How to Be an Orthodox Christian – Details, episodes & analysis

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How to Be an Orthodox Christian

Dcn. Seraphim Richard Rohlin, and Ancient Faith Ministries

Religion & Spirituality

Frequency: 1 episode/7d. Total Eps: 17

How to Live the Orthodox Life

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Data updated on 23/08/2026

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d2WdXDHC7_-Uw0oYDtEWlsXJ4fwYSn_Y/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113635573846427389195&rtpof=true&sd=true
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Baptism and Chrismation: The New Birth and the Breath of Life

Monday, June 29, 2026 • Duration

Dcn Seraphim takes up the first two mysteries of Christian initiation: Baptism, by which we are reborn out of the waters into the humanity of the new Adam, and Chrismation, by which the Holy Spirit Himself is sealed upon us. Drawing on his own background as a former Baptist minister, he traces the two great modern misconceptions about baptism — that it is only a symbol, and that it can only be administered to those old enough to consent — back to the Radical Reformation, and refutes both from a long line of New Testament passages. He then walks through the Orthodox baptismal rite moment by moment. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GSl_XdilbI9lDmaZYKufyh6pITpxmMni?usp=sharing Music Used: 11 Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8 Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

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Introduction to the Holy Mysteries: What's with All This Stuff?

Tuesday, June 23, 2026 • Duration

Every visitor to an Orthodox church eventually asks the same question — why so much stuff? The icons, the candles, the incense, the relics, the bread and wine and water and oil. In this episode Dcn Seraphim argues that the question itself is the wrong one, and that the Orthodox question is never "what is the bare minimum?" He diagnoses the quiet, unstated gnosticism that has shaped modern American religion and then lays out the central thesis that will frame the rest of the series: that the Holy Mysteries of the Church are the recapitulation, in Christ, of what God did with Adam in Genesis 1–3. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xZEu9Y48xE8Z4A_XC7bKLjxbK39ZTreB?usp=sharing Music Used: 11 Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8 Choir of St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA

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The Moral Life (Part 2): Sexuality, the Sanctity of Life, the Tongue, and Possessions [EP. 9]

Monday, June 15, 2026 • Duration

Picking up the framework from Part 1, Dcn Seraphim applies it to the specific moral questions where the Church's teaching most visibly cuts against the assumptions of our age. He begins by rejecting the quiet gnosticism of the modern world and affirming the goodness of the body, then takes up sexual ethics at length, working from Genesis 1 and Ephesians 5 to chastity, marriage as the icon of Christ and the Church, fornication, pornography, and the image of God in the human person. Finally, he talks about the discipline of the tongue: lying, gossip, judgment, and the new domain of online conduct. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16IQ-i3cukC75VMFRqGP1q9oLoED_uXa-?usp=sharing

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The Moral Life (Part 1): The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Transformation of the Heart [EP. 8]

Monday, June 8, 2026 • Duration

In the first of two episodes on the moral life, Dcn Seraphim works through the two great moral texts of Scripture — the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Sinai, and the Sermon on the Mount given by Christ to His disciples on a mountain in Galilee — and shows how Christ does not abolish the law given to Moses but fulfills it, taking it inward into the dispositions of the heart. The Decalogue marked off Israel by clear external standards of conduct; the Sermon on the Mount addresses a new community, the Church, in which God is concerned not only with our outward actions but with our inner thoughts, our affections, and the very movement of our wills. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1z-OVpbdZqhEDT0v3M9tipcdb-_frY4zP?usp=sharing

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Holy Tradition: Scripture, Councils, Fathers, and Liturgy [EP. 7]

Monday, June 1, 2026 • Duration

Where does all of it come from — the eastward-facing altar, the icons, the hymns, the precise theological claims woven into every prayer? In this episode Dcn Seraphim takes up the question of Holy Tradition: not a rulebook or a second Bible, but the whole living transmission of the Christian faith from the Apostles to today, the river in which Scripture itself flows. Drawing on St. Paul, St. Irenaeus, the ecumenical councils, and the witness of saints from St. Athanasius to St. Sophrony of Essex, he shows how the Church discerned the canon, defined the faith at councils like Nicaea and Ephesus, and continues to confess that faith in her worship under the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of prayer is the law of faith. Handouts and resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CD0DyDFbR8DEr1yNyb_N2tdrrX8PCmUL?usp=sharing Intro: 0:00 Two Modes of Transmitting Tradition: 4:04 Scripture in Tradition: 6:45 St. Irenaeus on Tradition: 12:06 Conciliary Principle/Councils : 13:56 Fathers of the Church: 21:45 What the Church pray is what we believe: 26:14 tradition vs. “T”radition: 30:36 Closing statements: 32:16

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How to Read the Holy Scriptures [EP. 6]

Tuesday, May 26, 2026 • Duration

In this episode, Dcn Seraphim explores the Orthodox understanding of the Holy Scriptures as a verbal icon of Christ — a living encounter with the One who speaks through every page, from Genesis to Revelation. He looks at how the Church gave us the Bible, why Orthodox Christians use the Septuagint, what is meant by reading Scripture with the Fathers, and why typological reading is not an invention of the Fathers but an extension of the way the New Testament teaches us to read the Old. Along the way he draws on St. Irenaeus, St. Theodore the Studite, St. Isaac the Syrian, and St. John Chrysostom, and shows how the hymns and readings of the Divine Liturgy are themselves the Church's living school of biblical interpretation. The episode ends with practical guidance for daily Scripture reading at home.

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Almsgiving: How to Be Like God [EP. 5]

Monday, May 18, 2026 • Duration

In this episode, Dcn. Seraphim takes up the third great discipline of the Sermon on the Mount and shows why the Orthodox Church understands almsgiving not as an optional extra but as the practice by which we become like the God who gives Himself away. Drawing on Christ's teaching in Matthew 6 and 25, the Book of Tobit, the parable of the Widow's Mite, and the writings of Sts. Basil, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and Clement of Alexandria, he traces almsgiving back to its roots in the very nature of the Trinity. He then turns to the practical questions: tithing, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, parish stewardship, and how the whole Divine Liturgy forms us as a school of giving. Show notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WENS_5xjgyLnr5kJQPTiK3qqYTgi5Hd6/view?usp=sharing

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Fasting: The Second Wing of the Christian Life [EP. 4]

Monday, May 11, 2026 • Duration

Dcn Seraphim traces fasting back to the first commandment given in Eden — a commandment about food — and shows how the Fall itself was a failure of fasting, answered in the wilderness by the New Adam who refuses to turn stones into bread. Drawing on Basil, Chrysostom, John Climacus, and John Cassian, he distinguishes Orthodox fasting from dieting or self-punishment and presents it instead as the rider's training of the horse: a medicine for the soul whose dose must be fitted to each person through the Church's principle of oikonomia. Then, he walks through the Orthodox fasting calendar — the four great fasts, Wednesdays and Fridays, the approximately forty percent of the year spent in fasting — while pairing Christ's "when you fast" in Matthew 6 with Isaiah 58's warning that a fast without mercy is no fast at all. Practical guidance follows on how to live a fasting day, how cravings become occasions for prayer, and how every act of bodily restraint is oriented toward the Eucharistic table, where food is at last received on God's terms rather than seized on our own.

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Prayer: The First Wing of the Christian Life [EP. 3]

Monday, May 4, 2026 • Duration

Beginning with the desert story of Abba Macarius — "Lord, as You will, and as You know, have mercy" — this episode grounds Orthodox prayer in the simple act of turning toward God and asking for mercy. Dcn Seraphim moves from the definition of prayer as communion (Evagrius, Gregory Palamas, Anthony Bloom) into the Sermon on the Mount, walking phrase by phrase through the Lord's Prayer with the help of Chrysostom, Cyprian, Theophylact, Maximus, and Gregory of Nyssa. He then lays out the daily cycle of the Church and introduces a beginner's prayer rule as a trellis on which a prayer life can grow. The episode concludes with a demonstration of the rule at the icon corner and the encouragement that dryness in prayer is often the sign that God is drawing us deeper. PRAYER LESSON OUTLINE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wY5vsnQr2ND9GciZbsfV4b148k7qzlUp/view?usp=sharing SAMPLE PRAYER RULE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d2WdXDHC7_-Uw0oYDtEWlsXJ4fwYSn_Y/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113635573846427389195&rtpof=true&sd=true

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Entering the Church of God [EP. 2]

Tuesday, April 28, 2026 • Duration

Orthodox Churches are laid out very differently from almost any other kind of church you're likely to walk into in North America. Why are there so many icons? What's with the wall and curtain between me and the altar? Why are people lighting candles? How should you stand, behave, dress, and orient yourself in Church? These are things that our ancestors took for granted -- and things that are often the most difficult and intimidating for newcomers. In this video, Dcn. Seraphim gives a tour of his own church, and talks about how the whole plan of salvation is inherent in the architecture and iconography of an Orthodox temple. Outro music: Cherubic Hymn, Romanian Chant, Tone 8 Choir of St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Cathedral

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How to Be an Orthodox Christian – Details, episodes & analysis

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How to Be an Orthodox Christian – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Google Drive7

Google Docs1

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

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Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Google Drive7

Google Docs1

Apple Podcasts

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