One of the common charges against the participants in the protests which began in Minneapolis[1] and spread virally around the country, and which frequently included the defacing and toppling of public statuary, is that the protesters are engaged in a new wave of iconoclasm[2]. Coming from political and cultural conservatives, these arguments claim that the protests are imbued with a new and dangerous religious impulse[3]. Now for Orthodox Christians, who follow the canons of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and venerate the great Orthodox iconophile, Saint John of Damascus, this charge of iconoclasm is grave, and should be investigated in earnest.
(more…)