Here is yet another cleric in the OCA and the GOA who openly promotes the LGBTQ agenda that directly contradicts Scriptures, the Moral Tradition, and the right teaching of the Orthodox Church.
He continues to serve at the altar and use the privileges of his churchly position to publicly distort and oppose the Orthodox Church teaching and practice, defy the authority of the Church, confuse the faithful, and lead them astray.
Protodeacon Theodore Feldman (OCA) published a profane article that bears false witness against Scriptures and contradicts the Orthodox Church teaching with regards to multiple moral issues. He promotes the corrupt LGBTQ ideology regarding human identity and sexual activity.
He insinuates that homosexuality is not a sin and it’s not condemned by the Scriptures. He insists that Jesus Christ “neither forbade nor saw fit even to mention homosexuality,” and only “condemned adultery.” He claims the Holy Tradition is silent regarding LGBTQ issues. He rejects the “opinions” of the Church Fathers regarding contemporary sexual behavior.
Pdn. Feldman serves in the (OCA) and is currently assigned to Holy Trinity Cathedral in Boston MA, where Fr. Robert Arida is rector and dean. The same Fr. Arida who also penned a chapter titled “Response to Myself. A Pastor’s Thoughts on Same-Sex Marriage” in the book “For I Am Wonderfully Made”: Texts on Eastern Orthodoxy and LGBT Inclusion that advances the LGBTQ secular narrative and conflicts with the Orthodox Church teaching regarding human sexuality, homosexual behaviour, and same-sex marriage, among other distortions.
Fr. Johannes Jacobse was one of the first Orthodox priests to publicly warn the Church about the unorthodox and distorted preaching of Fr. Robert Arida. “Contrary to Arida, the defense of the moral tradition is not an introduction of “new and alien spirits” and not the usurpation of the “voice of Christ” or the distortion of the “beauty of His face.” The opposite is true. Arida introduces the “new and alien spirit” because his attempt to legitimize homosexual pairings violates Orthodox self-understanding and practice,” wrote Fr. Johannes almost five years ago. Today, a new pro-LGBTQ acolyte has surfaced in Fr. Arida’s own parish who preaches remarkably similar false doctrines.
Protodeacon Theodore Feldman is yet another cleric in the OCA and the GOA who openly promotes the LGBTQ agenda that directly contradicts Scriptures, the Moral Tradition, and the right teaching of the Orthodox Church. He continues to serve at the altar and use the privileges of his churchly position to publicly distort and oppose the Orthodox Church teaching and practice, defy the authority of the Church, confuse the faithful, and lead them astray. He seems more comfortable reading and preaching from The Queen James Bible” (the pro-LGBTQ “bible” that’s “edited to prevent homophobic misinterpretation”), than the Orthodox Study Bible.
As Fr. Alexander Webster observed in his aptly named, Three Trojan Horses: Insider Attempts to Disorient the Orthodox essay, the “emergent Zeitgeist of sexual disorder, confusion, and libertinism that first appeared in America in the 1960s has become the dominant social ethical ideology. Who could have imagined that any Orthodox clergyman or theologian would enlist in such a movement? Alas, the ranks are growing, it seems, with each passing year.” Fr. Alexander warned of the “mounting obsession with all things LGBT” evident among several “prominent Orthodox clergy and theologians,” Professor Aristotle Papanikolaou (GOA), Fr. Alexis Vinogradov (OCA), and Archpriest Robert Arida (OCA) in particular. We can add Pdn. Theodore Feldman to that list now.
It is scandalous to see how brazen the LGBTQ propagandists have become. These wolves in sheep’s clothing yearn to make Church theology, sacraments, and practices subservient to LGBTQ ideology. They want to fly the LGBTQ flag from the Orthodox Church domes.
This is outright rebellion against God and nature, a betrayal of Christ, and open defiance of the authority and teaching of Scriptures and the Orthodox Church. One wonders if the bishops’ continued silence and refusal to publicly denounce, discipline, and/or depose these false prophets have emboldened these LGBTQ activists, enabled their revolt to grow inside the Orthodox Church, and encouraged them to spread their poison and deception to other Orthodox Christian countries and Churches via the Internet, academic conferences, and various LGBTQ venues, organizations, and events.
Here are the excerpts from Pdn. Feldman’s sacrilegious article titled “LGBTQ+ IN OUR CHURCHES by Protodeacon Theodore Feldman”. I have added headings that summarize the gist of his arguments in each paragraph.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 Don’t Make Sense in Our Present Culture
“Those who cite [Leviticus] 18:22 and 20:13 (do not “lie with a male as with a woman”) as prohibitions against homosexuality pluck them from a whole that we no longer countenance. In doing so—in selecting those commandments that they consider applicable to our culture—they confess to discerning how to apply Scripture to our lives. But then we may contest their discernment and counter that these verses, like the others, do not make sense in our culture.”
Impossible to Reliably Translate Leviticus Old Testament Writings
“We cannot anyway recover the intent of these two verses from Leviticus. The Hebrew words here that are often claimed as targeting homosexual behavior appear nowhere else in the Old Testament. And so they are impossible to translate reliably. We can recover neither their proper meaning, nor their intended target, nor their context in a society so far removed from our own as to make even ordinary daily activities incomprehensible.”
Christ Neither Forbade nor Saw Fit to Mention Homosexuality
“If we turn instead to Christ, we find that he neither forbade nor saw fit even to mention homosexuality—nor any other sexual activity that we class under LGBTQ+. Among all sexual behaviors, Christ condemned only adultery. For adultery is a betrayal of our partner and of God Himself, who fashions the bond that unites two persons in one flesh. And Christ further taught that divorce followed by remarriage is adultery (Mt 5:32, 19:9; Mk 10:11; etc.).”
Those Identifying as LGBTQ Must Receive Communion
“Yet we admit divorced and remarried communicants to our churches. How then can we raise barriers against LGBTQ+ communicants, when we accept those who, as Christ taught us, engage in the sin of adultery?”
We All Sin, Church Allows Divorce, Therefore LGBTQ Couples Ok in Church
“We hear calls for LGBTQ+ persons to remain celibate, lest they knowingly persist in sin. “Practicing” homosexuals, we are told, are “living in sin.” But couples who have divorced and remarried, according to Christ’s teaching, are likewise living in sin. Even more: Christ warned us that a married person who even looks at another person with desire commits adultery in his heart (Mt 5:28). Who among us has stopped looking with desire at other persons? We are all living in sin. This is a fundamental teaching of our faith.”
You’re a Pharisee if You Complain About LGBTQ Self-Identity Inside the Church
“Even adulterers, though, Christ accepted when they turned to Him. He foreknew the Samaritan woman for a serial adulterer, yet He broke every law in the book to bring her into communion with Himself—speaking to a Samaritan, speaking alone with a woman, sharing her drinking cup—because He foresaw that she would open her heart to Him. Indeed, she turned her entire community to Him (Jn 4). The sinful woman who washed His feet with her hair He likewise forgave because she approached Him with love in her heart (Lk 7). It was the Pharisees who muttered complaints against her and other sinners who turned to Him. How can we miss the parallel with those who are complaining today about LGBTQ+ persons who wish to draw near to Christ?”
Holy Tradition is Silent on Sexual Behaviors
“Both sides of the debate appeal to Tradition. But from Holy Tradition itself we hear only…silence. For Holy Tradition is rooted in the word and work of Christ. And here, as we have seen, we find nothing concerning LGBTQ+. So the opinions of the Church Fathers on sexual behavior (aside, always, from adultery) are just that: opinions, growing out of their own cultural context, but not out of Christ’s word.”
Leave the Church if You Object to Practicing LGBTQ Persons Receiving Communion
“Each of us confesses, as we approach the Chalice, that we are chief among sinners (1 Tim 1:15). Then by our own confession we are worse sinners than any sexual transgressor. If, then, we forbid “practicing” LGBTQ+ persons to approach the Chalice, we ourselves had better run out the exit door before we brazenly approach that same Chalice with judgment in our hearts.”
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These quotes are horrifying, and Pdn. Feldman’s article is blatantly sacrilegious. His views should not be tolerated by anyone within the Orthodox Church.
Source: OrthodoxNet