So, our question for the first Roundtable of 2018 is about science and faith: “can they coexist in religious rhetoric?” The short answer is “Sure, they can”—and we’ll demonstrate how that works in this very column.

At this point, I think we’ve pretty much all lost track. There was Bill O’Reilly and Harvey Weinstein, and then there was Mark Halperin and Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey and Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer…and by the time this column makes it into print, most likely some other famous person will have been outed as a sexual predator.

I didn’t have to think long at all about this particular Round Table topic: ‘What is the most commonly asked question you receive and how do you answer it?’ That’s an easy one for me, but I’ll need a moment to set it up for all you folks who aren’t Orthodox.

For this roundtable, Nick the Editor wants to know “if politically active churches should be tax-exempt”. It sure looks like President Trump believes they should be.

For today’s Round Table, Nick the Editor wants us to answer this question: “Are school choice programs fair to tax payers since they support private religious schools that may discriminate against tax payer beliefs?” The topic is often framed that way, but let’s flesh out some details so we can clearly see everything is at stake.

For this current roundtable, we have been asked, “What are your thoughts on exorcisms?” I actually perform a number of exorcisms each and every year. That’s because everyone who is received into the Church also receives an exorcism. That’s not something our parish came up with; it’s something that Orthodox Christians have been doing for at least 1800 years.