers.  This site will be growing over the months, go back frequently to see new signers and new items. 

How links from other sites can improve a web site’s ranking in search listings is one of the least understood aspects of search engine optimization.

 

Mary was a sixth-century hooker in the Eastern Roman Empire. She had been one from her youth. She wasn’t in it for the money, as she told a monk named Zosimas later in life, but "out of insatiable desire”. One day she saw the crowds of pilgrims preparing to go to Jerusalem, to celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. She decided to go with them, out of curiosity perhaps. She went along, announcing to her fellow-travelers, "I have a body and that will serve as both fare and food for me". The trip was an eventful one, as Mary put her body to prodigious use with her fellow travelers.

Whatever Happened to the Land of the Free and What Can We Do About it.

Massad Ayoob is arguably one of the most lethal men around, in fact he even trains others in the use of deadly force. Many people cannot distinguish the difference between 'dangerous' and 'lethal.' When they hear that someone is an expert in handgun combat, urban rifle, knife/counter-knife, close-quarters battle and stressfire shotgun, they automatically think of someone to be feared. However, after reading the following we believe you'll recognize a good guy who balances lethal force and compassion. Only the bad guys need fear him.

Mr. Ayoob has had stories about him and interviews in various publications and news shows such as the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New York Post, ABC's "Turning Point", National Enquirer, PBS "Frontline", ABC's "20/20" and the BBC News Magazine and we are privileged to interview him here.

We've all heard of people who consider themselves "spiritual but not religious." Some, for sure, are sincere about believing in a higher power to which they should submit their will, but others are more concerned about making up their own religion to suit their own preferences. We're addressing this issue because most discussion is around the "religious" versus "secular humanist" divide. It's pretty easy to distinguish between those who believe in God and those who don't. A special problem occurs with those who believe in a God of their own making.

Di: Hi Angel, summer's flown, and there's so much to say...

Angel: I've got an idea. What if we submit my Godparents article from www.malista.com in loving memory of and gratitude to my Godmother Athena Hanzakos, who passed away yesterday (8.8.1921 to 10.13.2009)?

Di: A beautiful idea since I've been thinking about your Godmother Athena all day, and Malista (yes, in Greek) is your Godsister Elena's Detroit area site.

Angel: Amen to that, and now for the story.

An Evangelical friend of mine of was complaining about his kid learning Chinese history in school. He was incensed that his son would learn "foreign history" instead of "Western history." I laughed and then infuriated him when I said, "For your kid, Western history is just as foreign."

To have a successful business, it is very important that you have quality business relationships. You may have a great marketing plan, but one of the most important things you can do is to work on building up relationships with people you meet.

It can take some time for you to begin to see results when you use these techniques, but the results for building business relationships are excellent. So, here are a few tips that will help you build better business relationships.

 1: Work One Relationship At a Time. You don't have to work on meeting hundreds of people each week. However, you should work on meeting at lease one person each day.

Before you know it you'll have more than 100 people who you have built relationships with. The number of relationships are not important, but you do want quality relationships. Take the time to work on building quality relationships on a consistent basis for the best results.
Remember it’s not what you know but whom you know.

 2: Join Organizations. Joining organizations in your area is a wonderful idea and it can help you  work to build up business relationships. When you join clubs or groups in your area that have similar interests, you'll find that this is a wonderful way that you can build up relationships. Take the time to get active in the community around you, start a club or group, or volunteer in order to meet new contacts.
To quote the bible “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another”. ... Proverbs 27:17 and so it will be with business relationships.

3: Stay In Touch. Once you make a contact it is important to stay in touch with them. Just meeting them one time may not bring results, but if you stay in touch with them every couple weeks, you can build up a solid relationship.

4: Make Sure Your Personable on the Web. If you are trying to build up business relationships online in forums, social networking sites, or blog directories, then you need to be very personable. Leaving comments and personalized messages is important. The last thing you want to do is just send out a bunch of cookie cutter messages to everyone. So, make sure you act in a personable manner.

 5: Show Pride in Your Business. Showing pride in your business is imperative if you are going to build business relationships. Make sure that all the people you meet know about your business. Make sure you add your business website to your business cards, add a signature line to all emails, and talk about your business with pride. This is an excellent way to build up top quality relationships.

When President George W. Bush was in office, I was a flaming liberal. I opposed the Iraq War on a host of grounds, not the least of which was the Constitutional requirement that only Congress (not the president) could declare war.

I was critical of Bushian fiscal policies from profligate spending to steel tariffs to farm subsidies. I was bitterly opposed to the PATRIOT Act and other curtailments on the freedoms ordinary Americans enjoy. The various ideas coming out of the Justice Department about the ‘unitary executive' made my skin crawl, and please don't get me started at a party on the problems with torture and the ability to declare American citizens to be enemy combatants.

A friend of mine asked me why I got a reconditioned Mac for my wife, instead of a new PC that was available from a box store for less money.

"Simple," I said, "I don't have time to play tech support."

When was the last time that your image presentation in Virtuemart actually wowed a client? Okay, the default image handling isn't too bad. You get a thumbnail, which pops up into a lightbox. If you need multiple images, then you get a stack of thumbnails on the product details page - which also pop up into lightboxes.

Frankly, it's all a little ho-hum to say the least. Much of what we sell on our CorShops site is actually software, so we don't need the images so much. After all, we can demo the software and that helps sell the sizzle. But most of our development clients sell physical products, and they need to put these in the best possible light. And that light is usually not a 'lightbox,' which is why we created the FlyTabs Virtuemart Theme.

Virtuemart is a great shopping cart, but the core system has three big problems when it comes to handling images. First, the default option on a Category page is that clicking the product image thumbnail pops up a bigger image, instead of leading to the product details!

That just makes people mad. Online shoppers normally expect to get product details, not a bigger image. That is why our FlyTabs Virtuemart Theme has the option to link product images to product details.

As a company, CorFun was using Wink to do presentation and training movies. Wink is an open source application that did a decent job, and rendered its output as swf files that played nicely in a browser. However, as soon as we needed audio for training or demo videos, Wink just stopped cutting it.

I first started working on Web projects for the Orthodox Christian Network (myocn.net) in late 2006. At the time, OCN had one program – Come Receive the Light. Come Receive the Light was primarily a traditional radio broadcast, airing in many key markets once a week. OCN’s Website was important, but had always been considered a secondary delivery channel compared to terrestrial radio.

Virtuemart is the best shopping cart solution around for Joomla CMS. Joomla, of course, just happens to be the best content management system around, so the combination of the two is a serious powerhouse. Joomla requires a template to operate. Virtuemart uses a theme, but since it runs inside Joomla, it works with the template also. That causes a lot of confusion for more novice users, so we would like to help clear that up. New online shop owners need to understand how they unique and look and feel of their sites will be generated.

The Great Commission wasn’t a suggestion. It was a commandment. We are to share the Orthodox Faith with the entire world. But how are we supposed to reach people? Stand on a soapbox on a street corner? Go door-to-door? Visit the sick, the needy, the elderly? Those are all good things that are worth doing. But did you ever think about using your Facebook account to spread Orthodoxy?

Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites are all the rage. People use them to find lost friends, connect with others with similar interests, and as an easy way to keep everyone updated with the latest news.

My parish is in the Diocese of the South, and does not have a bishop at present. When we do have a bishop, that bishop covers an area the size of Western Europe with over 70 different parishes. The fact is that a bishop presiding over the South could spend every Sunday away from home, and still not be able to visit all of his parishes in a given year.

God's Will and Doing the Right Thing

Suicide is the active hastening of the moment of death, to the point where one commits self-murder. There is usually very little confusion or doubt about whether one is dying. In the course of a terminal disease or advanced age, the Christian prepares for the moment that the Lord will "require of him his soul," when he will enter his repose. When death is known to be approaching (and frequently, this is known to the person well in advance of the actual event), then it is better to prepare in prayer and repentance, instead of avoiding death by electing one "heroic measure" after another. A Christian is correct to forego a medical treatment that will only delay the inevitable - especially a treatment that will make his preparation for death more difficult. If he knows he is "terminal" or dying already, he is also correct to make an "advance directive" whereby he refuses, in advance, any "heroic measures" like resuscitation.

This is an article we wrote a few years ago, but feel is just as valid now; especially for Memorial Day.

Last night while flipping through the channels one last time before bed, we were shocked and amazed to see a young man urinating into a snow cone and then taking big bites of it, much to the delight of his companions. "So, that's entertainment," we thought disgustedly as we turned off the set.

Earlier the same evening we had watched with another type of amazement the 4th of July fireworks over the National Mall. We ooh'ed and aah'ed with thousands of others and felt a deep gratitude that we can witness loud, bright explosions in the sky with delight instead of running fearfully for cover, as they probably do in Iraq and Afghanistan these days.

Peter: That's the key to the whole dispute. They're basing their claims on the idea that "we're all just animals."

Brian: Of course we are animate beings, but we are not beasts - that's the key distinction. Generally, non-religious animal rights activists hold the position that we're just extremely intelligent, hairless monkeys. We evolved to that state through random mutation and natural selection with no recourse to divine guidance... we 'just happened' to turn out this way.

Of course, the Christian rejects that entirely because we are the only creatures made "in the image and likeness" of God. There was once a philosophical notion, very popular especially among secularists, that the only thing that separates animals from humans is that we are aware of our own mortality. I think that might have come out of the existentialist movement.

Many have pondered that perennial question: "What is the purpose of the universe?" and not found a satisfactory answer. Yet, in a recent interview with Michael Novak, he gives us a profoundly simple and understandable answer. It also answers our question of, "What is America for?" Along the way we also touch on the question of what legacy we want to leave to future generations.... spotted owls, obscure mosses or a free republic?

Michael Novak is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, author of "On Two Wings" and over 20 other books.

What follows here is a selection from our interview.

What is the Orthodox Church's stand on IVF and cloning? What should be done with so-called "leftover" embryos which are not implanted? What does a 2,000 year-old faith have to say to modern technology on the sanctity of human life?

"The great discomfort among many secular Americans is that the religion that they have dismissed for the last half a century needs to be revisited because we are now being visited by religious fanatics. The fanatics sense that our secularism is a great weakness of character that makes us vulnerable to defeat, and they are correct." --Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse

Helen: Does the Church consider birth control to be abortion?

Fr. Tom: No.

Helen: Does it allow birth control?

With all the new democracies that have popped up around the world in the last 25 years (80 or so), none are based on the sovereignty of the individual, except ours. We're taking this opportunity to give a history lesson about our democracy, lest we forget. We begin with a segment of an interview with Senator Wallop.

Let's Get Back to Basics.

Politicos are gearing up for the fight over who should fill the vacancy on the highest court in the land. Yet, a recent poll revealed that a vast majority of the ordinary citizens of America cannot name a single one of the Supreme Court Justices. More disturbing is that a large segment of our population doesn't understand that judges are supposed to interpret and apply the law, not make it up. It's time to get back to basics, or civics. We had a very interesting chat with a fellow who will take us through some of the basics of what our country is about.

Yesterday we had breakfast with Star Parker, along with about 300 others at the Leadership Institute. It was a very enjoyable beginning to the day listening to how the Republican party can win the votes of Joe, Jamal and Juan Jose.

Many are concerned about the direction our country is going. Some call it anti -Christian, some call it post Christian, some call it secular. Whatever it is called, it is time to turn back the tide and bring Judeo Christian values back as the foundation of our culture and society.
From the video by Peter and Helen Evans

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Jesus' attitude toward earthy riches was most succinctly summarized in the Gospel of Matthew 6:32 'For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.' His concern is that we should not assign them too high a place in our own concerns. He continues, immediately (v. 33), saying, 'But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.'

Finally a mainstream book that features Orthodox authorities! Fr. Tom Hopko, Dean Emeritus of St. Vlad's Seminary, speaks on Abortion. Fr. Hans Jacobse, President of the American Orthodox Institute, speaks on War. Fr. Jonathan Tobias, editor of Second Terrace blog, speaks on Euthanasia. There are other voices in this book, but preponderantly Orthodox. We can finally be heard in the public square.

Yes, our book; Get Serious, Whoever said Christianity was Nice? or the Church's Stand on Contemporary Culture, is finally in print and we're very excited. We want to let you know that it can be ordered from "http://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=978-1-60696-301-2"

Also, if you, or a group you know, would like us to speak on the topics in the book or some other aspects of contemporary culture, please contact our speakers bureau at "cynthia.damaskos@orthodoxspeakers.com".

We hope you enjoy our book! and if you want to be on our newsletter and get info directly into your mailbox, send a request to we2rone@cox.net. and just say subscribe in the subject line