Customer Reviews

New York Glory: Religions in the City (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity Series)

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The segment on Mercy House the Orthodox community on the lower east side illustrated a total ignorance as concerns eastern orthodoxy. I was a member of this community and the description of the community illustrates the lack of guidance many converts experience. The semi-monastic lifestyle practiced by too many in the community, of which obedience from the abbot was the most glaring were all part of a cultish mentality not condoned by church fathers and indeed condemned by them! The abbot administered an unhealthy control over monks and parishioners alike; obedience there was about control not love. Many of the attitudes in this community were by and large fundamentalist and neo-gnostic. The community has since broken down with some monks and many parishioners leaving to escape a maniacal abbot he'll bent on control and embroiled in various law suits and deceptions, it is not clear if any of the unhealthy attitudes were at all an issue with parishioners.
The whole issue of mysticism in the Orthodox Church has in many cases in America become synonymous with neurosis in my opinion of which this community was a glaring example; as concerns the mystical and spiritual in the Church, it is not one of escape and delusion with the world but one of engagement!