Orthodoxy 101

An important transition is happening in our family, and while we haven't made knowledge of it wide-spread yet, we haven't been exactly secretive, either. So now that I've succeeded in making it sound like we're involved in something dangerous and illegal, let's get down to business.

My husband is converting to Orthodoxy.

Pause.

Yup, Orthodoxy. As in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Now this revelation probably has you wondering two or a thousand things, which is why I'm putting this post together. This decision has been in the works for a long, long time, and Stephen has wanted a concrete way to outline his decision. I suggested he guest post on the blog, and we ended up putting together a question-and-answer post that addresses those questions that have come up most frequently from family and friends who are in the know already.

Before we begin, you might need a brief run-down of our background. Both Stephen and I are committed Christians, specifically Nazarenes. We are 4th- and 5th-generation members of the Church of the Nazarene, a holiness denomination in the Wesleyan tradition. My dad is an ordained minister who has pastored in various Nazarene churches, and both of us graduated from a Nazarene university, where Stephen is now employed as a professor in the physical science department. We were married in the Nazarene church that my family has attended for a couple generations, and both sides of his family have attended separate Nazarene churches in the same town for years now.

In other words, we're Nazarene to the hilt, so this is sort of a off-the-deep-end plunge of faith.

But really, it's not. When you consider how long and how much he has been reading about the Orthodox faith, how deliberate he has been in his decision, how utterly led he feels to follow through with this change, it's very understandable. Even natural, as if he were always designed to be Orthodox. But instead of me bumbling and fumbling with words and concepts I don't understand, I'll let him tell you in his own words. I wrote the questions, and he wrote the answers, with only a little grammatical tweaking on my part.

Why Orthodoxy? Isn't being Nazarene good enough?

The analogy that I would offer in answer to your first question would be along the lines of someone asking you-- when we were engaged-- "Why Stephen Case?" If you had tried to explain to someone then why you wanted to marry me, you would probably have to admit it was for a wide spectrum of reasons: emotional and logical reasons, shared experiences, attraction, etc. I'm kind of at the same place when someone asks me "Why Orthodoxy?" There are Scriptural and theological reasons, emotional reasons (the way it "resonates" with me, for example), aesthetic reasons, experiences I've had, etc. To respond adequately would take a book-- or at least a post far exceeding any your readers would want to read.

The second question is more dicey. To put is quite simply, no, for me being a Nazarene is no longer good enough. That's not to say that there's not good within the denomination and theology or that the decision that I've made is right for everyone else. I certainly don't see becoming Orthodox as "turning my back" on the Nazarene church. So much of what I understand of holiness from my Nazarene background finds fulfillment in my understanding of Orthodoxy-- I feel that this is simply the next step, that my Nazarene background has quite honestly led me to the place where I feel it's time to take this next step.

Orthodoxy seems so foreign and weird. What about it appeals to you, a seemingly normal and not very exotic type of person?

Orthodoxy is foreign and weird (to me). Like I said above, lots of things about it appeal to me. Quite simply, when I leave worship at the Orthodox church I feel that I've had a drink from a deep, clear well. Orthodox worship is not about my comfort. It's not about making me "feel good" about God, Jesus, myself. It's difficult. It's deep. It's rich. It's starkly Christocentric.

What's with the icons? the kissing? the veneration of saints? the incense?

To return to my first analogy, if you were giving all the various reasons why you wanted to marry someone, if you were truly honest you'd have to admit that there were still things you didn't know about the other person, even uncertainties about them. Perhaps not doubts, but at least uncertainties. There were things though that you saw and accepted that in time you'd understand. I say this simply to make the point that I don't understand everything about Orthodoxy. There are lots of things I still expect to learn.

What I do understand-- and what I realize I desperately wanted-- is that Orthodoxy is all about bringing holiness into life in concrete, physical ways. It's about "resacramentalizing" life. Let's not just talk about holiness in abstract, metaphysical terms. Let's be holy. Let's participate in holiness. Christ came into the world, and thus in a real sense the world is holy. We pray to the God who is "everywhere present and filling all things". When we stop talking about stuff like this and actually start acting like it's true, we start to do strange things. We do things that might actually make us a bit uncomfortable (which is usually a good thing).

Take icons-- to actually get back to your question. The Orthodox don't make images of God the Father. But God the Son came into the world and had a real body. Thus a picture (icon) of Him carries important theological (and emotional) connotations. If you have a photograph of someone you love dearly, and they're not physically around to hug and kiss, you might kiss the picture. You might stand in front of the picture and desperately love the person pictured. You wouldn't call kissing the picture idolatry-- everyone knows the paint or ink or whatever is not the object of the affection itself. But the love or reverence passes through to the actual object of the affection. There's probably a lot more subtlety to it that I'm missing, but that's how I understand it in a nutshell.

{Note: This is Christine. I've also heard an analogy comparing icons to windows, through which we are able to "view" the saints gathered with us. Which leads us to our next question...}

So what about the saints? The key here is the way in which the Orthodox view the Church. It's a continuity. It's not just composed of the people in the pews beside you or worshipping at the same time in churches all over town on Sunday. When we worship, we believe that we worship alongside all the saints that have gone before, that are even now in the presence of Christ. When you walk into an Orthodox church, the saints are there staring back at you, to remind you that they're a part of you and you're a part of them. We're a part of something much bigger than ourselves, stretching off in directions that the eye and mind can't properly follow. When we honor the saints or ask them to intercede for us, the analogy is like asking a respected mentor to pray for you. The saints, so the Orthodox believe, are still just as much an active part of the Church as you or me-- probably more so, being that they're holy and all.

And the incense? It ties into this idea of worshipping with your entire body-- all your senses are affected. You hear the music, you taste the bread and wine, you kiss the priest's hands or the icons themselves (which I guess would be the sense of touch), and you smell the incense. Plus, every time that heavenly worship is described in the Bible (see, for example, the instance when Isaiah has the vision of God in the temple) the place is filled with incense that represents the Spirit of God.

Why do Orthodox cross themselves?

Because they believe you should pray with your entire body. Stand, bow, prostrate, cross yourself-- whatever. They don't really buy into the mentality of the outward/inward duality (sure it looks like I'm slouched on the couch, but I'm really praying fervently to a God I believe to be All-Holy and All-Mighty). That doesn't really fly.

Why are there so many different types of Orthodox churches? Is this like the Protestant's version of denominations?

The idea is that there is supposed to be an autonomous (they call it autocephalous) Orthodox church for each area of the world, and in historically Orthodox regions this pretty much holds true: the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, etc. All these churches are in full communion with each other and hold the same beliefs. In this way they're not like separate denominations. They're independent in their governmental structure, each under the jurisdiction of separate Patriarchs (like the head bishop). No one Patriarch has overarching authority over any other, though the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul has a sort of symbolic primacy (mainly because Constantinople was the capital of a Christian empire for well nigh a thousand years).

The problem is that here in the United States things got a bit tangled. The Russians sent missionaries to Alaska in the 1800s and seemed to be on the way to setting up an independent organization of Orthodox churches in America. This got disrupted when the Communists gained control in Russia and the church there came under serious persecution. Here in the U.S. an influx of immigrants from other Orthodox countries came over and set up parishes that still had strong ties to their homelands-- Greece, the Middle East, Serbia, etc. Many of the Orthodox churches became enclaves for keeping alive traditions and cultures that had more to do with ethnicity than Christianity.

Today America is a patchwork of overlapping Orthodox jurisdictions. The Greek Orthodox church here in Kankakee is technically (I think) under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch in Istanbul/Constantinople. Lots of times you'll see OCA (Orthodox Church in America) churches-- this is the church that was originally set up by the Russian Orthodox missionaries and is "supposed to be" the independent American Orthodox church. For various reasons, some of the other Orthodox churches don't recognize this. Or some they say they do but still keep their own parishes under their own jurisdiction.

Confused yet? The point is most everyone agrees that this is a problem, because all the Orthodox churches believe the same thing and are in full communion with each other. There's unity in belief and practice. If you "join" a Greek Orthodox church (for example), you're a part of the Orthodox church everywhere.

What are the differences between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church?

If you ask an Orthodox, they'd tell you the Catholic Church broke off from the Orthodox Church in 1054, the culminating event in a long process of estrangement. If you ask a Catholic, they'd probably say it was vice versa-- the Orthodox broke from the Catholic. Either way, by 1054, the breach was official. The main differences today (at least doctrinally) are that the Orthodox don't believe any one person should have authority over the Church like the Pope does. They think the idea of papal infallibility is silly at best and downright dangerous at worst. However (to be fair), this lack of central authority may have a lot to do with all the confusion I outlined above regarding jurisdictions.

Another thing you might hear Orthodox and Catholics arguing about is whether or not the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Catholic view) or just the Father (Orthodox view). To outsiders the debate seems silly, but to the Orthodox it's an important distinction for both historic and theological reasons. Historically, because it was an alteration of a fundamental Church Creed without the consent of the entire Church and theologically because it has to deal with an understanding of the Trinity itself.

Ugh, fasting. Hard-core fasting. Why? Is it worth it?

I don't know. I've never really tried it. I was never taught. But I believe that to really understand how to feast one has to know how to fast, and the Orthodox have been doing it better (or worse, depending on your perspective) than anyone for a thousand years. It's another aspect of that "resacramentalizing". Why should I fast? Why should I be worried about keeping certain days of the year significant? Isn't it enough to celebrate Easter with baskets and a cantata? Why should I make myself miserable for weeks beforehand?

I'm not sure. I don't understand it all, but I know that spiritual disciplines probably aren't disciplines if they're easy. And I know that I want to learn.

Do you really know what you're talking about?

Probably not. I've read a lot of books. If you're interested, some of the ones that have really influenced me are Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way as well as Alexander Schmemman's For the Life of the World. I also enjoyed Peter Gillquist's Becoming Orthodox and I'm in the process of enjoying Frederica Matthews-Green's Facing East. You might also check out this guy's essay about his own conversion.

Are you going to convert to Orthodoxy? What will this mean for our family?

Yes, and I'm not sure. Ask me again soon.

{Christine again. Let's call this the conclusion of Orthodoxy 101: Part 1. I'll let you chew on this for a while before concluding our brief series. If you have any further questions, for heaven's sake, please leave a comment! Even if you just want to say, "You're crazy," go ahead. We want to be as transparent and open as possible, and that right flows both ways.}