We left off Part I with the many questions I was having about where to find an authoritative statement of Christianity (and interpretation of the Bible). At that point, Catholicism was not really on my radar at all. It simply wasn't an option. Was never to be considered. I had sort of implicitly lumped Catholics in together with Mormons--"they think they are Christians, but true Christians don't accept them as Christians." In fact, I remember in 2002 (after one full year into grad school), we had a dear friend of the family (my sister's childhood best friend), who was dating a Catholic, and I emailed her various links of articles from the Christian Research Institute of reasons why Catholicism is wrong, the are not truly saved, one should not be unequally yoked with them. I'd been listening to CRI's "The Bible Answer Man," Hank Hanegraaff, regularly for a year, and he was a firm advocate of evangelical Protestantism, and as I'd written this friend, CRI's is "a trusted website I go to for any spiritual question." Catholicism was not considered to have any answers to my questions. (Interestingly, the girl decided to marry the Catholic, but did not convert and they were married by a Protestant minister...who knows if I had a role in that...)
What you're going to start to see here is a collision of events--conversations, experiences, encounters in my life and events happening in the churches in the US--that propelled me onto this journey with increased focus. We've already discussed my upbringing and the questions arising in college, then grad school with my Turkish friends and colleagues.
So in 2004, during the same time period of all these questions from the previous blog post, I took a one month trip to Turkey. There, I was really struck by seeing the churches that were built in the 6th century (e.g., Aya Sofya in A.D. 537) and learning about their history and the Christians of that time. Wow. Never in my entire life had I ever been taught about church history. (Why? We learn about the history of our nation, of scientific discoveries, of music, but not of our faith? Well, we learn of how it was thousands of years ago, and then there's a 1500 year gap.) It had never crossed my mind to wonder what theology was taught in the first and second generations of Christians after Christ (i.e., those who were children of those who'd walked with Christ), how they worshiped, how they remained unified in the face of so much persecution and lack of rigorous understanding and established teaching of the Scriptures that we have today. It was mind-blowing to imagine *one church.* Not havine any denominations. One church. Aya Sofya was the central basilica in Constantinople (Istanbul) for all of Christendom in that time. It is an enormous engineering wonder, one of the most advanced and ambitious structures for over 1,000 years. Standing there amidst it's ancient mosaics, towering columns and massive dome, it felt so symbolic of the one true church established by Christ, uniting all Christians around the world, enduring for all time. This felt like the sort of presence the Body of Christ should have, a united force, not the fractured denominations that can't work together for a common goal, the Kingdom of God. My heart yearned for unity and it became a burden on my heart that I prayed for among believers. It also sparked a curiosity of things antiquity. What was life like for the early Christian in the generation after what is recorded in the Bible? Surely there were all kinds of slightly differing preferences and interpretations of things back then, how were things handled in order to preserve the essence of the Gospel? There was one church for the first 1,000 years, until the Great Schism in 1054 that split the church east and west, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. What was that all about? What had everyone believed for 1,000 years, and what was the split all about? And then in 1517, Martin Luther had nailed his 95 theses to the church door (back in 1999, I'd visited Wittenberg, Germany, where Luther lived and preached, the church, etc.) and the Protestant Reformation began to really take shape that century. The first Baptists were traced back to 1609...how much of the teachings of the first 1500 years of Christianity did they retain and what all did they throw out? Why didn't I know any of this?
I didn't do anything about these questions, for 2004 was a very rough year--a month after returning from being in Turkey for 4 weeks, I had major surgery that wiped me out for months. I was also preparing for major candidacy exams in my Ph.D. program and did not have the energy to pursue answers to these questions. Meanwhile, for that past year (since 2003) I'd also been participating in a weekly dinner group at the home of Dr. J. Budziszewski, who is professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and a devout Christian. The group was by invitation only, for Christian graduate students, and what tremendous, intellectually stimulating, mind-exercising gatherings those would be! Extremely intelligent people reflecting on current events, politics, religion, science, philosophy, family, etc., all through a Christian worldview. Being a part of this group was such a unique experience and helped to form my mind and spirit in many ways. It turns out that on Easter 2004, Dr. B and his wife converted to Catholicism, and thus the following year's discussions often found their way back to questions (and arguments) about his decision. It rocked the group. Many couldn't believe it. Others began investigating to understand more. In the summer of 2005, I returned to Turkey. I also had a friend from Dr. B's group living with me for a couple weeks, and she was one of those utterly stunned by Dr. B's decision and had to investigate to see what in the world was he thinking?! She had a stack of about 10 books that she was working her way through on this topic, so I borrowed a couple of them and read them also. There was also a prominent blog, Pontifications, by an Episcopal priest who was blogging about his wrestlings in deciding whether to convert to Catholicism or Orthodoxy or remain Protestant (he ultimately became Catholic).
You see, another collision of events was that this was about the time that the Episcopal church of the USA (ECUSA) really went off the deep end in ordaining a homosexual as bishop (Gene Robinson in 2003), then females (2006), and on a more and more liberal path. So many Episcopal priests and congregants were fleeing--either to other Protestant denominations or to the Catholic or Orthodox churches. There had already been a movement of Protestants into the Catholic church in recent decades, but this really opened up the floodgates of people suddenly examining their faith, church government, how things had gotten there, etc., and being forced to make a decision. Similarly, other mainline Protestant denominations were taking a more liberal path, causing formal splits/off-shoots from them too (e.g., PCUSA vs. PCA, Lutheran Missouri Synod vs. ELCA). I was also leading a Bible study for a collection of friends from UT and church, and it turns out two of them were entering the Catholic church, which I had no idea about until they had already made the decision and announcement. This caused a rift in the Bible study, as some of the other people were horrified by their decision and concerned they'd be spreading false teaching in our study. So me, as the leader, had to act as a mediator between these two sides and helped everyone reach an agreement and understanding about how the Bible study would continue. It's astounding how heated these matters can become, between people with passionate beliefs on both sides! Similarly, a friend of mine wanted to intervene in the apparent course of another friend who seemed to be on the direction of converting to Catholicism, so I helped be a mediator between those two in the discussions--to help both sides understand what the other side was concerned with and trying to communicate. Often, folks have their mind made up and can't really listen to the perspective of the other side, so it seemed effective to have me as a mediator between them in both these cases. I understood both sides of the arguments and could rephrase them with a bit of the emotion and abrasiveness removed.
So all of these experiences culminated in the summer of 2005 for me to begin examining seriously the matters for myself. I still was opposed to Catholicism in principal, so I was actually interested in understanding Orthodoxy, as it had never been anything I'd really even heard of (besides 2 sentences in 10th grade world history class), much less understood what they believed. As I read books and blogs, I was fascinated with Orthodoxy. I absorbed everything I could about their teachings and how they are different than Roman Catholicism. Enough of my theology was changing (more about those particulars in another post) to bring me out of the churches I'd been attending and cause me to land in a small "Continuing Anglican" church (basically, of the old school traditional Anglican ilk from England, not the Episcopal church of the US; this one only used the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and the 1940 Hymnal, before all the controversial changes started happening in the American version of the BCP). I actually met with the wife of one of the pasters/elders at the non-denominational church I'd been attending, and she shared with me her secret attendance at that Anglican church, as well as her deep affection for the Orthodox church, her collection of icons, books, music, and seasonal attendance at the local Orthodox church. Hmm.
It turned out, unbeknownst to me, at the Anglican church, there was a dear elderly couple, the Mc.'s, with whom I had many mutual friends, who had recently begun going there too, and had a similar story as mine. Dr. M. was a well-known and well-respected doctor, author, and speaker on Focus on the Family. The Mc's took me in as their sort of adopted daughter, and we met weekly for dinner and discussed various matters of faith, culture, etc. I requested to meet with the priest of this parish, and for a couple hours shared and discussed with him my questions and wrestlings, and got his opinion of the matters, him having formerly been a Catholic priest. I decided to enroll in the classes to be confirmed as an Anglican in early 2006, as a first step in a direction that I was sure I was feeling called to, though was not sure it would be the end or if there would be more to come.
Meanwhile, at our family reunion in the Fall of 2005, I unexpectedly got into some profound conversations with my dad's Uncle L. (who lives in Tennessee and I'd had conversations with about 2-3 times in my life) about Orthodoxy...it had never dawned on me to wonder what he believed regarding all these matters, nor had I thought about the fact that they spent time in Russia. All I knew was my entire family had deep respect for him as a Christian and as an intellect, and somehow (I don't remember how), I mentioned my ecclessial journey, and he indicated a great fondness for Orthodoxy, and we discussed some of the reasons, somewhat vaguely. Then in February 2006, he and I began an email correspondence about Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism. Whoa. It kind of blew me away...confirming so many of the conclusions I was having (more about this later), that I wasn't way out in left field.
In the summer of 2006, I spent two weeks in India, and was overwhelmed by the Hindu practice of bringing sacrifices to idols, giving them food and water at night, etc. I had never actually seen such graven images as idols and people worshiping them like you read about in the Bible. I remember the first Sunday I returned to my Anglican church in Texas, when we said the Nicene Creed, I wanted to just shout it from the rooftops--"I believe in ONE God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in ONE Lord Jesus Christ." It suddenly became crystal clear to me the importance of having a creed stating the fundamental essentials of the faith, that one affirms every week, to keep you grounded in the Truth in the face of such wayward beliefs. In Texas or Southern America, it doesn't seem as critical or distinctive, but wow, the face of global religions, this stating this creed was powerful!
Also in 2006, immediately after being in India, I spent 2 weeks in Bulgaria. There, I went to an Orthodox monastery (Dryanavo) up in the mountains and stayed the night. I went to the services, spoke with a priest, and spent much time in prayer and reflection. The remainder of the two weeks in Bulgaria, I attended every Orthodox service I could manage, again really observing and absorbing the experience and the impressions on my heart and spirit when in prayer in those settings. They were very positive experiences--eye-opening at an entirely new and different way of responding to the faith and interacting in communion with the Lord. I forgot to mention, in the spring of 2006, I also had the privilege of being the driver for Fredericka Matthews-Green, a reknown speaker, author and convert to Orthodoxy (who was speaking at an event in Austin). What are the odds of this? Then, my Anglican church also had a book study of her book, Illumined Heart.And I became good friends with a math post-doc from Cyprus at UT who was Greek Orthodox and a very genuine, overt Christian. I attended the Paschal (Easter) service at an Orthodox in downtown Austin (and the Triduum services during Holy Week at the Catholic Cathedral downtown, just to be fair). So having never been exposed to Orthodoxy in 27 years, suddenly I was immersed/surrounded, getting some first-hand experience instead of just in books.
We'll pick up the next blog here. Basically, I'm giving an overview of the timeline of things, then I'll get into more detail of particular teachings and such.
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