RAISING THE NEXT GENERATION FOR THE CHALLENGES OF BEING ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS
RAISING THE NEXT GENERATION FOR THE CHALLENGES OF BEING ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS

Summary/Abstract: This paper offers a conceptual geography of the collision between the centrality of the traditional Christian family, grounded in the Orthodox Church’s knowledge and experience of God, and the banality of its secular counterpart. Christianity appreciates the family as created through the monogamous and life-long bond of the marriage of husband and wife, with the raising of properly Orthodox children as a central focus of family life. The dominant secular worldview of Western Europe and North America hasbrought this traditional understanding into question. For the secular world, the family is thought of as a self-pleasing social arrangement that expresses one’s personal lifestyle choices. Such post-Christian families routinely encourage practices that Orthodox Christianity knows to be sinful, such as same sexmarriage, cohabitation without marriage, abortion and surrogate motherhood. Emphasis is placed on developing children into self-possessed agents, who undertake their own moral and lifestyle decision-making as soon as possible. Children are taught to place financial and career success above cultivating aproper relationship with God. This is not a Christian understanding of proper childrearing, nor will such practices educate the young as Orthodox Christians. As this paper explores, Christians appreciate the family as the core community through which children learn how best to live and to seek salvation,as well as how properly to fulfill substantial duties to God, family members, and their community. The family is a sacramental relationship forged with the blessing of God and properly oriented towards Him.

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