From the excellent blog “Becoming Orthodox.” I’ve been working on an introductory post, but it’s getting too long to be of any benefit to anyone. For now I will attempt a brief overview. Both my husband and I are from devout Protestant backgrounds and we both have found these experiences lacking. David has felt this […]
The Gift of Orthodoxy
I decided that if she could get in, perhaps I could too, and for some reason, I wanted very much to get into that church. There was nothing logical about it, it was a compulsion. The next time the gate opened, I slid in, and was grabbed even more roughly than my friend had been. They looked at the large silver cross that I was wearing and finally allowed me to enter. It was so beautiful. The chanting was unearthly.
Finally Oriented
I didn’t realize till it was too late that the underlying theology behind historical Christian worship wasn’t compatible with my current theology. It was like trying to mix oil and water. It didn’t work. I imagine our Pentecostal church was the only Pentecostal church in the area with icons of Christ and the Virgin Mary behind the pulpit!
Moving East: Part Two
by Phil Silouan Thompson I read on from the earliest Fathers into the third and fourth centuries — Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil. Where was the break I was expecting? Where was the change from congregational democracy and unstructured charismatic worship, to liturgical, hierarchical religion? That change was nowhere to be found; instead, it looked more like […]
My Great Adventure in Search of the Truth
From Sister Matthaia Osswald This story tells how a Roman Catholic nun discovered the fullness of the Truth in the Orthodox Church… Childhood and adolescence. I was born in 1961 from Protestant parents, in a town in South Germany. We lived in a suburb which had earlier been a separate village and later was integrated […]