by Fr. Brendan Pelphrey Converts to Orthodoxy are frequently asked why we became Orthodox. Since my wife and I were chrismated in 1995 we have answered this question hundreds of times, but often it is difficult to know exactly what to say. It is not that our story changes each time, but that the reason […]
Strange, Yet Familiar: My Journey: Part 3
Those who predicted that, in becoming Orthodox, I would be cutting myself off from my own people and my national culture have been proved wrong. In embracing Orthodoxy, so I am convinced, I have become not less English but more genuinely so; I have rediscovered the ancient roots of my Englishness, for the Christian history of my nation extends back to a period long before the schism between East and West.
Strange, Yet Familiar: My Journey: Part 2
Orthodoxy, so I recognized in a sudden flash of insight, is not merely a matter of personal belief; it also presupposes outward and visible communion in the sacraments with the bishops who are the divinely-commissioned witnesses to the truth. The question could not be avoided: If Orthodoxy means communion, was it possible for me to be truly Orthodox so long as I still remained an Anglican?
Strange, Yet Familiar: My Journey: Part 1
Part One An Absence and a Presence by Bishop Kallistos (Ware), Bishop of Diokleia I can remember exactly when my personal journey to Orthodoxy began. It happened quite unexpectedly one Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1952, when I was seventeen. I was walking along Buckingham Palace Road, close to Victoria Station in central London, […]