Fr. Andrei Tkachev - The Right Choice of Father Joseph Gleason

Full transcript and write-up: https://www.gorthodox.com/en/news-ite...

In this video, Fr. Andrei introduces his audience to Fr. Joseph Gleason, an American priest who moved to Russia six years ago, and discusses his conversion to Orthodoxy and the reasons he came to Russia.

For more information about Fr. Joseph and the community he is starting in Russia, click here: https://www.gorthodox.com/en/news-ite...

And here: https://www.gorthodox.com/en/news-ite...

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From Global Orthodox (gorthodox.com/en):

One of Russia's most popular priests, with videos often garnering a million views or more, Fr. Andrey Tkachev is also a writer, journalist, TV presenter, and missionary. He has more than 1.4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, over 120,000 subscribers on his Telegram channel, and there is a good selection online of his homilies translated into English.

In response to a recent hour-long documentary (in Russian) about Fr. Joseph Gleason's move from America to Russia, Fr. Andrei released the following video, commenting on the trend of Americans and western Europeans leaving their home countries, bringing their families to live in Russia. This video has English subtitles. A full transcript is included below.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, brothers and sisters.

People travel here and there. Sometimes just for sunshine, for new experiences, for ski resorts, or something else. Sometimes they have a deeper quest of some kind. Well, let's say some poor Africans flock to Europe for a better life. And people with money in their pockets, an empty head, and a greedy heart, go to Tibet, for example, looking for Shambhala. They have some kind of spiritual quest. Somebody leaves Russia and goes to America, dreaming of a land where money grows on trees.

But some are leaving America and coming here to Russia. Maybe not so many, but they come for truth and for a normal life. I'd like to tell you about one such person today. I encountered the person in our story through a famous journalist of ours, Arkady Mamontov. He made a film about this man. But even before that, there were articles about him on Orthodox resources, such as Pravoslavie.ru. On RT, in Russian, there was an article saying, "This is a good place." These are his own words. This is Joseph Gleason, a priest who has come a very long way.

First of all, he is interesting as a man who found Orthodoxy. Formerly a Protestant, a Calvinist by denominational affiliation, he was the son of an American minister. His father was a preacher. They had the sort of life where they traveled all over America, having the opportunity to see all sorts of different churches. At some point, people have a longing for what they don't have. They start looking for other forms of spirituality.

So he met someone who had converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, someone who wanted to be part of an apostolic church, and belong to an apostolic community. The Russian church has the tradition of Apostolic succession, and of course Catholicism has a similar tradition. He investigated Catholicism too. He was interested in books of the biblical canon, such as Tobit, the Wisdom of Solomon, and many others. There's mysticism, mysticism in the Bible. And then he wondered about the baptism of children. He wanted to baptize his children, but in this type of Protestantism, there was no such custom.

He had married, and had become a father, and thus he had become interested in children. Children generally tend to change people quite a bit, simply by their presence. There's a concern for others that gradually arises.

For the rest of the transcript:  https://www.gorthodox.com/en/news-ite...