People sometimes ask me “What is the strangest question you were ever asked in all your years of Orthodox ministry?” I can recall many strange questions (such as “Did Adam have a belly-button?”) but perhaps few were stranger than the question which queried, “Are we allowed to lift up our hands in church when we pray?” My guess is that the query came from discomfort with some modern charismatic practices which include raising one’s hands in church whenever praying or singing. It is clearly a case of “guilt by association”: those crazy charismatics seem to always raise their hands in prayer, so we shouldn’t.