“…we must first of all recognize the chief enemy facing us: it is, of course, the devil, who wants to knock us off the path of salvation; and the chief means he uses in our times to do this is the spirit of worldliness. This is what has weakened and watered down Orthodoxy in America — and not just in the other jurisdictions. The spirit of worldliness is in the air we breathe, and we cannot escape it. You cannot watch television, you cannot go to a supermarket, you cannot walk in the streets of any city in America — without being bombarded by this spirit. In supermarkets and other large stores they even play lighthearted, senseless music in order to catch you in this spirit and make sure that you don’t think or feel in an other-worldly way. Our Church and everyone in it is attacked by this spirit, and we can’t escape it by isolating ourselves in a ghetto or in a small town; the outside influences can be lessened, perhaps, in such ways, but if we are not fighting an inward spiritual battle against worldliness, we will still be conquered by it without fail. And so the chief question regarding the future of our Orthodoxy in America — and in the whole world, for that matter — is: how do we remain orthodox and develop our orthodoxy against the spirit of worldliness that attacks us on all sides? In order to answer this question we have to ask first another question that might be a little surprising: what is Orthodoxy? But this question is basic; if we aren’t sure just what Orthodoxy is, we won’t know what we’re trying to preserve and develop against the spirit of worldliness.”
– ‘Orthodoxy in America.’