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 PrintableVersion Why evangelicals join the Orthodox churchesConsideration of reasons that some evangelicals have joined the Orthodox churchesTo anyone brought up in Western Christianity, Roman or Protestant, the world of Eastern Orthodoxy is unfamiliar. We are likely to find the format of its services strange, its theological terminology hard to understand and its way of thinking radically different. There is a sense of 'foreignness', rooted in the growing estrangement between East and West which culminated in the 'Great Schism' of 1054. Yet evangelicals have recently begun crossing the great divide and becoming Orthodox. What is it about Orthodoxy which attracts them, and where is evangelicalism failing? What is Orthodoxy?Doctrinally speaking, Orthodoxy claims to embody the true church, founded on the Scriptures and the seven Ecumenical Councils, whose conclusions were accepted by East and West. These took place between 325 and 787 AD and established the outlines of Christian belief concerning the Trinity and the person of Christ; evangelicals should have no trouble accepting the main decisions of the first four at least.(1) Administratively, Orthodoxy is a family of regional jurisdictions, each of which is self-governing; thus there is no figure corresponding to the Pope in Roman Catholicism. The main jurisdictions with a British presence are the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate (by far the largest), the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), the Serbian Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Antioch. While they have hitherto been seen as catering for particular ethnic groups, they are now looking outwards, and it is no longer uncommon to find converts in their congregations. Who is converting?Probably the most celebrated evangelical to become Orthodox is Frank Schaeffer, son of the apologist Francis Schaeffer, who joined the Greek Orthodox Church in 1990. Known already for his pungent critique of American evangelicalism, Addicted to mediocrity (2), he has outlined his understanding of Orthodox faith in Dancing alone: the quest for Orthodox Faith in the age of false religion (3). But Schaeffer is not the only well-known evangelical to tread this path. The Anglican, Michael Harper (see John Marsh's review of his latest book in this month's issue), once a curate to John Stott and the founder of the charismatic Fountain Trust, joined the Antiochian Orthodox Church in 1995, along with a number of other Anglicans distressed at the CofE's decision to ordain women as priests (the group known as 'Pilgrimage to Orthodoxy'). Andrew Walker, of King's College, London, and the C.S. Lewis Centre, has written movingly of his journey from Pentecostalism through unbelief to Russian Orthodoxy in Charismatic Renewal: the search for a theology. In the States, Peter Gillquist and some other Campus Crusade leaders began to recreate the New Testament church. In the process, they found themselves adopting views and practices identical to those of Orthodoxy, and formed a body known as the Evangelical Orthodox Church(4). Nearly all its 2,000 members were received into the Antiochian Orthodox Church in 1986, and they have infused American Orthodoxy with an outward-looking and activist spirit. I have come across evangelicals of all shades who have converted to Orthodoxy. The experiences of those I have interviewed or corresponded with have certain recurring themes: dissatisfaction with man-centred and faddish worship, frustration at what they see as a lack of depth in theology and prayer, and a conviction that evangelicals have cut loose from the historic Christianity of the Church Fathers. However, one official wrote: 'We have a policy in our Diocese of never receiving people for negative reasons ... We insist that converts come for positive reasons. And they do.' Moreover, converts insist that they are not giving up their evangelicalism. As one put it: 'I haven't left being evangelical in the primary sense.' They retain their love for the Scriptures and commitment to evangelism. They do not see themselves as rejecting the tradition which brought them to faith in Christ, so much as building on it. What can we learn?Lack of space precludes me from outlining why Orthodox convert to evangelicalism, what Orthodoxy is learning from evangelicalism or assessing the theological differences, but I do want to consider what evangelicals can learn from Orthodoxy. After all, a church which produced the classic doctrinal statements concerning the Trinity and the person of Christ must have something going for it! Somebody once commented that 'the cults are the unpaid bills of the church'. That metaphor can be extended: just as the Reformation represented the 'unpaid bills' of Roman Catholicism, in that it rediscovered truths long neglected or suppressed, so too the conversion of evangelicals to Orthodoxy calls attention to neglected aspects of evangelical theology which need to be re-emphasised. The first is the doctrine of the church. Evangelicalism's signal weakness for the last 200 years has been its lack of a strong ecclesiology. Many who came to faith in evangelical churches have later joined 'high-church' theological traditions; an Orthodox correspondent described evangelicalism as something of a 'revolving door'. Yet Calvin held that apart from the visible church '...one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation ...'(5) referring approvingly to Cyprian's dictum: 'He cannot have God for his Father who does not have the Church for his mother.' As one convert asserted, if the Bible is what it says it is, then we have to reckon with its teaching concerning the church. Secondly, we need to give fresh thought to the relationship between Scripture and tradition. Orthodox distinguish between the universally-accepted tradition of Christian faith enshrined in the Scriptures, the Creeds and the Ecumenical Councils, and the traditions which spring up in different areas and different times, and which may or may not prove enduring and valuable. For them, Scripture teaches the importance of tradition (1 Corinthians 11.23, 2 Thessalonians 2.15, 2 Timothy 2.2), and the teacher's task is to pass on faithfully that which he has received. At its best, such an approach avoids the preoccupation with novelties and 'majoring on minors' which have sometimes disfigured evangelicalism. In the early centuries, the Apostolic Tradition (the body of belief expressed by what became the Apostles' Creed) was seen as the key to correct interpretation of Scripture. It is well worth reading some of the writings of the early Fathers expounding this tradition - men like Irenaeus and Athanasius. These men wrestled with issues of doctrine, not in the setting of polite debate, but in the conviction that salvation was at stake. Sometimes they speak a strange language and their hermeneutics may on occasion leaves us gasping with incredulity, but their writing can open up new insights into the gospel. Thirdly, we need to take a long hard look at our worship. Recent emphasis on mutual ministry has benefited many churches, but there is more to worship than 'doing our thing', having a good sing or listening to a good sermon. Sometimes our services risk being more like what one convert called 'the Labour Club on concert night' than a foretaste of the gathering depicted in Hebrews 12.22-24, and we too rarely experience that sense of the transcendence of God which lies at the heart of Orthodox worship. As one convert wrote: 'It is the constant theme of most of those who come to the Orthodox Church and her services that what drew them was not understanding, fashion or acceptance of much they felt was strange. It was their conviction that they had profoundly met with God in the worship.' What should we do?In the USA, Orthodox are beginning to respond to evangelical outreach among them by making considerable efforts to win evangelicals. Over here, there is as yet a mere trickle of converts from evangelicalism to Orthodoxy, and no sign of any mass movement like that of the Evangelical Orthodox. However, the flow of converts is likely to increase. Orthodoxy's clear stand on many fundamental truths is attracting people tired of doctrinal fudging and ethical compromise. Another attraction to those troubled by widespread evangelical shallowness, fragmentation and lack of any sense of history, is its claim to be the church of the apostles, the Fathers and the early British saints. Yet the strongest attraction will probably prove to be the worship: the ethos of Orthodox worship is one which many in our post-modern culture (and its post-evangelical manifestation) find deeply attractive, because of its timelessness and powerful sense of the mysterious and transcendent. What then should our response be? 1. We must keep the lines of communication open: one convert commented that it was not him but his evangelical friends who broke off relationships. At another level, we could explore the possibility of more positive dialogue between evangelicals and Orthodox in Britain, such as that carried out in the USA by the Society for the Study of Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism. Dialogue does not mean papering over the cracks, but honestly exploring where we agree, where we differ and what we can learn from each other. The fact is that we have more in common with Orthodoxy than with liberal Protestantism, as Orthodox themselves acknowledge. 2. We believe that conversion to Orthodoxy would involve giving up truths which are precious to us and central to the gospel, and that evangelicalism has expressed fundamental aspects of the Christian faith which are not adequately set forth elsewhere. Let us re-affirm our own doctrinal, spiritual and historical tradition (some of which we share with Orthodoxy), drawing on it to meet those longings which lead people to become Orthodox - the desire for a richer sense of God's presence, the belief that doctrine matters because it tells us about the God whom we worship, and the delight resulting from discovering the riches of past ages.(6) Tim Grass(1) Some Oriental churches (e.g. the Coptic church in Egypt) call themselves 'Orthodox' but reject the definition of the relation of the divine and human natures in Christ put forth by the Council of Chalcedon in 451; in spite of discussions with a view to closer ties, not all Orthodox regard them as sharing the same faith. © Evangelicals Now - August 1997 |
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