One of the most impressive, and refreshing things about the Orthodox blog world is that debates and disagreements are typically conducted with a generous spirit. There’s an old fashioned sort of hospitality and openness you don’t see elsewhere.
In the past year I’ve sent lengthy email messages to three leading Orthodox writers concerning controversial matters and much to my surprise, all three wrote back with friendly, helpful, and very long responses.
One of those was from author Matthew Gallatin, whose “Searching For God In A Land Of Shallow Wells” is the best conversion book I’ve come across. I confessed to Matthew that I was concerned that I didn’t “hear the gospel” preached in the Orthodox Churches I had visited, and referenced a highly criticle article in Again Magazine by Orthodox theologian Bradley Nassif. Nassif charges that many Orthodox churches comprised of evangelical converts are “revolving doors” where they are simply not fed the gospel. He goes on to make this startling claim:
The most urgent need in world Orthodoxy at this time is the need to engage in an aggressive internal mission of spiritual renewal or outright conversion of our clergy and people to Jesus Christ. All of us—bishops, priests, and people—need to make the Gospel crystal clear and absolutely central in our lives and in our parishes.
That’s some pretty strong stuff. This guy has some huge cojones claiming that some Orthodox Clergy aren’t even converted! Ancient Faith Radio’s Kevin Allen conducted a hard-hitting and sometimes testy interview with Nassif about the article you can listen to here.
I am most grateful for Matthew Gallatin’s response (imagine getting an email like this from John Piper!). Gallatin first discussed the issue with his Priest. Here is a small excerpt:
In fact, as Father and I talked about the lapsed converts we have known, we agreed that the real key to their leaving was that none of them ever really embraced the full liturgical life of the Church. They were unable to shed their evangelical mindset regarding worship. They were looking for a Sunday morning “power hour” to get them enthused and spiritually fortified for the week. None of them attended services outside the Sunday morning Liturgy.
In my own conversations with these folks over the years, I got the clear impression that church for them still remained a place to go for personal inspiration–and then just whenever they felt like they needed it. They decided to be Orthodox because they’d read Church history, or because they fell in love with icons and incense and liturgy. But they had never given themselves over to the phronema–the ”mind”–of the Church. They didn’t understand that the rich liturgical life of the Church is not just a spiritual supermarket where we can purchase spiritual fulfillment when we feel we’re running low. Our comprehensive liturgical worship life is our job. It is a communal “work of the people.” That’s what “liturgy” means. Our joining as often as possible in worship is not some legalistic requirement. It is our essential preparation for the life of continuous worship we shall live in heaven.
These people were hearing the Gospel as loud and clear as it can be proclaimed, and to a depth that they would never hear it in an evangelical church. Plus, there were all the catechumen classes and Bible studies. So why weren’t they being spiritually nourished?
The bottom line is that what they either didn’t understand, or were unwilling to shoulder, was the tremendous responsibility that comes with being Orthodox. To be an Orthodox Christian is to be immersed in a loving relationship with Christ. It’s a love that makes great demands on all parties. In short, it’s a lot of work. Sooner or later, you have to get down to business. It’s not about self-fulfillment. It’s about self-denial.
Wow. What a great response. Thanks for sharing!
Jim,
I responded to your comment in my blog. Thanks for writing!
This will be long. Forgive me.
I confess to being an AFR junkie myself; it’s almost all I listen to on my iPod. I am particularly fond of Dr. Bradley Nassif. I may not respond with such vehemency as to the state of Orthodox clergy ’round these parts (TX — in my opinion, His Eminence Abp. +DMITRI is himself a stunning example of a scripturally-literate and evangelically-minded pastor and has surrounded himself with likeminded priests).
I think the awareness of the need within the Church is several decades old; Father Alexander Schmemann wrote of his own awareness in the seventies. Father Tom Hopko states repeatedly that “it’s all about God,” and not anything else. So folks in the “upper eschelons” of the Church here in America are aware that, when folks don’t know the basic Bible Story characters in the OT, or don’t know any of the parables of Christ, then something is wrong.
Granted, in my time as a Southern Baptist growing up, I met my fair share of similarly disinterested youth (and adults!) who came on Sunday morning and little else (or, if the youth came more often, it was for social purposes only; they seemed bored to tears during the worship and “sermonette” time). So I don’t want to come across as too one-sided.
I think what folks in the West are dealing with is (surprise, surprise!) two different extremes. On the one hand, the Evangelical world that dominates our American (and, in particular, our southern–Texan!
— culture) is severely truncated in its gospel message. Redemption, according to this particular stripe of Christianity, is seen almost always as a forensic “statement of intention” on God’s part, and nothing more. The Son has changed the Father’s mind about us through a contract written in Blood, so we have an ironclad guarantee that moves the Father’s hand away from the gate to paradise so that we can be allowed — snow-covered dung though we still are — to enter heaven. The Father loves us now, and all sin (whether it actually is still present in our hearts post-profession of faith) is forgotten by God, and we are granted passage to heaven. This gospel message is preached, long, loud and strong by Evangelicals, though without my post-convert ramifications added, I’m sure.
On the other hand, we have the Orthodox, whose idea of salvation is a body/soul/spirit infusion of the very life of God into the believer, and is rooted not only in Calvary, but in the Manger, the Mount Tabor, the Empty Tomb, the Mount of Olives (Ascension). The entire advent of Christ thus brings man from ontological death to actual life through a life-long cooperation with divine grace. This idea is intertwined in every hymn, every fast, every Scripture reading, every sacrament, to such a degree that we have at our disposal the most thorough Bible commentary and study resource available to mankind. The simple message at the core of all of our often “over-byzantined” worship, however — that “Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first” — though it be prayed in every divine liturgy, is quite often missed, the forest of this glorious statement being looked over for love of all the trees (icons, vestment and chant styles, rubrics, ethnic social activities, language issues, and more).
What this leads to, then, is Evangelicals looking at us and saying, “I like the way I do it better than the way you don’t.” Hmm. Harsh, but perhaps something we need to keep in mind. As Father Tom states in his talk on the book of St. John’s Apocalypse, everything in our worship service is meant to point us to the revelation of Jesus Christ. That’s why the Gospel and the Eucharist are the two ways in which Christ is brought out to us in the Divine Liturgy; He is revealed in the Apocalypse as the Word of God (the Gospel) and as the Lamb of God (the Eucharist). St. Ignatius, I believe, stated that our teaching is in agreement with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist confirms our teaching (I may be misquoting this; if so, forgive me). Both the didactic proclamation of the good news given through hearing the written Word of God through reading and worship, as well as the intimate, physical, sacramental acts that unify us — body, soul and spirit — to our Incarnate Lord are needed to bring us into a holistic union with Him. It’s not that the Orthodox Way has been tried and found wanting, but rather that it’s been found difficult and left untried.
This faith is, let me say again, much harder than what Evangelicalism teaches. God will not “guarantee” or “make” good works come out of someone. No false comfort is given to someone to make him think that “he’s already believed, so good works will, ultimately come”; God will never override free will and, as such, we must never be haughty, but fear, as our God, the Consuming Fire, will appear, and those of us who’ve loved His appearing will be purified in glory, while those of us who — perhaps even through laziness or a false sense of security brought on by all this “I know that I’m saved!” talk — did not conform ourselves to Christ in spite of the grace given to us, will wish the rocks to fall on us.
This is another facet of the Gospel that the Orthodox Church preaches, yet I thank God that Her saints bear witness that our God loves mankind more than anything else and, though He will not ever trespass our free will to “establish good works,” always wills that we (continually!) repent and (continually!) come to a knowledge of the Truth.
Forgive me if I’ve rambled.
David – What an incredible comment! This is so accurate, and quite funny:
“The Son has changed the Father’s mind about us through a contract written in Blood, so we have an ironclad guarantee that moves the Father’s hand away from the gate to paradise so that we can be allowed — snow-covered dung though we still are — to enter heaven.”
For at least two years, I’ve been quietly asking myself, and God, that if this is true, what kind of faith should it produce? It’s supposed to make us very happy that we’re not still reprobate, but I just don’t see alot of glee out there.
In AA I learned that we can’t think our way into right living; we must live our way into right thinking.
I’m trying to be careful to not idealize Orthodoxy similar to the way I did Catholicism. But it seems to me that God is doing something special with the OC in America. You young converts are an especially interesting bunch, and really fine writers.
JFred,
I listened to that Illumined Heart podcast, as well. It was good and interesting I thought. I was a little shaken because, like you, I was a restless evangelical — I went through various versions, including the Vineyard and the “emergent church.” I’m also a fellow 12 stepper — and I have a tendency to fall madly in love with the Orthodox Church, thinking that it is the perfect cure for what ails all my friends. So, again, I was a little shaken that Dr Nassif was calling for more gospel in the Church. I was also a little afraid because it sounded like so many situations I’d been through in my former church life: “We need more (fill in the blank), let’s put a committee together and change everything, making it seeker sensitive along the way.” Yikes and yuck.
Then I started thinking about my limited experience of Orthodoxy (I’ve been on the conversion road for only a couple years, though hungry for it specifically for maybe 12.) The liturgy and the Tradition that Orthodoxy safeguards and practices seem to me to be a solid framework on which to hang and through which to experience and share the central message of Christ and His Kingdom. When I was an evangelical, I had no framework. 30+ years into my life, I still couldn’t figure out how to let Jesus be real in my life and I certainly didn’t find any method for a personal change (Personal Revolution… remember Charlie Peacock?) that worked for me thus the 12 steps, God’s underground church, I called it).
So when I thought about that interview with Dr Nassif, I thought to myself, “I don’t totally agree, because at least in my experience, I finally found a place where the Gospel was real.”
My two cents. Blessings on your journey.
Let me be clear — I don’t think Dr. Nassif is calling for — nor am I calling for — any kind of reform in the Church. I think we’re both simply calling for an intentional use of what’s already there in spades.
First of all, thank you for this post! I think that, even more pressing then bring new people into the Church is our retention of the people that we have.
Having listened to the interview w/ Dr Nassif’s and reading over Matthew Gallatin’s comments, I find myself leaning more toward the former.
I appreciate, and agree with Gallatin, that those who leave the Church “either didn’t understand, or were unwilling to shoulder, . . . the tremendous responsibility that comes with being Orthodox.” But this it seems to me leaves a number of questions not only unanswered, but even asked. Specifically, how were those who leave catechized?
It is not unheard of for someone to be received after only a few months, or even weeks, after they approach the priest. How many times are people received without even any formal instruction in the faith?
Then there is the question of the community. It is one thing to welcome converts, it is another thing to actually integrate them into the community and nurture their growth in the faith.
In the early Church the catechumenate lasted years. It was proceeded by a period of inquiry and followed by a period of further instruction (mystagogy). Even assuming that all our clergy and faithful are personally committed to Christ, we can’t neglect the fundamentals of a serious period of instruction for inquirers, catechumens and the newly illumined.
And this must happen within a community that is itself committed to integrating new members. This means that it is not simply converts who need to change, we need to change as well.
Many of those who were baptized as infants have for all practical purposes fallen away. Unreasonably we seem to think that parishes that have an uneven record of fostering a personal commitment to Christ in those born into Orthodox families are able to do so with adult converts.
Convincing someone of the truth of the Orthodox faith, in my experience at least, is relatively easy. it is much harder to take people through the often long and labor intensive process of being inquirers, catechumens and then provide them, as newly illumined members of the Church, with the spiritual formation that they need to grow into mature, committed Orthodox Christians who place Christ at the center of their lives.
Again, thank you for the post–it is a issue that, like you and many in the Church, I am very concerned with.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
I, too, am a product of 12 step recovery. Jesus brought me back to Himself through recovery. I have noticed a lot of references to the 12 steps in various items that I have read and listened to pertaining to Orthodoxy. I see an affinity between the two, and apparently I’m not alone on this. Would you fellow 12-steppers out there say that that affinity has made Orthodoxy more attractive to people like us? Any books out there on the subject?
Hi Dion — Glad to see yet another 12 stepper exploring Orthodoxy with me! As you know, the 12 steps require action. Those who just go to meetings and share their feelings, without ever taking the steps seldom get sober. Same thing goes for those who think they don’t need to get a sponsor. It’s fun going to meetings for awhile to enjoy the group therapy aspect of recovery, but it doesn’t stick. They never get past the 3rd step, and they never get past the 3rd step because they don’t take the 4th!
I liken this to the quagmire the earnest evangelical frequently finds himself in. We accept the proposition of what is taught, only to realize that intellectual acceptance, along with some good works thrown in, does not produce a robust faith that brings glory to God with truth, beauty and goodness.
I’m new at this, but the spiritual disciplines in the OC are similar to the 12 steps. I am also beginning to realize how important it is to have a spiritual father. Too often in evangelicalism, we use the prayer, bible study, decision method. That amounts to essentially counseling ourselves and deluding ourselves into thinking that we’ve sought God’s will.
Well, the truth is that my will seldom matches God’s will and I almost never figure that out until it’s too late. The need for a spiritual father, and for confession, is one of the main motivations for my exploration of Orthodoxy. I would never tell an AA newcomer to go it alone. Why would I try to live out my Christian life without a sponsor/spiritual father?
I haven’t read it, but an Orthodox priest wrote a book on the 12 steps that gets good reviews on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Steps-Transformation-Orthodox-Priest-Explores/dp/1888212632
Keep Coming Back!