Seeing Worship as Ethics

In the introduction to his landmark book on Eastern Orthodox ethics, Toward Transfigured Life, Stanley S. Harakas argues that while there is room within the Orthodox tradition for a distinction between ethics and theology, there is no warrant for a separation of ethics from dogma and religious practice.¹ Harakas sets out this rule at the beginning of his book because he, like other Orthodox writers, detects a separation, if not an outright divorce, of worship, belief, and ethics in much of American religious discourse.² In this chapter, I will not try to prove that a separation or divorce of ethics