Why Orthodoxy

While the majority of our loved ones have not questioned our exploration of the Orthodox Christian Church, a few have asked about it. Therefore, I decided I would share how we have come to this point. With this post, I endeavor to create a situation that could lead to understanding.

I was raised to respect, indeed believe in, the Holy Bible. And I was raised to understand the Bible through Protestant and Baptist traditions of interpretation. My husband was raised Lutheran. I had learned a contempt for liturgical worship services. It’s so rote, after all. People who go to liturgical churches don’t even take their Bibles to church, right? So, I had no desire to attend or raise our children in such a setting. Therefore, we mostly attended Baptist churches in our moves around the country.

I had also learned to be suspicious of hierarchy.

We met and made friends with some of the best people we will ever know in those churches. We also experienced things that made us question what was being taught.

It was while we lived in a Midwest town that we experienced something that, although we didn’t see it at the time, would become a major turning point. We attended a church where the pastor ruled with an iron fist and lorded over his congregation. My husband and myself (and our teenage daughter) began to be very concerned when we kept hearing (from the pulpit, etc.) that we, as a congregation, could not question the pastor. He was led by the Holy Spirit and so to question him was to be in rebellion against God.

My husband and I did question him, however. And the results were that he bullied my husband and myself with pastoral power to silence us about the abuses we saw. This ‘pastor’ and his wife were responsible for lies and gossip told about my family and myself, telling others to stop being friends with us (some thankfully did not listen), and most unforgivably, he tried to divide and conquer by trying to turn my husband and myself against each other. (Thankfully it backfired and strengthened us.) But it nevertheless was a very difficult time.

We have spoken to other families since then who experienced similar things at his hand. It is heart-breaking.

Around this time, this ‘pastor’ broke off from any governing body that was in place(such that it was), effectively leaving no one to turn to for mediation. He was basically a despot, and it occurred to us that a hierarchy would have been helpful.

At this point, we began to house church with a few other families. We desired to have the simplicity of the early church. We just wanted to worship God and teach our children to love the Lord. But, here, although we weren’t aware of it at the time, we also lacked leadership, structure, and a common approach to Scripture and worship.

Then we moved to England. We attended an Evangelical, non-denominational American church plant. Again, we met some of the most wonderful, loving people there.

When we moved to our current state (back to the Midwest, but not the same state), we visited many churches over a two year span, including Baptist, non-denom, a quasi-Methodist mega-church, and even a couple of visits to a Presbyterian church. These churches are filled to the brim with people wanting to worship God in spirit and in truth.

But I was not at peace. Neither was my husband nor our oldest two children.

Then we visited an Anglican church. No one was more surprised than I when I actually liked a liturgical service. There was something about it that my soul responded to that cannot be put into words.

I had many conversations with the priest, a godly and loving man. We talked about sacraments and godly structure. We talked about mystery and the via media. We talked about salvation and predestination.

Predestination was a recurring theme that began years ago in the previous Midwest state and continued up to our time in the Anglican church. We read and studied this Calvinist doctrine and had many conversations with friends who believed it was a central tenet to the Christian faith.

We, however, have found it to be contrary to what we read in Scripture (even with all of the logical arguments for it) and contrary to the nature of things.

Our priest, however, did not preach it from the pulpit and assured us that there was room for many views on the subject.

We were happy and content. We all decided to become members of this church.

Unfortunately, at the same time that we were wanting to commit to this church, I had a niggling concern in the back of my mind about some of the tenets of the Anglican faith, particularly predestination. We realized that the great problem was that even though our church didn’t emphasize it, another Anglican church might. What if we moved? We wouldn’t be able to count on all Anglican churches being the same.

A watershed moment for me was when I looked on the Anglican Church in North America website to learn more about the Inaugural Assembly that occurred in the summer of 2009 in which the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in America was invited to speak about seeking unity between the two churches. I watched the speech given by Metropolitan Jonah and I liked what I heard.

This is getting quite long so I will close now. I will write Part 2 next chance I get. I plan to write what we are learning about the Orthodox Church itself.