Orthodoxy Live October 4, 2026

This is Orthodoxy Live with Father Evan Armitage, a live interactive call-in program where your questions about the Orthodox faith are addressed. Father Evan is the priest at St. Spirit and Greek Orthodox Church in Loveland, Colorado. Call in your question at 1-855-AF RADIUM That's 1-855-237-2346. Here now is Father Evan. Well, good evening and welcome to Orthodoxy Live, your live call-in show about the Orthodox faith, her teachings and traditions. I'm your host, Father Evan, and we're streaming to live here on Ancient Faith Radio. I'm glad you're with us. It is October 4th, 2026. And tonight, I look forward to taking your calls. You can call in at 1-855-AF RADIUM. That's 1-855-237-2346 as we get underway. We have open lines. Now, if you're a listener to this program or you're joining us for the first time, it's been a little bit of, you know, an up and down season of Orthodoxy Live in the sense that I've had a lot of travel in the last, oh, several months, I've had a number of sacraments that have hit actually on Sunday evenings. And so I haven't always been available over the last three, four months every Sunday, which, you know, typically for the majority of the life of the show, you know, pretty much every Sunday I'm on air. So if you've been waiting to call in tonight, tonight, I'm back on air and love to hear from you. And we're coming up on a milestone in November, on the 18th of November. We'll mark our 14th year having broadcasted here on Ancient Faith. I think at this point, Longus running continuous live program in Ancient Faith Ministries got started when there was only one other live program going, Kevin Allen Orthodoxy today. And, you know, I got started just shortly after he did. Of course, we lost Kevin early in his life. He was unfortunately diagnosed with a degenerative illness and he passed, but what an incredible show that was. And I was his counterpart, you know, he'd broadcast first and then I'd come on. And so we'll start our 15th year, which is hard to believe. And if you've been along the ride with us all along, that's wonderful. If I said that I ever thought we'd get to 15 years back when we started, I'd have been lying. I didn't know if I'd go six months. So anyway, we'll be coming up on that milestone and tonight, open lines. Love to hear from you. 1855 AF radio 1855 237 2346. The other thing I want to say as we get underway, I had a parishioner come up to me today who's been around for a bit and he sort of flashed me a book and, you know, I saw it really quickly and I kind of noticed the blue border and I said, oh, you picked up Orthodoxy's lives version of a book called Toolkit for Spiritual Growth on Prayer, Fasting and Armsgiving. And he said, yeah, I didn't, I didn't know you'd written a book. And I said, well, yeah, that was the first. There are two others. There's one in the middle called Reclaiming the Great Commission. And then a third one. If you're listening to this programming, you've never picked up either the first, the second or the third. I'd encourage you to especially consider getting that first book and third book. If you're someone who's involved or interested in the spread of the gospel, the right ordering of a parish and its life, maybe that second book is a good choice. As a matter of fact, this coming month in just a couple of weeks, I'm going to be traveling down to the southern part of the state to be leading a retreat with about 25 parishes from the West Coast. And we're talking about, you know, thriving parishes and what it means to thrive and how we go about arranging a life of the parish in such a way that we indeed see things grow. Now, if you are listening tonight and you've got a question for me, but don't feel like dialing in, you can always go through your chat room on YouTube or Facebook. I always kind of get that language a little bit off because I don't really use social media. And I've never gotten into, you know, putting comments or chatting or asking questions. But if you're streaming with us tonight and watching the program, you can ask your question there and our producer engineer will get that question over to me. So again, it's October 4th, 2026. We're streaming to live here on ancient faith radio. Glad to be with you. Look forward to speaking with you this evening. Well, to get us underway, I've got a question that came in from Patrick who asks, is the imagination part of the news? Well, there's actually quite a bit to unpack there when we talk about, you know, imagination and news for those who may not be familiar with those terms. You know, on the one hand, when you when you mention the word news and oh, you ask, that's a term used within the Christian life that refers to sort of, you know, one spiritual faculty, right? It's a part of who we are as persons. And it's the way we come to know and perceive God and sort of the spiritual reality that is around us. It's sort of the eye of the soul. Now, for those of us who are not used to language like this, you know, imagine, you know, the universe that we live in, the observable universe, right? You know, there's planets and stars and galaxies. There's mountains. There's oceans. There's streams. There's cities and towns and rocks and flowers and bumblebees and fish, you know, dogs and cats and other people. And we might sort of develop a very materialistic view of the world that we live in, right? And in some sense, you know, as someone has said, that sort of a two dimensional view of the universe, when we consider that there is another layer that, you know, may be currently in the way that we live not perceived by our, you know, physical senses, that other layer, that other dimension, the spiritual dimension lays alongside of it. Now, there are examples of this constantly in the scriptures, right? So, for example, the visitation of an angel. This happened rather dramatically in the life of a young woman named Mary, right? She's visited by the archangel Gabriel. It also appears often in the life of Christ, right? His signs and wonders, whether it was something like turning water into wine or walking on water or healing a leper, right? There's this sort of other layer to a human life, right? And it's within one's news that we would say one perceives and comes to know that world. And the news can be clouded, you know, and darkened, or it can be liberated and be clear. And so anyway, that sort of gives you a basic understanding of what we mean by the news. It is a word that again appears in the scriptures. The other imagination in the language of the church, the imagination is given the word fantasy, right? That's a Greek word. You can easily kind of understand it in English fantasy, right? We would say, at least a Christian perspective is that one's imagination, you know, is not part of one's news, right? But one's imagination could either serve and help, let's say, the news or interfere with it, right? You know, one's imagination is part of one's personhood, but it isn't the same thing as the news, right? And this is something that I talk a bit about actually in that third book I mentioned, Toolkit for Spiritual Growth 2, which has got three subjects, scripture, confession, and time. I talk about the world of imagination or fantasy in that third section, right? And our fantasy can be, you know, it's sort of how in our memory we think about the past, right? There's memories there, but it also might be how we represent the world internally in our own head and heart, right? You know, maybe you read a passage of scripture and the imagination sort of pictures it for you. It could be used, you know, for what we think about the future, right? Now, we also speak about in the church there's this other part, the onyah, which is really, you know, how we analyze, remember, compare, make arguments, draw conclusions, right? So, there is concern, you know, in the Christian life about how the fantasy or fantasies or imagination can steer us awry. And, you know, it's not generally thought of as helpful to spend our lives in this space, you know, at least not often. But the scary thing is, is that's kind of where we spend most of our time these days, right? A lot of what we have in media, the screen culture that we live in, you know, lends itself, you know, even sort of these immersive online games that people might play, you know, the Oculus that came out a while ago, I'm sure it's been surpassed, but, you know, it's this sort of idea of this virtual reality, living in an artificially created world. These are dangerous activities, spiritually speaking, because they move us into the world of our imagination, the world of fantasy, and disconnect us from reality. Now, you don't really need a theologian, a priest to tell you that. There are, you know, all sorts of just natural sciences that sort of point out, you know, for mental health or physical well-being, right, for interpersonal relationships, how this stuff is dangerous. But believe it or not, there's a rich, rich set of ideas and theological constructs and recommendations in a practical sense from the spiritual life. It's sort of a world that the church has been speaking about for millennia, right? We didn't need the advent of our modern technology and screen culture to sort of get us attuned to just how dangerous that space can be, right? It can even be done in sort of the old world fashion, where someone sort of moves into, you know, a fantasy series books, you know, here and off the written page. They don't even need a screen and they can lose themselves, right, and lose touch with the world that they live in, right? So anyway, that was a great question. Thanks for asking it. All right, well, again, you're listening to Orthodoxy Live here on Ancient Faith Radio. Number to call, 1-855-237-2346. That's 1-855-AF Radio. Okay, from our YouTube listeners tonight, how can we reach young women with the Orthodox faith? As young men have been reached in modern years, it feels like single young adult women converts are a very small minority in the church. And I just wonder if there is a way to reach that, and they've put in parentheses, my demographic. That's a good question. I mean, here's the thing that I would say. I've got a lot of thoughts on this subject. The first thing that I would say is that, you know, for a long time, most church spaces, whether that was small group ministries or small groups or even many worship spaces, were inhabited more and more by women and less and less by men. And, you know, I don't know the recent data that's out about this, but I think there is still good evidence for the reality that women still are outnumbering men in many of the sort of areas of life within the church. Right? And so with this uptick of men rejoining the church, there's sort of this noticeable difference where now all of a sudden we see an influx of men. Some have reported that uptick in a negative manner, right? And even classified, you know, those entering the church from this demographic as zealots or, you know, the Orthro Bro kind of phenomenon online, sort of super conservative, trad, and maybe entering the church for ideological or political reasons. Okay. I think that's also overplayed. Now, where does my data come from? Well, about a year and a half ago, I was asked to give a talk, a series of talks on this new emerging reality of the growth of the church and what was happening. And I did some analysis, you know, pulling data from parishes who are receiving people into the church. And the data didn't support the idea that the church's growth was solely within this young male demographic, right? But rather what emerged was that the, yes, there is an uptick in single young men entering into the church. And I think that's a welcome thing to see men returning to the church. But the large majority of those entering the church were families, right? Families with children or couples. And that's the largest segment that I, and this is again pulling data from, you know, parishes that not only have classes for inquirers or, you know, people who've been received as Catechumans and then sort of sacramental records, like, you know, chrismations and baptisms, like who's showing up? Who's getting baptized? Who's being chrismated, right? In the church. And the segment was, you know, mostly young families, then it was men. And then as you mentioned, you know, young women. Why this flip? Why this sort of, you know, why is it that young women are not entering into the church at the rates that young men are? And how might the church reach them? Again, there's stuff out there about this, right? There are people who are thinking and writing about it. And there's sort of these tactics, right? And sort of this idea of where we go to meet women, you know, either in the online space, which is where a lot of people that are young are encountering the church for the first time, right? In this sort of virtual space, which is a good thing, right? But how do we reach them? Well, I'm going to take a different track because I don't want to necessarily get into sort of, you know, a thin slice strategy. Now, in my parish, I wouldn't say that we are missing young women from that sort of swell of people's interest in the church. Actually, I'm not seeing that sort of drop off. Now, why might it be a little bit different in my parish? Do I live in an area where women outnumber men or young women do? No. I don't. But I think it's actually in the life of the parish, right? I think within a healthy parish who does not place or does not place an emphasis on one demographic or serve or cater a single demographic, but rather provides a healthy environment for the faith to be fostered and grow. I think the call of the spirit is not limited to one group or another. And so, you know, young women find a place within the life of the church just as a young woman, a young man would, or a family would, right? Now, part of that certainly is ensuring that there is, you know, and here we're not getting sort of into the idea of gender politics, but we're just saying it does the church give opportunity to its members to become engaged and involved in a meaningful way. And if the leadership of a parish, primarily first the priest and then maybe its council or other leaders, you know, ministry leaders has a predisposition toward only selecting males for roles of leadership, then I think that becomes visible and tangible and becomes an obstacle, right? But within, you know, healthy leadership, it's not as if we're saying, well, I've got one man, now I've got to get one woman. That's not necessarily how it works. I've never thought that way. But we simply allow for the movement of not only the spirit within the community and women are called to serve God and his church just as equally as men are. But we not only notice that, but then as we develop leadership and we pay attention to those brought to us, I think quite naturally it arises. Now, does that negate the need for the church to pay attention to whether or not, you know, we give not only attention, but opportunity for engagement and involvement to women in our local parishes. I don't think it negates that need, but I'm saying that the first step is just making sure that the parish itself is healthy, right? In a healthy parish, you know, as the spirit calls people, the spirit is not selecting just men and not women. Now, I hope I'm giving, you know, an answer to this question that can sort of maybe broaden our conversation a bit, you know, but I, you know, I don't think if your local community is experiencing, you know, a more broad, a based type of growth, then there's something disfigured perhaps in that, in the life of that parish, right? So anyway, those are some thoughts on that. So let's take a quick break. Again, you'll listen to Orthodoxy Live here in Ancient Faith Radio. It's October 4th. If you'd like to dial into the program after the break, we've got open lines at 1-855-AF radio. We'll be right back. Orthodoxy Live with Father Evan will be back in a moment. In the meantime, lines are open at 1-855-AF radio. That's 1-855-237-2346. This is Father Evan Armitas, priest at St. Spirit on Greek Orthodox Church in London, Colorado, and the host of the Ancient Faith Radio Sunday Night Call and Show Orthodoxy Live. I am pleased to announce today the release of my first book for Ancient Faith Publishing titled Toolkit for Spiritual Growth, a practical guide to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It seeks to provide a guide to the three basic and primary disciplines of Orthodox spirituality. Through these disciplines, Christ opened for us a path that frees us from the disordered way of life that has become normal for many, even though their hearts and minds tell them otherwise. Please join me in exploring the three-legged stool of Orthodox spiritual practice, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Book's now available at store.ancientfaith.com. And the title once again is Toolkit for Spiritual Growth. I look forward to sharing it with you. God bless. Father Evan is ready for your call, and our lines are open at 1-855-AF radio. That's 1-855-237-2346. Here once again is Father Evan. Well, welcome back to the program. If you're tuning in tonight, of course, you are welcome to call 1-855-AF radio. If you're streaming with us tonight, you can type your question in the chat box, and our producer engineer will get that to me. The other thing that I was going to say is that if you are interested in emailing me, the email that you can use to send your question is orthodoxyliveatancientfaith.com. And so maybe you do that post-show, maybe you're listening to the show as a podcast, and our question pops into your mind. So this YouTube question comes in from William. William writes in, congratulations on the anniversary. Well, thank you. Question, does orthodoxy say anything about English versions of the Bible that translate grace, Hades in Greek, as undeserved kindness? Example, Romans 11-5, which is a sort of translation, undeserved kindness is coming from the new living translation. What I can tell you is that the church does not have a very favorable view of the new living translation, the NLT, and does not recommend it in any way for serious study or reading. I just wouldn't use it is what I would say. And so that translation, undeserved kindness, yeah, I don't think it's helpful at all. I wouldn't use it. And I would choose a different Bible to use. Keep in mind, it's pretty difficult to have a scripture translation that's going to be equivalent. You just can't take a word in Greek and then just say, well, it's equivalent word in English is this. And so you just sort of build the cat runs and then you just do that in Greek or vice versa. It just doesn't really work that way. It's not really how languages kind of work. But there are translations that the church has dealt with in English. And I would say to some degree, feels are a bit better. So if you pick up an Orthodox study Bible, very easily acquired online, you can get either the app or the physical Bible, which I recommend getting in the physical one and the app. I have both. The app is great because when I travel, I don't have to take up the physical space and let's say my carry on and I can just use my my app to read scripture. But the New Testament is the New King James version, right? And, you know, that's fine. It itself has its own limitations and flaws, right? There are things about the New King James version of the scriptures, that translation that are incorrect, right? That's just the way it is. There are things that are done in that translation that the church would say is not helpful or is misleading or is error is it's sort of an error of translation. But, you know, people do their best to come up with the best translations they can. You know, it's not as if they're always trying to mislead. But sometimes