Why I joined the Orthodox Church

My first meaningful encounter with the Orthodox Church was reading "Unbroken Unity", the biography of Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Russia. She was a German Protestant princess, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who married into the Russian Imperial family. She chose to become Orthodox, and after her husband's murder she founded the Martha Mary Convent of Mercy in Moscow, and was martyred in 1918.
Then in the 1980s I was sent to Russia three times to visit families where the husband or father was in the camps because of his Christian witness. I was really impressed with the faith and endurance of the Orthodox Christians I met.

My experience and thinking is in many ways similar to that of Timothy Ware in the 1950s - now Metropolitan Kallistos of Diocleia.

What follows are excerpts from his article

Strange yet familiar: my journey to the Orthodox Church

 

I shall never cease to be sincerely grateful for my Anglican background.

I shall always regard my decision to embrace Orthodoxy as the crowning fulfilment of all that was best in my Anglican experience; as an affirmation, not a repudiation. Yet, for all my love and gratitude, I cannot in honesty remain silent about what troubled me in the 1950s, and today troubles me far more; and that is the extreme diversity of the conflicting beliefs and practices that coexist within the bounds of the Anglican communion. I was (and am) disturbed first of all by the contrasting views of Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals concerning central articles of faith such as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the Communion of Saints. Are the consecrated elements to be honoured as the true Body and Blood of the Saviour? May we pray for the departed, and ask the Saints and the Mother of God to pray for us? These are not just marginal issues, over which Christians may legitimately agree to differ. They are fundamental to our life in Christ. How then could I continue in a Christian body which permitted its members to hold diametrically opposed views on these matters?

I was yet more disturbed by the existence within Anglicanism of a "liberal" wing that calls in doubt the Godhead of Christ, His Virgin Birth, His miracles and His bodily Resurrection. St Thomas's words rang in my ears: "My Lord and my God!' (John 20:28). I heard St Paul saying to me: "If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is also in vain" (1 Cor 15:14). For my own salvation I needed to belong to a Church which held fast with unwavering faithfulness to the primary Christian teachings concerning the Trinity and the Person of Christ. Where could I find such a Church? Not, alas! in Anglicanism. It did not have that continuity and fullness of living Tradition for which I was searching. 

The compelling need for me not only to contemplate Orthodoxy from the outside, but also to enter within, was brought home to me by words that I heard spoken in August 1956 at the summer conference of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. Father Lev Gillet was asked to define the term "Orthodoxy." He replied: "An Orthodox is one who accepts the Apostolic Tradition and who lives in communion with the bishops who are the appointed teachers of this Tradition."

The second half of this statement - the part which I have italicized - was of particular significance for me. I thought to myself: Yes, indeed, as an Anglican I am at liberty to hold the Apostolic Tradition of Orthodoxy as my own private opinion. But can I honestly say that this Apostolic Tradition is taught unanimously by the Anglican bishops with whom I am in communion? 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?  

Those simple words spoken by Father Lev served as a critical turning-point. The idea which they planted in my mind - that Orthodox faith is inseparable from Eucharistic communion - was confirmed by two things which I read around this time. First, I came across the correspondence between Alexis Khomiakov and the Anglican (as he was then) William Palmer, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Palmer had sent Khomiakov a copy of his work A Harmony of Anglican Doctrine with the Doctrine of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East. Here Palmer took, phrase by phrase, the Longer Russian Catechism written by St Philaret of Moscow, and for every statement in the Catechism he cited passages from Anglican sources in which the same doctrine was affirmed. In his reply (November 28, 1846), Khomiakov pointed out that he could equally well have produced an alternative volume, quoting other Anglican writers - no less authoritative than those invoked by Palmer - who directly contradicted the teaching of Philaret's Catechism. In Khomiakov's words:  

Many Bishops and divines of your communion are and have been quite orthodox. But what of that? Their opinion is only an individual opinion, it is not the Faith of the Community. The Calvinist Ussher is an Anglican no less than the bishops (whom you quote) who hold quite Orthodox language. We may and do sympathize with the individuals; we cannot and dare not sympathize with a Church ... which gives Communion to those who declare the Bread and Wine of the High Sacrifice to be mere bread and wine, as well as to those who declare it to be the Body and Blood of Christ. This for an example - and I could find hundreds more - but I go further. Suppose an impossibility - suppose all the Anglicans to be quite Orthodox; suppose their Creed and Faith quite concordant with ours; the mode and process by which that creed is or has been attained is a Protestant one; a simple logical act of the understanding ... Were you to find all the truth, you would have found nothing; for we alone can give you that without which all would be vain - the assurance of truth." 

Khomiakov's words, severe yet just, reinforced what Father Lev had said. By this time I had come to believe all that the Orthodox Church believed; yet the "mode and process" by which I had reached these beliefs was indeed a "Protestant one." My faith was "only an individual opinion", and not ”The Faith of the Community”; for I could not say that all my fellow Anglicans believed the same as I did, or that mine was the faith taught by all the Anglican bishops with whom I was in communion. Only by becoming a full member of the Orthodox Church - by entering into full and visible communion with the Orthodox bishops who were the appointed teachers of the Orthodox faith - could I obtain "the assurance of truth." 

A few months later I read an article on the ecclesiology of St Ignatius of Antioch by the Greek-American theologian Father John Romanides.

The primary icon of the Church for St Ignatius, so I found, was precisely this: a table; on the table, a plate with bread and wine; around the table, the bishop, the presbyters and the deacons, along with all the Holy People of God, united together in the celebration of the Eucharist. As St Ignatius insisted, "Take care to participate in one Eucharist: for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup for union in His blood, and one altar, just as there is one bishop." The repetition of the word "one" is deliberate and striking: "one Eucharist ... one flesh ... one cup ... one altar … one bishop." Such is St Ignatius' understanding of the Church and its unity: the Church is local, an assembly of all the faithful in the same place; the Church is Eucharistic, a gathering around the same altar, to share in a single loaf and a single cup; and the Church is hierarchical – it is not simply any kind of Eucharistic meeting, but it is that Eucharistic meeting which is convened under the presidency of the one local bishop.

Church unity, as the Bishop of Antioch envisages it, is not merely a theoretical ideal but a practical reality, established and made visible through the participation of each local community in the Holy Mysteries. Despite the central role exercised by the bishop, unity is not something imposed from outside by power of jurisdiction, but it is created from within through the act of receiving communion. The Church is above all else a Eucharistic organism, which becomes itself when celebrating the sacrament of the Lord's Supper "until He comes again" (1 Cor 11:26). In this way St Ignatius, as interpreted by Father John Romanides, supplied me with an all-essential missing link. Khomiakov had spoken about the organic unity of the Church, but he had not associated this with the Eucharist. Once I perceived the integral connection between ecclesial unity and sacramental communion, everything fell into place.

 

I did not find Orthodoxy archaic, foreign or exotic. To me it was nothing other than simple Christianity. 

 

It is the Orthodox rather than the Protestants who are the true Evangelicals.