Enlightenment values were a necessary adjunct to, although not solely responsible for, the Western legal tradition. This is because the Enlightenment produced a lens through which human relations could be viewed, and this perspective strongly influenced the invention of law in the West.1 Eastern Orthodoxy developed its own philosophical system without reference to Enlightenment values. The East's failure to engage with those values has resulted in a failure to find a common ‘language’ through which East and West can speak to one another. This inability to speak a common language places the Orthodox Church at a distinct disadvantage in its relations with the West, and has done for a very long time.

William Stringer was at various times a cheesemonger, a Methodist lay preacher, a priest, and an American Loyalist exile. Originally from London, Stringer preached the Gospel for the early Methodist movement, but longed for priestly ordination in the Church of England. Unable to achieve this goal due to his humble background, he was instead ordained in 1764 by the controversial and ecumenically minded Greek Orthodox bishop, Gerasimos Avontilies (also known as Erasmus of Arcadia), who ordained several Methodists under Greek Orthodox rites in London. Having acquired illicit ordination, Stringer moved to Philadelphia where he ministered to a parish that had broken from the Church of England during the Great Awakening. The clergy of Philadelphia responded negatively and wrote to Archbishop Richard Terrick of London, who ordered Stringer to desist from his ministry. However, Stringer did such a remarkable job of bringing his congregation back into the Anglican fold that Terrick agreed to re-ordain him in London under Anglican rites in 1773. With the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, Stringer supported the British cause and rejected the revolt as inconsistent with Christian obedience. He was forced to leave America and return to England, where he lived out the rest of his life as a curate. Despite his initial transgressions, I argue that Stringer was a force for order, stability, and orthodoxy in a revolutionary world.

Despite the strong interest of Eastern Orthodox theologians in the area of anthropology, their reflection has almost never included intellectual disability. The article aims to take the discussion further by providing the contours of an inclusive anthropological ethics. In this sense, it will develop constructively the three main principles of Dumitru Stăniloae's dialogical anthropology: (1) that each human being is a person because she is called to dialogue with God from the womb of her mother; (2) that this dialogue with God is mediated by one's neighbour; (3) that the materiality of creation is meant to be transformed into a gift of communion with other humans and God.

The present article addresses the question of secularism in Greece. It discusses the prevalent modernist and civilisationist explanations of the recent crisis in state-church relations in Greece. Based on the idea that there is neither a single route to, nor a single pattern of, modernity and secularism, the article argues that the entanglement between state and church in modern Greece does not necessarily indicate either incomplete modernity or incomplete secularism. The paper emphasises both the structural weakness of the Orthodox Church in the modern Greek state and the secularisation of the church's ideology as core dimensions of the particular pattern of secularism in this country. The recent crisis is interpreted as a result of the twofold challenge of democratisation and globalisation that this historically grown pattern of secularism is facing over the last decades. Further, the article seeks to demonstrate that the nationalist stance of the Church of Greece should not be seen as persistent blind traditionalism and anti-modernism.