During December’s twenty-four days before Christmas, blog readers joined me in reading one “chapter” a day from the Protoevangelium of James, which functions as a sort of prequel and addendum to the gospel accounts of the Nativity. What are we to think of this poetic, mystical document? Scholarly debates about its origins and historicity are way above my pay grade, and the purpose of this devotional exercise was not to debate, but…

December is a busy time in the Orthodox tradition. Beyond the Nativity celebration, the month also features the feast days of some flashy, well-known fathers like Saint Nicholas (Dec. 6), Saint Spyridon (Dec. 12), and Saint Stephen, the first martyr from the Book of Acts (Dec. 27). Often lost in the shuffle is a second-century martyr who changed my life: St. Ignatius of Antioch. His feast day is fast approaching (Dec. 20),…

Over the years, I’ve heard variations of a particular message from Christian friends: Icons were created for an illiterate population, but once the Bible became available to the masses and people learned to read, we no longer needed pictures to communicate truth. The reference to the irrelevance of religious art, or “icon worship,” was often accompanied by a patronizing tone of voice that implied that pictures are for children, not for those…