Agreed. It decreases any chance of confusion to other inquirers who come into TAW asking questions. I'll go one further though. I don't like those, who are not at bare minimum a catechumen, actually answering questions of what Eastern Orthodox believe to other inquirers questions while sporting the Orthodox tri-bar icon. It isn't that they can't get the answer right but I have seen some of them get is so very wrong and confusion having occurred before it was corrected. The confusion could have been prevented if the newbie had identified themself as what they are, a seeker/ inquirer into the Orthodox faith instead of sporting the tri-bar cross, thus giving the impression they have already been chrismated.
I agree, too. I've been feeling a fair amount of non-Orthodoxy passing as Orthodoxy here lately. Even just a couple of years ago, there were personality clashes, but a more solid sense of, for the most part, one heart and one mind. But now that sense is seriously weakened. Some people have jumped ship altogether.
In the threads on the H word, for example, there is a sense of confusion and disagreement now that never existed before.
For me, TAW was always a place I could come for peace, to not have to argue about what Orthodox teaching is, to be able to assume (rightly, on the whole) that we all share the same beliefs, especially on issues that are controversial in the world outside. Lately I have had a lot less of that sense of peace and certainty here. It may be that abuse of the faith icon is a contributing factor. I DO say that everyone who uses it needs to be able, on request, to state his or her jurisdiction and Bishop.
To RKO:
It might help to understand that people can be right in degrees; that most people do have a great deal of truth in their worldviews. A claim to the fullness of the truth, being
completely right in terms of worldview, is not due to personal arrogance, but to having the dumb luck to find the organization that really HAS maintained the paradosis most completely. It's in thinking, not that WE are right, but that the CHURCH is right, and we are only accepting or discovering truth we did not make. I see the analogy of a dartboard. Orthodoxy is the bullseye. Heterodox Christian faith is in the near circles, other theistic faiths a little further out, polytheistic still further, atheism in the circle around the nail holding the dartboard up (there IS truth and it CAN be known) and principled agnostics that deny we can ever know, that there is even truth to be known, are totally off the board.
So I can enjoy the company of Catholics or Protestants, knowing that they have an awful lot right, even though I can't join them, as I can see that they have not maintained the paradosis. (History is a huge basis for me here.)
