#schism — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Leigh @[email protected] · 2026-05-07 · 16:11 UTC

24 years ago, I released the first pages of Schism online. To celebrate I have a surprise for you- but you have to find it first.

A hidden link is on the site. It can be anywhere, any page, on any image. Prizes for the first 3 to find it- Rules below!

#giveaway #artcontest #webcomic #comic #schism #contest

Slow Mover @[email protected] · 2026-03-26 · 02:14 UTC

Autocephaly and the Age of Polarization

Autocephaly means “self-headed.” In the life of the church, it refers to a body that governs itself rather than being ruled by a higher authority elsewhere. In its proper sense, it is not necessarily rebellion, and it is not the same thing as schism. It can be a way of honoring local history, local language, local suffering, and local responsibility. A people may need space to pray, discern, and order their common life without being managed by a distant power that neither knows them nor loves them well.

There is something good in that. Not all unity is holy. Sometimes what is called unity is actually domination. Sometimes centralization silences the weak, flattens the local, and blesses the priorities of empire. In such cases, a measure of self-rule can be a form of dignity. It can protect a people from being absorbed into somebody else’s story. It can allow faith to be spoken in a native tongue, clothed in local memory, and embodied in forms that are truly rooted rather than imposed.

Yet every good thing casts a shadow.

What begins as the rightful desire not to be ruled can become the unrighteous desire not to be related. What begins as self-governance can harden into self-enclosure. In a polarized age, that danger is everywhere.

Communities wounded by neglect or control often retreat into their own certainty. They do not merely seek freedom; they begin to seek purity. They define themselves not only by what they are, but by what they are not. They become “self-headed” in the deepest and most dangerous sense: accountable to no one beyond themselves.

Then autocephaly becomes more than a church structure. It becomes a spiritual condition.

We can see this far beyond ecclesial debates. Political tribes become autocephalous. Media ecosystems become autocephalous. Families, congregations, movements, and even individuals become autocephalous. Each claims its own authority, its own facts, its own moral universe. Each comes to believe that dependence is weakness and mutual correction is betrayal. The result is not healthy difference within a living body, but a scattering of severed heads, each insisting it alone can see.

Modern polarization feeds on this instinct. People feel unheard, misrepresented, and overruled, so they gather with those who share their grievance. At first this may be a necessary act of survival. There are times when people truly must withdraw from abusive systems.

There are times when a community must say, “We cannot remain under this yoke.” But the wound that gives birth to separation can also become the justification for permanent alienation. The memory of harm becomes the theology of exclusion.

And here the church must be careful.

Christian faith is not a celebration of either domination or isolation. The body of Christ is neither a machine controlled from above nor a pile of disconnected parts. It is one body with many members, each distinct, each necessary, none sufficient unto itself. The hand is not the foot. The eye is not the ear.

Yet none can say to another, “I have no need of you.” The danger of our age is that we have become very skilled at saying precisely that.

So, the question is not whether local integrity matters. It does. The question is whether local integrity can remain joined to communion.

Can a people govern themselves without idolizing themselves? Can they protect their own life without imagining that all truth now resides only within their border? Can they remember that self-rule is a discipline of responsibility, not a license for self-absolutizing?

These are not only questions for Orthodox churches. They are questions for all of us. They are questions for congregations that split, for denominations that fracture, for parties that demonize, for citizens who sort themselves into mutually hostile worlds. They are questions for every person tempted to confuse conviction with closure.

Perhaps the deepest Christian word against polarization is not uniformity but communion.

Communion does not erase difference. It does not demand silence about injustice. It does not ask the wounded to pretend they have not been wounded. But it does insist that the goal of freedom is not merely separation. The goal is reconciled life. The goal is a community in which truth can be spoken, dignity honored, wrongs confessed, and relationship restored without coercion.

In that sense, the lesson of autocephaly for our time is double-edged. It reminds us that no community should be crushed under distant domination. But it also warns us that self-governance without shared life can become another captivity. We may escape the tyranny of others only to enthrone the tyranny of ourselves.

The church, if it is to speak faithfully in an age of polarization, must resist both temptations. It must reject false unity built on control, and false freedom built on estrangement. It must become a people capable of bearing difference without making an idol of division. It must learn again how to be many members with one life.

For the great question of our age is not simply who will rule. It is whether we still desire to belong to one another at all.

#autocephaly #bodyOfChrist #ChristianUnity #ChurchDivision #churchUnity #EasternOrthodoxy #ecclesiology #localChurch #modernChristianity #NationalismAndReligion #OrthodoxChurch #polarization #Reconciliation #Schism #SpiritualReflection

#autocephaly #bodyofchrist #christianunity #churchdivision #churchunity #easternorthodoxy

ReadingFaithfully.org☸📗 @[email protected] · 2026-03-12 · 00:00 UTC

🌱 Today’s #DailySutta:

MN 115 From… Bahudhātukasutta: Many Elements

“How is a mendicant qualified to be called ‘skilled in the possible and impossible’?…”

Read the sutta
📖 https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/mn-115-from-bahudhatukasutta-many-elements-2/?=MDS

Get these by email
✉ https://daily.readingfaithfully.org?=MSUDS

#schism #MajjhimaNikaya #Theravada #PaliCanon #RealBuddhaQuotes #Suttas #Dhamma #Buddhism #Buddha

#dailysutta #schism #majjhimanikaya #theravada #palicanon #realbuddhaquotes

ReadingFaithfully.org☸📗 @[email protected] · 2026-03-12 · 00:00 UTC

🌱 Today’s #DailySutta:

MN 115 From… Bahudhātukasutta: Many Elements

“How is a mendicant qualified to be called ‘skilled in the possible and impossible’?…”

Read the sutta
📖 https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/mn-115-from-bahudhatukasutta-many-elements-2/?=MDS

Get these by email
✉ https://daily.readingfaithfully.org?=MSUDS

#schism #MajjhimaNikaya #Theravada #PaliCanon #RealBuddhaQuotes #Suttas #Dhamma #Buddhism #Buddha

#dailysutta #schism #majjhimanikaya #theravada #palicanon #realbuddhaquotes

ReadingFaithfully.org☸📗 @[email protected] · 2026-03-12 · 00:00 UTC

🌱 Today’s #DailySutta:

MN 115 From… Bahudhātukasutta: Many Elements

“How is a mendicant qualified to be called ‘skilled in the possible and impossible’?…”

Read the sutta
📖 https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/mn-115-from-bahudhatukasutta-many-elements-2/?=MDS

Get these by email
✉ https://daily.readingfaithfully.org?=MSUDS

#schism #MajjhimaNikaya #Theravada #PaliCanon #RealBuddhaQuotes #Suttas #Dhamma #Buddhism #Buddha

#buddha #buddhism #dhamma #suttas #realbuddhaquotes #palicanon

ReadingFaithfully.org☸📗 @[email protected] · 2026-03-12 · 00:00 UTC

🌱 Today’s #DailySutta:

MN 115 From… Bahudhātukasutta: Many Elements

“How is a mendicant qualified to be called ‘skilled in the possible and impossible’?…”

Read the sutta
📖 https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/mn-115-from-bahudhatukasutta-many-elements-2/?=MDS

Get these by email
✉ https://daily.readingfaithfully.org?=MSUDS

#schism #MajjhimaNikaya #Theravada #PaliCanon #RealBuddhaQuotes #Suttas #Dhamma #Buddhism #Buddha

#dailysutta #schism #majjhimanikaya #theravada #palicanon #realbuddhaquotes

Paul Healey @[email protected] · 2025-09-02 · 09:15 UTC

@theferret Let the puppet clowns of MAGA and Reform etc. run the world and everyone loses their right to live on it. All they do is fascilitate those who turn good land into toxic waste and blood soaked rubble! Those who finance the winning parties, only want isms to create schisms, so the few can F.Us.All.Up. #ISMS #SCHISM Totalitarian Rule No. 1: two isms make a schism to take the freedom of the people and control their capital #TotalitarianRuleNo1

#isms #schism #totalitarianruleno1

Greg Johnson @[email protected] · 2025-03-27 · 09:29 UTC

Martin Luther was an early Lutheran theologian. Here he comments on Jude 1:25, which warns that someone who is saved would keep a tight rein on their tongue, and not to deceive. Luther says that to offer nice greetings to an associate but think, “the devil take you!”, is not Christian. They have not inherited the blessing and are the evil fruit of an evil tree.

Do we do this?

#christian #schism #religion #timetoact #peacetoall