Today's scandal: bearing witness to Christ in contemporary Western societies

This article by Inga Leonova, an American Orthodox laywoman, examines the question of Christian witness in contemporary Western societies. Written in the form of a plenary address, it questions the current ways in which faith is transmitted in a context of advanced secularization. The central idea is that Christianity cannot be reduced to a system of values or moral teaching, but that it consists fundamentally in a personal and living relationship with Christ. The author identifies in this reduction a recurring historical pitfall that weakens the missionary reach of the Church. On the theological level, the article recalls the christological centrality of Christian witness and proposes a rereading of the notion of evangelical scandal as a necessary condition for an authentic Orthodox presence in the contemporary Western world.