u/Silent_Individual_20

George E. Demacopoulos (Professor of Theology and Co-Founder of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University; and a Greek Orthodox layman), released an article on Public Orthodoxy and a new scholarly book on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross holiday (Sept. 14), and its history in Constantinople as a tool of blessing Byzantine political and military might after Heraclius defeated the Sasanian Persians (early 7th century CE) and also as a cope after Heraclius lost the Levant to the Rashidun Caliphate later that century.

Demacopoulos wrote that the oldest documented evidence for a festival based on the alleged True Cross in Jerusalem is St. Cyril of Jerusalem writing of a 'True Cross' relic in the Golgatha basilica (but doesn't say anything about how it was discovered), and the legends claiming Constantine or Helena found it are later inventions.

The hymns written around this feast came to include some linking Jesus' crucifixion to Constantine I's military victories in the early 4th century. Soson Kyrie (“Save, O Lord”) that Exaltation hymn doesn't appear in the Jerusalem Chantbook, nor in the canon hymns for the Feast that St. Kosmas the Hymnographer composed in the  following century (8th century CE); 

"It is not coincidental that Heraklios was the first emperor to adopt the title basileus—the Greek word that the Septuagint uses for the kings of ancient Israel. Heraklios sought to recast his authority in explicitly biblical and Christian terms. It is also not coincidental that Save O Lord is probably the oldest-surviving Christian hymn to use the term basileus. We might say that Save O Lord reflects precisely what we might expect of a composition commissioned by a military emperor eager to cast his often-failing military campaigns within the register of ancient Israel’s holy wars."

"And unlike the most ancient hymns, which stressed the connection between the Cross and Christ’s own suffering, Save, O Lord dispenses with that connection almost entirely. There is no mention of the crucifixion in the hymn at all—no reference to spiritual salvation, no reflection on Christ’s sacrifice, no theology of the defeat of death, no acknowledgment that the Cross was, before anything else, an instrument of torture and execution. In Save O Lord, the Cross becomes a weapon, transferred wholesale from Golgotha to the Roman battlefield without any of the theological freight it carried when it belonged to Christ alone. This is, so far as the manuscript evidence allows us to say, the first surviving hymn of Christian composition whose central request is success in war" [...]

Under the heading Liturgical Change

"What began as a local tradition centered upon the ritual lifting of the relic of the Cross at the site of Christ’s crucifixion grew into one of the most popular festivals in Byzantine Church. More than any other Feast on the Christian calendar, the Feast of the Exaltation provided an occasion for the promotion of Christianized imperial ideology, in part because it began as a commemoration of imperial patronage but more importantly because of the multiple legends connecting the emperor Constantine to the Cross and the Cross to his victories on the battlefield.

Orthodox Christians often speak of their tradition as one that is unchanging. That instinct is not baseless —there is real continuity, real fidelity to a received tradition, and that continuity matters theologically. But the liturgical history I have just recounted should give us pause about pressing that instinct too far. Save, O Lord was not composed by an apostle or issued by an Ecumenical Council. It was composed, in all likelihood, at the behest of a heretical emperor (Heraklios is responsible for promoting Monothelitism), to sanctify a specific set of wars, at a specific moment when he was rebranding his own authority in explicitly biblical terms. It reflects the theological imagination of seventh-century Constantinople under the pressure of total war with the Persians and then the Arabs. Perhaps, given this context, Save O Lord does not represent a timeless deposit of faith so much as it reflects a point of view as historically conditioned as any other artifact of that period.

This matters because the alternative—the assumption that our received hymnography arrived both pure and complete, beyond historical scrutiny—makes it very difficult to reckon honestly with hymns like Save, O Lord. If liturgy cannot change, then a hymn that asks God to grant “our” emperors victory over “barbarians” must simply be defended, spiritualized, deliberately mistranslated, or ignored, because to question it is treated as tantamount to questioning the notion of worship itself. But if we recognize, as the historical record plainly shows, that liturgy has always changed—that new feasts were added, old ones split apart, that hymns composed to serve the interests of specific spiritual needs were later revised, trimmed, or replaced—then we are free to ask a different and more honest set of questions: not “can this change,” but “should it?”" (emphasis added).

George E. Demacopoulos, “The Cross That Learned to Fight: How the Feast of the Exaltation Came to Sacralize Violence,” Public Orthodoxy, September 18, 2026, https://publicorthodoxy.org/good-reads/the-cross-that-learned-to-fight/.

Demacopoulos' new book: George E. Demacopoulos, Sacralizing Violence in Byzantium: Hymns, Empire, and the Narrowing of Christian Identity, vol. 51, Dumbarton Oaks Studies (Harvard University Press, 2026).

Demacopoulos' bio: “George E. Demacopoulos | Fordham,” accessed September 18, 2026, https://www.fordham.edu/academics/departments/theology/faculty/george-e-demacopoulos/.

Demacopoulos is one of the few Orthodox scholars I greatly respect because he acknowledges the historical and geopolitical messiness of the EOC's history and liturgical structure (even if some cognitive dissonance creeps in here and there).

Greetings all.

It turns out that hypocritical actions by clergy or fellow laypeople have been studied in their role in sparking religious switching, disaffiliation (partial or complete), and deconversion. Long story short, anthropologists and scholars studying the cognitive science of religion (CSR) popularized the term Credibility Enhancing Displays (aka CREDs) for religious costly behaviors that either helps reinforce a child or adult convert's current beliefs or encourages them to join a religion.

CREDs include costly rituals, fasting (or other dietary restrictions), celibacy vows, financial and volunteer commitments, and more extreme examples like hardcore asceticism and martyrdom. Meanwhile, religious hypocrisy (including say, clergy abuse scandals against children and adults, the Moscow Patriarchate's sanctification of Putin's aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere, etc.) often serve as Credibility Undermining Displays (CRUDs, yes, that's the acronym, but arguably it's fitting! 🤣).

Hugh Turpin et al., “CREDs, CRUDs, and Catholic Scandals: Experimentally Examining the Effects of Religious Paragon Behavior on Co-Religionist Belief,” Religion, Brain & Behavior 9, no. 2 (2019): 143–55, https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2018.1439087, https://www.academia.edu/38259353/CREDs_CRUDs_and_Catholic_Scandals_Experimentally_examining_the_effects_of_religious_paragon_behavior_on_co_religionist_belief;

Hugh D. Turpin and Aiyana K. Willard, “Credibility Enhancing Displays, Religious Scandal and the Decline of Irish Catholic Orthodoxy,” Evolutionary Human Sciences 4 (2022): e20, https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.21, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360848182_Credibility_Enhancing_Displays_religious_scandal_and_the_decline_of_Irish_Catholic_orthodoxy;

Jonathan A. Lanman and Michael D. Buhrmester, “Religious Actions Speak Louder than Words: Exposure to Credibility Enhancing Displays Predicts Theism,” Religion, Brain & Behavior 7, no. 1 (2017): 3–16, https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2015.1117011, https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/17250565/LanmanBuhrmesterCREDsFinal.pdf;

Jonathan A. Lanman, “The Importance of Religious Displays for Belief Acquisition and Secularization,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 27, no. 1 (2012): 49–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2012.642726, https://www.academia.edu/1590808/The_Importance_of_Religious_Displays_for_Belief_Acquisition_and_Secularization;

For more specific research on CRUDs effecting religious switching, crises of faith, or deconversion:

Kinnaman, D., & Lyons, G. (2007). unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…and Why It Matters, New York: Baker Books; 

Jason Wollschleger and Lindsey Beach, “A Cucumber for a Cow: A Theoretical Exploration of the Causes and Consequences of Religious Hypocrisy,” Rationality and Society 23, no. 2 (2011): 155–74, https://doi.org/10.1177/1043463111404673, https://www.asrec.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Wollschleger-Cucumber-for-a-Cow-ASREC09.pdf;

Bradley R. E. Wright et al., “Explaining Deconversion from Christianity: A Study of Online Narratives,” Journal of Religion & Society 13 (2011): 1–17, https://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/toc/2011.html.