Posted on 11/10/2004 8:12:49 AM PST by sionnsar
I appreciate the Pontificator’s invitation to write on this topic. Please forgive its autobiographical character, but it’s the best way I know to approach the subject.
In February, 1998, after 18 years of ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church, my family and I were received into the Orthodox Church. That decision was not primarily based on a “need to leave” the Episcopal Church so much as a “need to be Orthodox,” for want of a better expression.
My first introduction to Orthodox theology came in the mid-70s, before I entered seminary. A Christian friend gave me a copy of Vladimir Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, one of the seminal works of 20th century Orthodox theology. I was active in a charismatic house-church at the time, but was becoming increasingly disenchanted with the experience (subject for a different article sometime). Reading Lossky was part of a series of things that made me understand that Christianity without a grounding in Holy Tradition was deeply lacking. That realization sent me back to the Episcopal Church. The year was 1975, and nothing noticeable had changed in the parish I had wandered out of to explore the charismatic experience. The prayerbooks were the same. The hymnals were the same. The sermons were the same - not always exciting, but solid and sound. The sense that Tradition was alive and well permeated things, and I enjoyed being back home.
In 1977 I entered seminary - and, of course, things were changing. My interest in Orthodox theology was not changing, however. One of my professors, Fr. Winston Crum, was on the Anglican-Orthodox Dialog group. He had done his doctorate at Harvard under Fr. Georges Florovsky, one of the great figures in 20th century Orthodox theology. Fr. Crum took me to a meeting where I heard Fr. Alexander Schmemann lecture. Fr. Timothy Ware (now Bishop Kallistos) came to our seminary as a guest lecturer. I met Anatoly Krasnov-Levitin, a close associate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn during this same time period. And all of these meetings confirmed what I found in books of Orthodox theology. Holy Tradition was alive and well, believed, practiced, and normative in the lives of these spiritual giants (or so I see them now).
None of that made me consider the idea of becoming Orthodox. I was an Anglican. I thought a great deal about Orthodox theology, and its kinship with much of Anglicanism and gradually became aware that the kinship was more than cursory. Reading Orthodox theology and mining it for its understanding of the faith seemed perfectly natural to me - in a way that reading almost any Anglican writer did not. I never felt the need to be on my guard or to second guess Orthodox authors. I rarely read an Anglican in that manner (with the later exception of things written by such men as Al Kimel).
My relationship to Orthodox thought changed somewhere in the course of the late 80s when I began work on a degree in Systematic Theology at Duke. The chairman of my committee was Geoffrey Wainwright, a British Methodist who had himself done doctoral work under Nikos Nissiotis (an outstanding Greek theologian who died far too young). Studying under Wainwright was similar to my experience with Winston Crum. I read Orthodox theology under his guidance and wound up writing my thesis on the theology of icons. I think that it was during that time that my inner attitude towards Orthodoxy began to change. I started running across articles about people who had converted to Orthodoxy. Their stories were as varied as their backgrounds and situations - but all had something in common - and I sensed a kinship with that common experience.
I had begun with an attitude towards Orthodox theology that said, “This is reliable,” and was coming to a deeper realization that said, “This is the truth.”
As strange as it may sound, I had been reading Orthodox works for 15 years - and had yet to step inside an Orthodox Church. I remember being in Washington, D.C. for a conference around that time, along with my wife. We made the obligatory visit to the Episcopal National Cathedral, for our first time. It was impressive, but mostly as an edifice. The Cathedral was gothic and grand, but empty. I was aware that the architecture said one thing, and that the services there and the clergy would say something completely different. Driving away from the Cathedral, we saw a sign for St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral (it’s just down the street a bit). I remember circling the block slowly. Our windows were down - it was afternoon - and we could here the music of a service inside. (I know now that it was Vespers). My wife enthusiastically suggested, “Let’s go inside!” But I said no. “I’m afraid that if I go in, I won’t be able to come out.”
That was one experience among many of that time, revealing to both myself and my wife a hunger for less division in our lives between the Church we lived in and the Church we believed in. Within a couple of years we were attending Orthodox services when we were on vacation. I met Archbishop Dmitri of the Orthodox Church in America (my bishop today). I met priests, visited monasteries, and came to know that reading theology was a sad substitute for the life of living theology. Much happened over the next number of years. At the end of ‘97, a job offer came my way, providing employment apart from the parish I’d been serving. We had already made a commitment to each other, to Archbishop Dmitri, and more importantly, a commitment to God, that we wanted to enter the Orthodox Church. I took the job, renounced my orders in the Episcopal Church, and entered a period of training and preparation. In November of ‘98 I was ordained deacon, and in March of ‘99 I was ordained priest. By July of ‘99 I had given up secular employment in order to serve the growing mission we had helped start in the Knoxville, Tennessee area.
This short account illustrates the only answer I can give to an Episcopalian (or anyone else for that matter). The primary reason that someone should become Orthodox is that they have come to believe that it is True. I think believing anything less than that is less than becoming Orthodox. I cannot say to someone, “You must be Orthodox.” Not because I don’t believe it’s true, or that I believe it’s only true for some: I believe that God has to tell you that it’s true or it won’t really matter. And only God can do that.
It is a simple fact of history that the Orthodox Church is continuous with the original Church. Indeed, no one really questions the claims that the Orthodox Church is what it claims to be, “the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Others will speak of it as one of the “two lungs” of the Church (that’s one of Rome’s suggestions). Anglicans have said that Orthodoxy is one of the “three branches” of the Church. Orthodoxy, without seeking to unchurch anyone else, simply says that it is the “fullness” of the Church. On at least one level this is true in a way that can only be theoretical elsewhere. Orthodoxy is a Church without Reformation, Renaissance, Counter-Reformation, liturgical renewal, modernization, or much else that has made the Churches across the contemporary scene unrecognizable in their apostolic origins (if they even claim them). Not that Orthodoxy is unchanging. It is alive and has changed, though in that change, the Orthodox would say they have remained the same, and I believe this to be true. When I read St. Athanasius or other fathers of the Church, their works and the Church services I am in, week in and week out, are of a piece.
I was an Anglican because I was taught that it was part of the Holy Catholic Church - that Scripture, Reason and Tradition were its sources of authority. For some time Anglicanism nurtured a hunger for the reality that is Christ’s Church. I am Orthodox because it is the Holy Catholic Church, the Pillar and Ground of Truth. It is a hunger satisfied.
An Episcopalian should become Orthodox if he believes Orthodoxy to be the Truth. Knowing that, or coming to know that, is a reality that has to come from God.
I think I can say very positively, that Anglicanism, at its best and in its finest historical moments, has always tended towards something like Orthodoxy, or even longed for union with Orthodoxy itself. It was and is a right instinct.
The battles raging in Churches today are not confined to Anglicanism. I have heard numerous theories as to why different groups are subject to these troubles. Some offer critiques of the Reformation or blame the rise of modernism on the intellectual history of the West. Apostasy and faithlessness are possible anywhere at any time. Orthodoxy is the 2,000-year-old communion of the faithful who have wrestled with heresies and persecutions and triumphed.
I expected Orthodoxy to be ethnically foreign and closed to the outside. I have found something quite different. Though Orthodoxy has its ethnicity (as does Anglicanism), it is by no means a closed group. Probably more than half the student body in the two seminaries of the Orthodox Church in America are converts - as are a majority of the Bishops in the Holy Synod. Converts are not second-class citizens.
Again, my thanks to the Pontificator for his kind invitation to write on this topic. I pray for you and encourage you to be faithful to Christ in all things.
" Is it a speculative wonder, or have they really thought about it? Have they written down their experiences? I'm curious."
I doubt any of them have written down their experiences, but I do know that one couple thought about becoming Orthodox long and hard and since then have wondered, as they hear from others or read about the troubles in the ECUSA, why others don't at least look. The last I spoke with them on this, and that was some time back in the fall, they opined that most Episcopalians don't even know Orthodoxy exists, or if they do they think its only for Greeks and Russians and suchlike folk. I'll ask Sunday.
At a guess they aren't really aware of it in this country, except as an ethnic matter. I remember being a little surprised, a couple years back, when a fellow who was considering our church (he's a friend of our deacon) but chose the "local" (downtown Seattle) Greek Orthodox church instead.
I'll ask Sunday.
I'd be interested.
I don't know how but I got on Spong's email list. The last email was beyond words, he explained why the virgin birth is just symbolic and that no one except a few people at places like Bob Jones University take it as literal history now. No wonder, Episcopal church is in decline.
It lives on also in the Western Rite of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America.
Do tell!
In some ways it is an Orthodox parallel to the Anglican Use in the Roman Catholic Church.
They have been moving on for a long time. Some are going to Continuing churches, some to Rome, some to Orthodoxy, some to other places in the world-wide Anglican Communion, and some to Protestant churches. How it's all going to shape up down the road is a guess.
Remnant? You're the majority! It's only in North America, the UK and a few other places where this is going on. Remember, today even more than when I heard it in the 60s, the most representative Anglican is an African woman.
This was a surprise! I didn't know this was going on in the Catholic church.
It is beyond words to me that anyone can stay in a certain faith where the leaders (ie Spong) openly rejects the basic tenets of Holy Scripture. My former parish is still fairly strong, but it is in an urban area where the residents think they are slightly intellectually superior to the people in the suburbs. However, I must say the church has lost many long time members.
How long have they been there? I looked at that picture and thought "I know EXACTLY where that is!" From '93 to '95 I lived in Woodinville and cycled to work in Lynnwood, going up Atlas & Barker then down Poplar -- right past where the church is. (Memory vaguely recalls there being construction at the time, but I could be wrong...)
Our festival,btw, is 10/1 and 10/2. You and your wife are invited. Would love to see her again. I will only be there on 10/2 because of a long-ago-committment to a Scouting activity on 10/1.
We sell very wonderful pastries and russian food.
To be clear, there are no legal inclusive language liturgies in the Catholic Church. In fact, the new translation of the Mass into English will make the translation even more faithful to the Latin original.
In recent years a small number of Catholics have left the Church for one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches because of fury with the Catholic bishops over their scandalous behavior in handling priests who were deviants, abusers, predators, homosexuals, ephebophiles, and pedophiles. Others equally outraged simply found their home in the Eastern rites of the Catholic Church -- like the Maronite Catholics.
That just goes to show ya how green I am. I've been in the Episcopal church for seven years, I have seen dramtic changes within this time.
I'm frankly tired of all the talkin, just wished we could do a split and move on.
Patience, young Anglican, have patience. Anglicans are very Entish in some ways. *\;-)
But I think we're getting near; I doubt you'd see seven more years without action.
Thank you for the invitation. What is the timing on 10/02? We are tied up at church in the morning (LibreOuMort is the church organist and I the lay reader, so we cannot miss the service), but later could be free.
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