A little more background

I introduced myself a month or so ago and I’m grateful for the number of positive posts of welcome I had. At the time I said I’d fill in a bit more about myself later. That time has come, so here goes!

I was brought up Baptist. Left as a teenager and returned in my mid-twenties when I was baptised. I was sincere but soon left again as I found the faith as I understood it to be unsatisfying and by that time I was becoming more and more involved with drinking and drugging.

These last two habits became more and more prominent in my life until I descended into alcoholism. I was seriously ill with this for many years and during this time was married three times and damaged relationships with family and friends. Eventually, I found Alcoholics Anonymous and in desperation threw myself into it’s 12-step program of recovery. Through this process I connected with a God of my understanding. This gave my what I would describe as a profound spiritual experience and I found myself praying morning and night, and helping with meetings and working with other addicts and alcoholics. For most of the years I have been doing this I was never religious although I was keen to understand more about what this God I’d found was.

I like music and a few years ago, I was reading about the composer John Tavener who was a Presbyterian, then Catholic and finally Orthodox. The latter interested me and I began to research it. I got in touch with a Priest who helped me and talked me through a number of things however, I still didn’t commit to the Divinity of Christ in the conventional sense ( although willing to acknowledge his place as a spiritual teacher in contact with God ) and so this didn’t go much further than talk.

I don’t quite know what happened, but at the beginning of lockdown I was in a fairly desperate plight for reasons I won’t go into and started to read more Christian books and prayed earnestly for a further revelation of God. AA was fine but it had become a bit of a loose fit for me and I wanted more. On reading some Orthodox material something clicked and I found myself convinced that Christ is the true Son of God and I continued to delve further into Orthodoxy writings. I sought out a Priest and attended Liturgy. I loved it. I loved the way they read the Old Testament and the way they reasoned about God. I loved the way they acknowledged the limits of reasoning or definition and were relaxed about accepting mystery at some point too; their rejection of scholasticism and their unapologetic lack of enthusiasm for pursuing theological rabbit holes. It all contrasted with my experience of Protestantism most favourably to me. Mostly, though, I loved the way they saw God as infinitely merciful and good, and on our side. It seemed to offer everything that I would have hoped from any religious doctrine.

Nonetheless, I have reservations. These are firstly and most importantly, concerning the use of Icons which I find difficult to accept. I also struggle, though to a lesser extent, with the position of Mary and the Saints which for a raised Baptist from the West of Scotland is a little bit of a biggie.

I want to further my experience of Christ and His Spirit and will join any denomination which will hep me do this. I want to share in the life of the church and be a part of the bride of Christ but I’m not sure how to do it. I love, love, love so much of Orthodoxy but I’m scared by these two issues above, and they give me doubts about many Orthodox claims and so I am hesitant.

Anyway, here I am. I’m not saying I’m going to become Anglican, but I’m sort of browsing if that’s not too disrespectful a term to use.

Thank you for reading and I hope this is a bit more informative than my first post.

Oh, by the way, I notice I have put my religion as "Kent" in my profile. This was the fault of an elderly man's eyesight! Of course, I thought it asked "Region"

All good wishes

 

This is quite the story and I hope you can continue your recovery well! I am also browsing. I am glad you found your way. I use icons and statues, was raised middling Anglican. I find the Marian stuff hardest.

And as someone who lives in Canterbury, Kent is definitely a religion

 

You're not far from me at all

To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with Icons or statues etc per se, but it's the compulsory venerations - up to and including the specific actions you need to perform - that I don't relish. It is so obviously an innovation but Orthodox will deny this vehemently and claim the early church venerated icons when, it seems to me, all the evidence refutes.

 

Shot in the dark, you a Gills fan?

 

Looks as if a lot of our personal story overlaps. I hope your recovery continues to go well and that no matter where you land, it's a church that draws you closer to Christ.

Feel free to reach out anytime, ODAAT.

 

Haha nah, and I moved down here from Yorkshire. Not really into sports.

 

Fair enough. Hard to be a Gills fan ATM anyway. Lol. Im a bit football mad, figured I'd ask.

 

That is a lovely story, thanks for sharing. Perhaps Anglicanism is what you’re looking for, historically and theologically rich without the compulsion you mentioned.

 

You can adjust that. Under your user name, there is a menu option for personal details, and you can make the adjustments you need there. If you have trouble, one of the staff will either guide you or do it for you.

Anglicanism has always had a broad canvas, The line often misattributed to Augustine "In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas" meaning In essentials unity, In non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity. is perhaps a moderately reasonable description of Anglicans.

I sometimes describe myself as Anglidox, as I am not always comfortable with being housed under an Anglo-Catholic tag.

As Anglicans, we walk with others on the way. Part of our task is to help others on their journey, which may not be the same as helping others onto our journey. Where I find the church going woke, I am inclined to dig in, however, I am a bit scared of Orthodoxy as it tends to be very enculturated - and I am big enough to realise that Anglicanism is also enculturated however it is a culture I find familiar.

So welcome among us as we journey together for this part of the road, I am certain we all have much to offer and much to gain.

 

I'm pretty despondent at the moment, because I'm 90% Orthodox. I could even accept the Icons being important aids for some, if they weren't compulsory. I also don't mind if someone asks Mary to intercede for them but it's not something I'd be all that happy to do as part of a liturgy. The rest of Orthodox theology ( as I understand it ) is a great comfort to me. I don't really know what I should do next.

 

Perhaps Orthodox practice is somewhat different in the UK. My experience in the US is that other attendees of a Divine Liturgy pay very little attention to what anyone else is doing (including the clergy most of the time). My experience was that few sang any of the service but many wandered about the sanctuary lighting candles and doing whatever really. It was a culture shock for someone from a Western context. No one paid much attention to the sermon and some priests put very little effort into it. The one time everyone synced up was for the distribution of the bread and wine.

 

The one orthodox service I went to had about a 5-10 minute read sermon.

 

This is very different from the Divine Liturgy at my local Antiochian parish. Aside from parents getting up with their young children, everyone did pretty much the same things. This particular church had chairs set up in rows. Everyone sat and stood (mostly sat) at the same moments at various parts of the liturgy. Everyone lined up to kiss the cross on the way out. At the end of Great Vespers, the whole congregation lined up to venerate the icons at the front of the nave.
The sermons are short (~10 min or so), but not bad. A deacon once began his sermon by reciting, "Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he..." Even got a bit of a laugh.
What you describe is what I had read about in various Orthodox materials. Seems the Antiochians (at least the ones by me) do things differently.

@Barnaby, thank you for sharing your story. I, too, come out of a low church tradition and have found myself straddling the fence between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy (Roman Catholicism has little appeal to me). I have more connections within Anglicanism, and I share some of your concerns with Orthodoxy, so Anglican is how I lean. I initially started looking at Orthodoxy because of the many riffs within the Anglican Communion. However, it seems like Orthodoxy has pretty much the same issues (Patriarchs excommunicating one another and whatnot...). I love Anglican liturgy and have been formed by personal use of the Daily Office. The Divine Liturgy is beautiful but difficult to follow, though I do incorporate some Orthodox prayer practices into my private prayer. It sounds like you have a good relationship with the local Orthodox Priest. If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to voice your concerns to him and see what he says. Ultimately, whichever route you go, you'll need the communion of saints to walk faithfully.

Blessings on your journey! See you at the finish line.

 

Thank you all for your replies. As you have said, I am in pretty much the same position as you, @Nicco_of_Myra. When Orthodox tell me about their theology I feel really warm and comfortable, even eager to be part of it. I love the Liturgy and I know that the Icon police aren't going to catch you if you don't venerate an Icon, but some of the things you need to confess to become Orthodox is that you accept their veneration as well as Holy Relics and a couple other things that I find odd. There's also the Triumph of Orthodoxy service where there's a list of Anathemas you need to attest to and I'm really not that into confirming some controversial secular rulers as being "equal to the Apostles" etc It seems to me to be all political.

I told the Priest who blessed me as a Catechumen - who is not my local Priest but is very welcoming and friendly - this and he got a bit ruffled and told me I had to accept this as the Church's teaching. I got the impression he wasn't used to someone questioning it. Other people in the Church have said just to ignore it and I get that but if I'm making a confession of belief it really needs to be sincere.

So I'm stuck. I'm feeling like Anglicanism is a broad church which would allow me the freedom of conscience yet give me a rooted faith. What I don't want to do is to ponce around for years and do nothing, of course, so I'm off the the Divine Liturgy in the Orthodox Church this morning. I might get the chance to talk to the ( different ) Priest when I'm there.

At the Orthodox Church I attend where I live, the sermons aren't the feature they are in Protestantism but they are pretty good and from the heart. I really benefit from the thoughtful and sincere reflections our Priest here shares. He's a sort of rarity in some respects: an ecumenical Orthodox. He's very respectful of other traditions and a really lovely man.

 

You might join the Orthodox Church and it might be beneficial, but after a year or three (at some point) those unresolved issues will boil back up to the surface and you might become disenchanted. For one thing, it is going to be really difficult to simply 'put out of mind' your disagreement with a practice that you witness at Every - Single - Service. The iconography thing is a huge part of the Orthodox experience.

If it were some other denomination, I might say the easy answer would be to just attend and not join. But since (it is my understanding that) you can't receive communion in the Orthodox Church until you're a member, 'just attending' won't really work.

My son was seriously dating a woman (for more than a year) who was Russian Orthodox. She would only marry him if he converted to RO. He gave RO a long, hard look and he just couldn't bring himself to accept a few of those things, even to be with the woman he cared about. Finally he had to break off the relationship.

I would like to hear what parts of their theology you refer to. What portions are making you feel warm and comfortable? I'd like to see how those bits compare to Anglican theology and see if (or where) they differ.

 

Thank you.

Bear in mind I'm not a theologian and I'm only starting to discover the rudiments of Orthodoxy so I might be way off here but the following is my understanding.

I'm attracted to the shift from the juridical model of God's wrath to us to one where he rescued us from the consequences of our error the consequences being death and being forever lost to fellowship with God.

I like the way they view the idea of the fall not leading to original sin.

I like the view that sin is not wickedness but rather a sickness to be healed - that we are sick and need rescue and healing in order to get better. Rather than condemned men requiring Jesus to be tortured to death on our behalf by a vengeful God. I like the belief that Jesus came and died and descended to Hell to conquer death and set us free,

They seem to be, on the whole, very understanding of the idea of "progress not perfection" and a lifelong learning to becoming made more like Christ.

I also want confession to be part of my journer: not a priest forgiving me but guiding me to recognise the true nature of my sins and so helping me ask God for forgiveness and help.

This is my best understanding. Please feel free to correct me if you feel I've got this wrong.

 

I am in no position to say yea or nay on those points (other than, I too like their view on "ancestral sin"). Yes, there are things to like. I just meant to say that there are also things to dislike or disagree with, as you pointed out yourself in regard to your reservations, and either you will come to gloss over what you know from the Bible so you can feel comfortable with those issues or else they will continue to bother you as unresolved issues. There has been some comment made on the forum from a couple of people who think they've noticed a 'revolving door effect' among new Orthodox converts, wherein many of them only stay for 6 months or a couple of years, but that is anecdotal and I don't really know how prevalent the trend is. For all I know, you may wind up being one who happily remains there. From a personal standpoint, there are a few things that I still don't fully agree with about Anglicanism after being in it for 4 years, and some days those issues (such as original sin, some aspects of the sacramental theology, and Calvinist-influenced lack of evangelistic fervor) bug me, but so far I'm still in the Anglican parish. No church is perfect (they are all led and populated by imperfect human beings).

 

As a former Orthodox, I feel duty-bound to tell you that none of this is accurate. This is just something some Orthodox in the West say to sound trendy, and it's based on some really atrocious scholarship. The liturgies, historic catechetical writings, confessions, and writings of the saints make it abundantly clear that Orthodoxy is as stridently anti-Pelagian as Roman Catholicism and historic Protestantism. The satisfaction theory of atonement has counterparts in mainstream Eastern theology. Orthodoxy is very much committed historically to the doctrine of original sin. And sin is not mere sickness but the rejection of God, requiring an intervention that only God can initiate, in Eastern theology. Orthodox certainly has distinctives that make it attractive in comparison to Western Christianity, but the attitude to sin and the need for redemption isn't one of them.