Dear friends,
It is a real joy for me to announce to you the official launch of the History of the Orthodox People (HOP) website and project. You can now find it here: http://orthodoxhistory.info/
Please keep in mind that at this point in time the HOP website is a placeholder, a kind of leaf-less “tree” with each “branch” dedicated to the history of one, specific, Orthodox people but with all the “leaves” still missing. Right now, there are only two “branches” which have already begun producing “shoots”: the “Fundamentals of Orthodoxy” and the Serbian branch of the “Restoring the Historical Truth”. All the other branches are still waiting for their first leaves to grow.
I did not want to wait any longer for a couple of reasons:
- Today March 5th is, according to the Church calendar, the “Sunday of Orthodoxy” (aka “Triumph of Orthodoxy”) which commemorates the victory of the Church against the iconoclast heresy and the Seven Ecumenical Council. What better day to launch such a project?!
- By launching early, I hope to entice all the other teams of the HOP project (African, Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian, Russian and West European) to start producing their ‘leaves’ (some are almost ready).
- By launching early I also hope to convince others to create new teams (we are missing plenty such as Orthodoxy in the Americas, Georgian Orthodoxy, Armenian Orthodoxy, Arab Orthodoxy and many more) and join the HOP project.
- I also hope to incite interested people to send us any original texts and other documents they might have.
- To use this opportunity to appeal for donations: we not only have computer-related costs, but a lot of us have a hard time making ends meet and every dollar would help.
[Sidebar: in case you did not see my earlier posts about this, the purpose of the HOP project is to become a repository for documents relating to the history of the many different Orthodox communities worldwide, to facilitate research on the history of the Church, to restore the historical truth about misrepresented or forgotten moments in history and to present a modern reader a valuable resource to study the many different Orthodox people and countries in existence today.]
While working on this blog, I often got emails and comments asking me to explain something related to the Orthodox Church or to the ideas and actions of various Orthodox people. This project is, in part, a reply to these emails.
Furthermore, while there are quite a few very good Orthodox websites out there (and we will be recommending them on the HOP website), none of them have the same historical focus, so it is our hope that we will contribute something useful to what is already available.
Finally, a lot of what is (self-)described as “Orthodoxy” out there is really a misnomer and sometimes an outright fraud. There is an “official” “Orthodoxy” out there (I think of it as “post-Patristic”) which is centered on such things as the (admittedly beautiful) Orthodox rites, nationalism and patriotic education and, of course, politics. Sadly enough, a lot of what is supposed to be “Orthodox” has, nowadays, “lost it’s flavor” and has been deluded in various types of modernisms, innovations and “ecumenical dialogs of love”. In contrast, the HOP project will aim at giving you the “real deal” – the type of Orthodoxy the Fathers and the Apostles would approve of, an Orthodoxy unconcerned with political correctness or popularity contests. In the HOP project, we will strive to remain faithful to the doxa and praxis of the Fathers.
But we need your help. Badly.
This project is potentially huge and we will never have too many volunteers. Nor will we ever have enough translators, contributors, WordPress support staff, editors, etc. So, if you are interesting in contributing or if you want to submit some interesting documents or if you can help with WordPress please email the HOP project.
If you have comments or suggestions about the website itself, please email our webmaster.
If you can donate any money towards the HOP project, please use the regular donation options as if donating to the Saker blog but please make sure to add “for the HOP project” as I want to keep these two projects separate.
Finally, and as always, please post your comments/reactions/opinions/suggestions in the comments section below. We very much need your opinion to make the HOP project a success.
Hugs, thanks and cheers to all,
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
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