The Stereotypical Conversion Narrative

I promised myself I would never do this. Every Orthodox convert who starts a blog feels the need to go on about their "journey". It's not that I have not been edified by posts such as this, but I always felt my conversion was so typical that any story of it would only be like saying "me too!" The atypical elements are such that I could never recommend the path I took to an inquirer or catachumen. So, I promised myself I would never write the "how I converted post."


I am starting to believe that the promises we make to ourselves are the ones that are (as opposed to promises to God or to other people) meant to be broken.The self is a liar and, well, selfish; the promises it asks you to make are more often than not made out of pride or false modesty. So, self, sorry, but my priest's request for my conversion story trumps your "I'm too good for cliche" attitude.

So, Let's Get the Biographical Details Out of the Way First.

I was born and raised an Evangelical. At the time of my birth, my parents were students at Tennessee Temple University, a very conservative, very Baptist school. Most of the churches I attended were Baptist- almost always Southern Baptist when I lived in the South, various other stripes when my family moved above the Mason-Dixon line. Both my grandfathers were pastors at Southern Baptist churches, my father was an ordained minister and occasional youth pastor, and the whole family was involved in evangelism- revival meetings, singing, "Gospel magic" (now called "Evangelical illusions" to avoid accusations of calling forth dark powers- truly we should have left That Which Sleeps lie), ventriloquism, and clowning (though the benefit of growing up in a non-liturgical church is that I can honestly say we never led a Clown Mass)- and willing to go to any church that invited us. I grew up in church and on the stage, accepted Jesus into my heart at four, and was baptized at seven.

Being a military brat for the first few years of my life (and a bio-tech brat after that, my Dad would follow the job market around the country) exposed me to views outside of the strictly Southern Evangelical norm. My first exposure to anything resembling Catholicism came at our on-base chapel in England when I was about three or four. The chaplains shared an office and one of them had a crucifix on the wall. I was very curious about this strange cross, because none of the crosses I had ever seen before actually had Jesus hanging on them (though I knew- perhaps the first thing I ever knew- that Jesus died for my sins and the cross was that instrument of his execution). When I asked my mom why Jesus was on the cross, she told me that it was a Roman Catholic cross, and that they did not believe in the Resurrection, so for them Jesus was always on the cross.

As I grew older, I would constantly run into this Evangelical vs Catholic mindset. Methodists were wrong because they baptized by sprinkling and that was Catholic, Lutherans and Episcopalians were wrong because their services were too Catholic, Presbyterians were wrong because they practiced infant baptism and that was Catholic. The reason having these Catholic practices were wrong, as I was taught, is because they are not in the Bible- from an Evangelical mindset all these practices are man-made traditions that obscure the message of salvation. Chick tracts (little comic books aimed at evangelism) littered the houses I grew up in, a good portion of them geared toward explaining to Roman Catholics exactly why Catholicism was a demonic deception.

Cognitive Dissonance or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tradition

So, I grew up with a strict literalist interpretation of Scripture. When Genesis says that God created the world in six days, it means six 24 hour periods of time. When the Book of Revelation says locusts with women's faces will pour from the earth and torment the wicked, it means actual locusts with women's faces will pour out of the earth and torment the wicked. The Bible means what the Bible says!

Except when it doesn't. When the Bible says baptism washes away our sins (Acts 22:16), it doesn't actually mean that, baptism is just an outward symbol; likewise it only "symbolically" fulfills the statement of Romans 6:4: "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life"(KJV). When our Lord says of the Eucharist, "This is my body... This is my blood" He means "This is symbolically my body; this wine is to my blood as purple kool-aid is to grape juice". Marriage is merely ceremony, that whole "one flesh" thing is symbolic. "Symbolic" is a word that Evangelicals like to use to dismiss troubling statements that seem to put their Sinner's Prayer, salvation-assured conversion in question. To suggest that baptism is (under normal circumstances) a requirement is to advocate "works"- something that would have St. Paul rolling in his grave (Phil 2:12- wait, that reference doesn't fit at all)! 

As I became a teenager, problems like this became more and more noticeable. An incident in my later teenage years, after I had gotten my driver's license, freed me from the parental directive to go to their church and choose one of my own.

I had long been a fan of the works of one Clive Staples Lewis. My father had read me and my siblings a chapter of The Chronicles of Narnia each night before bed starting from the time I was about two or three years old- there was also an animated movie that we had on VHS that I watched over and over, and one of my first memories of the time my family was stationed in England was my mom taking me to see a stage version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (the most vivid part of this memory is the moment the playhouse went dark, a rumble came from the stone table on the stage and Aslan proclaims in his booming voice "Yes, it IS more magic!", to this day reading that section of the book gives me goose-bumps). As I grew old enough to read for myself I devoured Lewis. Along with this love for Lewis came a curiosity about the church to which Lewis belonged- the Church of England. I had researched into the American counterpart of this church, the Episcopal Church, and despite a few reservations about the direction it was taking, I started attending the local parish. What attracted me to Anglicanism was the Via Media, the idea of taking a "middle way" between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. And once I went to the local parish and saw the liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer in action, saw for the first time the idea of a "common prayer" incorporated, I was hooked.

In the Episcopal Church I found (I thought) a place that believed that the Eucharist was indeed the Body and Blood of Christ. At the same time, there was no one forcing me to give up certain Evangelical preconceptions I had grown comfortable with, and indeed had never thought to challenge, ideas such as Salvation Assurance. Oh, certainly there were Anglicans who would have thought these ideas heresy, but then there were those who did not.

A Self-imposed Exile

Not too long after, I quite simply stopped regularly attending church. I would go every once in a while, but it was far closer to once or twice a year than every Sunday. I joined the ranks of the vaguely spiritual, I still subscribed to the beliefs of the Creed, but I felt no need to be a regular attendant of the services. There were many contributing factors in this- I had never really "clicked" with the people my age at the local parish (they were nice enough, but I just never managed to make it to the youth group meetings enough to be a presence), my car broke beyond repair, there were the issues in my family life- but all these merely hid the fact that the reason for my infrequent attendance came down to one simple fact: I was angry with God.

Now, I did not quite hate God, I certainly never stopped loving God, and in my daily life a strong desire to serve Him was certainly present. Still, I was angry with God, in the same way one might be angry with a close relative. I felt that God, quite simply, did not seem to be living up to His end of the deal- whatever it was I happened to have in my head that the deal was supposed to be (it was, of course, very vague). Every prayer that seemed unanswered was a letting down, the fact that the will of God was so inscrutable seemed a slap in the face when it seemed that if He would only tell me what to do I would do it (the idea that God's will was quite simply to live my life daily taking what comes with faith and grace never occurred to me).

Deprived of regular church-going, and with a prayer life that was woefully inconsistent, I found myself looking for other outlets for a sense of community, and idea of belonging to a body. I partied hard, got way too drunk, way too stoned, experimented with Ecstasy and hallucinogenics, and in general lived a rather Epicurean lifestyle. None of this mattered, of course. I might have been slightly lapsed, but I was saved, I had said that little prayer when I was four years old, I had been baptized, nothing I could do could take me away from God.

Part of me actually resented this idea- nothing could take me away from God. I was well aware of the Psalmist's statements about the impossibility of escaping God, even in the depths; and I understood all too well the consternation of Jonah as his trip to Tarshish was interrupted. As time went by and I drifted further from God His presence paradoxically became almost suffocating.

A Crisis in the Quarter Life

 
Right before I turned twenty-six I started to feel the drain that my life of debauchery was creating on my spirit. By this point I had lived outside of Florida for several years and was in the city of Chicago, and thought of turning to church again. I went to the local Episcopalian parish and found myself met with something that had once seemed to me nice enough in theory but was in reality sheer horror: the priestess. Up to this point I had been okay with the idea of the ordination of women, but now I saw what a mistake the Episcopal church had made. The sermon was anything but- it was political soap-boxing of the type that conservatives are accused of (but which I have never heard from the pulpit itself, outside of anecdotes), a vile screed against the Bush administration and neoconservatives that I might have actually been sympathetic to had it come from any place but the pulpit and at any time other than then. I had come to the service that day seeking solace and spiritual renewal and was met with political screeds and smug self-satisfaction in the fact that person in the pulpit happened to have breasts and a vagina and the male deacons in the front row were quite unrepentant that they happened to prefer other males. I was at church to repent, and met with those who said there was no need for repentance.

Who Reforms the Reformers?

At this point I made it my life mission to figure out what to do about my church problem. Evangelicalism would not work, Anglicanism was far too inconsistent for someone as rootless as myself, I knew far too much of Western history to seriously entertain Rome's claims of papal infallibility (even given their rather acrobatic approach to defining the pope's infallibility- if you ever have time to kill, ask a roomful of well-educated Roman Catholics which of the pope's pronouncements are infallible and watch the ensuing fistfight), Lutheranism was a possibility and yet its American Evangelical branch and European churches were as bad the Episcopal church, Presbyterianism was out of the picture as Calvin and I never got along (of course, Calvin never got along with anyone! Bazinga!), and I was quite certain that the Eastern Church MUST have done something wrong in the Great Schism.

I kept refining my image of what the Church should be- one week I was absolutely certain that the presbyters should have some actual authority, the next I would be convinced of the priesthood of all believers. I believed in Apostolic Succession, I believed in house churches. I think the model I finally came up with when I abandoned the project could be considered Emergent High Church. I think part of the swinging back and forth was due to my more worldly side wishing to hang on as long as possible to the creature comforts it had found- it was as if I had a presentiment that my party days would be over by the time I turned thirty, and the sarx wished to go out with a bang.

The Road No One Else Should Travel

During this time I was still paying attention to goings on in the Episcopal church. The hierarchy was starting to flat out fire priests and bishops who disagreed with the anti-traditional direction the church happened to be taking. Lawsuits were being filed. Churches were starting to break away en masse, whole dioceses were fleeing, and a new Anglican body was soon to be formed in the States. Canon lawyers on both sides were loading the cannons and firing canon balls across the bows of the enemy (I am so very sorry- but not sorry enough to erase the pun). Those who dissented from the Episcopal hierarchy were speaking of the actions of the PB (on this blog we never refer to a woman as a "bishop" nor "priest"- this is a rule henceforth and forever more- but I will leave the "B" in place as the Episcopal church has yet to put the "b" in a kennel) as being against both the canons and constitutions of the church and thus illegal. In an effort to better inform myself I started to search out "canons and constitutions" on the internet.

I found something very interesting. I found the Apostolic Constitutions, I found the Didache, I found the Acts of the Ecumenical Councils. I read through these and I was struck by the wisdom expressed in them. I understand that some of these may seem very quaint today and perhaps even inapplicable, but taken in the context of the history of the Church they were very wise responses to the problems of their particular time and place. I would not recommend that potential converts read through these (in fact, I would recommend the exact opposite), but for me they were like the first glimpses of dawn after a long night.

I found a Church that claimed to be the same Church that made these canons- the Orthodox Church. My journey did not end with this discovery; I still had a minefield of canonical and non-canonical contenders to the Orthodox title, I still had to figure out the difference between Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, and most important of all I had to deal with the rather strange claim that the Orthodox make to be "The Church"- as in "The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" proclaimed in the Creed. I was still too attached to the Anglican Branch Theory and an ecumenical outlook that wished to embrace all Christians to take this claim seriously- and it was in this claim that I felt was the error that led to the Great Schism between the East and West.

Still, Orthodoxy attracted me, and inspired me to pray daily (though I used the American 1928 Book of Common Prayer rather than the Orthodox Prayer Books). I also began fasting regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, devoting these days to the prayer: "Lord, help me to find a church."

The Sign of Jonah

In June of 2009, just 17 days after I turned 29, something strange happened. The parishes and dioceses that had broken from the Episcopal church had come together to form the Anglican Church in North America. I had been watching the formation of this church eagerly- a new Anglican church with none of the problems of the Episcopalians might be just what I was looking for. But something else happened at the inaugural assembly of this new diocese. Two guest speakers had been invited to address the Anglicans- some Evangelical mega-church guy named Rick Warren who seemed to be all the rage at the time and the OCA's then-Metropolitan JONAH.

The Metropolitan addressed the assembly, gave warm greetings and announced that the OCA would be entering ecumenical talks with the ACNA. Then he laid out quite clearly what would be required for union between the two churches: affirmation of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and the relevant local councils, no more priestesses, and removing the filioque from the Creed.

This floored me. By this point I had come to all these points, it heard them being laid out in such a way to wake me up to the fact that this was indeed where I was. Rather than wait for an ACNA parish to be founded near me and hope to find a home in that church, I finally realized there was a place for me to go. I resolved to, as soon as possible (I was working Sunday mornings at the time, and well into the evening during the week), start attending an Orthodox parish.

Sts Nicholas, Andrew, and Michael

Soon after, I had talked to my youngest brother after my mother informed me that he too was interested in the Orthodox Church. We both asked each other if we had actually been to a service yet, both replied in the negative, and both resolved that whichever one of us attended a service first would inform the other and give his opinion. Several months later, my work schedule finally cleared up. It took me a few weeks to get my courage up- I only had vague ideas of what to expect. Reading through the texts of the services only told so much, much information on what to do during a service conflicted based on the ethnic tradition of the jurisdiction of the writer.

But finally, with the help of the nice people at OrthodoxChristinity.net, I bit the bullet and went to All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago for a Vespers service. This particular Vespers service held a surprise- it was the eve of the feast of the one saint that even the most anti-saint Evangelical knows of: St Nicholas. Further, after I entered and was looking around rather nervously I was approached by a man (around my age) in a black robe (is this the priest, I thought) who asked in a quiet voice, "You're new?" "Yes,I've never been here before." "Are you Orthodox," came the next question. "No, but I'm very interested in Orthodoxy." He introduced himself as the Deacon Andrew (well, that's one mystery solved already!), asked a few questions about my religious background, told me that a good portion of the parish were converts as well, and assured me that my not having a clue what was going on would not be a problem, that it was just fine if I observed. In just one evening I had experienced three different saints in three different ways: St Nicholas in his feast day, my own patron St Michael the Archangel in guiding me along a rather tumultuous road (perhaps some day I will have a blog post with more details on this, but it goes beyond the purpose of this already long post); and the namesake of St Andrew the First-called filling in that Apostle's role of making introductions.

I cannot describe that first Vespers service, or indeed that strange space I seem to enter during every Vespers service after (alas if I could get into that mindset during Sunday Liturgy- but lack of morning coffee carries its penalties for us non-morning people). The beginning of the service, as Fr Patrick intoned "Blessed is our God, always and unto the ages of ages," in his deep, booming, Ent-like voice; the peace of the Psalms, the reverent sense of community of the various Litanies; the tinkling of the censer and smell of incense; the whole parish joyfully singing "Oh Gladsome Light;" the short homily on St Nicholas (that in itself was astounding- not often had I heard a homily so short yet so profound. Father Pat said more in ten minutes than the preachers of my childhood said in thirty); all these different things added up so that I finally understood: "Yes, it is more magic!" This was magic in its truest, deepest sense. These rituals were not men trying to manipulate God into obeying rather arbitrary rules- the Evangelicals are correct when they say God does not need ritual. These rituals were for us, for men, an exact formula designed to put us in the proper mindset to lay aside our earthly cares and join in a community of believers that brings light beyond the shadow of death; a deeper magic of which the necromancers of old could only dream. The most modern, charismatic, rock'n'roll service could not dream to capture the spirit found in these haunting acapella hymns, hymns that have not changed in a thousand years; the loudest crash of the cymbal could not awaken me more than the soft tinkling of the bells on the censer.

The Last Leg

After I returned home that evening I immediately called my brother, as promised. I asked if he had been to an Orthodox service yet, and when he said "no" I gushed praises over the Vespers service I had just attended and he listened with interest for a few minutes before saying, "Well, I gotta go and get to bed- I've already made plans to attend Liturgy tomorrow morning." 

I had been attending services at All Saints for a few months, when certain circumstances caused me to leave Chicago. My first move was to my brother's where we attended services at his Greek Orthodox parish. I am afraid that in our zeal for this new Church we drove my sister-in-law (who, at the time was a committed non-denom) a bit crazy. Still, I do not regret those few months I spent with them- on the 20th of June, 2010, just fifteen days after my 30th birthday, my brother and I were received into the Orthodox Church at the parish of Sts Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene in Cumming, Georgia (my brother's own wonderful blog can be found at Life of an Orthodox Soldier).  I've moved a few times since then and been blessed to attend several wonderful parishes in each place I have lived.

I do not wish it to seem as if becoming Orthodox has solved all my problems. I still struggle with regular attendance and prayer, and it seems that struggle has become even harder recently. Still, I manage to attend more often than not, and it feels like a victory every week I run through the hurdle of life and enter those Church doors and hear the priest intone "Blessed is our God, always, and unto the ages of ages!"