Hello, and Happy New Year. I'm in Kent, UK. I'm someone who hasn't been involved in religion for around 40 years, but my interest has grown a lot lately, and I'm looking to join a Church. I'm just not sure where my next move should be. I'm investigating Orthodoxy and also interested in Anglicanism. I'm hoping to learn a bit more and get some advice from members here.
Joining a denomination is not like joining a club though. You are never really a real member until you have sworn allegience to Jesus Christ, accepted the salvation offered by him and submitted to his Lorship over the rest of your life. If that's what's happened in the circumstances of your life so far, then you have been called and chosen. If you were baptised as an infant it has finally kicked in and started you on your journey into God's Kingdom. .
You will be welcome wherever you go, but choose wisely. I would suggest a church that adheres to the Faith as taught by Jesus and the Apostles. Many churches are progressive and try to have one foot in the Word and one foot in the World. This is a modern form of syncretism. Others of course will say differently. You have to learn something of the Faith before you can accept the full commitments. I don't know where you are in your journey so you could be ready now or you could be a way off. May Christ be with you.
Welcome. I floundered about in my life concerning religion for years. I was raised in a mixed household of Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and Roman Catholic. Talk about an ongoing conflict in terms...I then went out in the world on my own and became very disillusioned with any organized religion that I saw out there. I spent time in SE Asia during the Vietnam War. I was a very scared and lonesome young man. I saw these shaved headed men walking about in saffron robes, with little concern for their own well-being and safety and asked who are these men? So, for over twenty-years I studied and learned what I could of Buddhism. I married a Buddhist and she returned to the USA with me. We drove hours to attend temple for their major holidays and celebrations. It was there I came in contact with an Old Catholic Church priest. He was at a Buddhist temple to learn meditation and chanting with the monks. I became acquainted with him and he invited us to his parish, but a half-hour away from the temple. So, in the future, we did the temple on Saturdays and we did the parish on Sundays, making a weekend of it, as both were four-hours from our home. We carried on like this for years. I have had many experiences in my life where I should have died myself, not my family. I was in war, I was in law enforcement and dealt with drug-dealers and other hardened criminals, I was in the biker-scene for drug-interdiction and could have been killed numerous times. I have been in numerous motorcycle and automobile accidents where I should have died. I have numerous health-issues that stem from exposure to toxic herbicides in Vietnam and carry cancer with me daily. I should be dead. I have heart-disease from the same exposure. I should be dead due to heart-failure more than once. I am not. I did not nor do I not "blame" God for putting me into these situations. I feel it is part of the human-experience due to the fall of Adam and Eve from God in the Garden. I THANK GOD DAILY FOR AWAKENING, NO MATTER WHAT MY MALADY OR SITUATION. I should be dead, if not for the glory of God and his grace. Surrender yourself to God. Ask for guidance and take some of the blame of your life and actions upon yourself and know that God gave us the faculty to make choices in our lives and it is we that do not choose the correct ones. We have chosen to make a local Anglican Catholic Church parish our church home now. We are 1400-miles away from the Old Catholic Church we once attended. We still have a local temple to attend to meditate at and to partake of their social activities. God bless you and may God guide you.
Thank you. I have been drawn to Jesus in a roundabout way and religion is something I have developed an interest in only recently, after years of prayer and meditation outside of any recognised denomination. I have had quite a journey in my life and I will share some of it with you shortly, if you don't mind. In the meantime I'm glad to be here and am very grateful for your welcome
IIRC, @Invictus is formerly Orthodox, now Episcopalian. I suspect he could explain why he made that transition.
I explain my reasoning here. It is a beautiful tradition, and probably the most liturgically and theologically continuous manifestation of Christianity to be found in the world today (apart from the remnants of the Non-Ephesian and Non-Chalcedonian Churches). Nevertheless, one needs to go into it with eyes wide open. The typical year required for aspiring converts is, in my opinion, simply too short. It really ought to be 2 or maybe even 3 years, to truly have a firm grasp of it. In terms of its overall ‘ethos’, in many respects it is more similar to Asian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism than it is to anything one would encounter in Western Christianity (even Catholicism). This isn’t a ‘bad’ thing (and it’s actually something I considered to be more of a ‘feature’ than a ‘bug’), but it’s just not something that’s immediately apparent to outsiders. In other words, it is a genuinely ‘Eastern’ religion whose content is Christian. I don’t discourage people who are interested in it, and it’s a tradition I retain a great deal of respect for, but it’s not for everybody. Hope this helps.
Thank you for your insights Invictus. I am very new at this and have only been attending the Liturgy for around 7 or 8 months. Where I live EO services in English are extremely rare and many of the English speaking Priests seem to have come from Anglican backgrounds but who left over issues such as women's ordination etc. I am attracted but am taking my time