In which I Reveal My Bapto-Catholic Hybridity

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The last two times I have attended Catholic Mass while on the road, I have encountered youngish priests who, though they did not lead their congregations in the Traditional Latin Mass, brimmed with conservative Catholic fervor. One of these experiences was in the mountains of western North Carolina, with a priest who announced that he would miss the next Sunday because was heading off to a conference that he would lead entirely in Latin. The other was in Greensboro, NC. Meanwhile, my own Catholic parish in suburban Atlanta is led by a group of wonderful monks, who strike me as playing it very middle-of-the-road while offering a rich, apolitical, theologically robust, traditional yet contemporary version of American Catholicism.

At this point it is reasonable for anyone who is paying attention to this post to ask why in the world the Baptist author is speaking in this way. That’s because my religious journey began in the post-Vatican II northern Virginia Catholicism in which my mother raised me, saw me drift away after Confirmation and eventually into born-again Southern Baptist life as a high-schooler, a path I have pursued personally and professionally through Baptist ordination and a career teaching at three Baptist schools. However, my Southern Baptist wife fell hard for Catholicism about 20 years ago, and about 6 years ago I rejoined her in limited Catholic practice while not abandoning my Baptist credentials, service, or church involvement. My spiritual life now feels whole, reflecting the entire religious trajectory of my often fragmented life and with each Christian tradition offering dimensions of liturgy, theology, tradition, church culture, and ethics that speak profoundly to me. This is religious hybridity, which is not unusual in these days but certainly not what I expected my journey would look like.

My most recent book, After Evangelicalism, is the first one to reflect this hybrid experience and I think is all the better for it, though of course I cannot claim to “represent” either Baptists or Catholics. Just myself — and, yes, maybe a whole bunch of post-fundamentalists and post-evangelicals, yet another community in which I now claim some measure of religious identity.

Here is one thing I am sure of about Catholicism — it has been deeply divided by the innovations unleashed by and through the Vatican II conference (1962-1965), with many millions of Catholics cherishing aspects of Vatican II and others resistant to any and all of its changes. I cannot help but read Christina Wassell as belonging to one of the most resistant anti-Vatican II sectors of American Catholicism. I find myself in near-complete disagreement on that score.

Here’s what I learned from Vatican II about following Jesus in the modern world: The Church showed itself shockingly able to learn new things and open itself to relevant cultural developments. The Church became a leading exponent of peace and justice, offering astute analysis of pressing global economic, political, and international relations challenges. The Church decided to eschew anti-Protestant and indeed anti-modernist, anti-democratic, anti-liberal reaction (breaking with over 400 years of being defined by such reaction, as in the Council of Trent and the Syllabus of Errors). The Church was able, more or less, to renounce its own long, disastrous history of antisemitism and to revise its liturgy so as not to feed the anti-Jewish passions that had been easily read off of certain New Testament passages and church liturgies and had contributed to pogroms and finally the Holocaust. More broadly, the Church articulated a respectful attitude to people of other religions. The Church now understood itself as belonging to the people, not just to the “religious” and the magisterium; and as a pilgrim people, not one that has already arrived. The Church decided that majesty and mystery needed to be balanced with accessibility and clarity. Meanwhile the Church ultimately did not give ground on such matters as abortion, women priests, contraception, divorce, Marian theology, and a whole host of other traditions and beliefs.

Ultraconservative Catholicism and Protestantism are finding massive common ground in America. The theology may be different, but the spirit — and usually the politics — are the same. Neither holds much appeal for me or for most of the Baptists, Catholics, and post-evangelicals that I know, but perhaps I need to get out a bit more.

I can give you chapter and verse on what is wrong with wimpy liberal Protestantism and liberal Catholicism. Yes, the music is often lame in both. Yes, they have trouble keeping their young. Yes, they can become all social ethics, no theology. Yes, sometimes the abandonment of Tradition simply leaves a vacuum for Culture to dominate.

But still: My path looks more like creative, critical, appropriation of scripture and tradition by modern Christian people who want to bring the best insights of the faith to bear in their lives and churches for the reign of God, care of creation, and human flourishing in this broken world. The riches of the Catholic tradition, including the insights of Vatican II, are a key part of that. Count me as one who honors the legacy of Vatican II and has attempted to weave its best work into my own efforts to follow Jesus.

 

The Traditional Latin Mass & Reactionary Politics

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I found Christina Wassell’s account of moving from “generic Protestantism” (my term) to the Roman Catholic Church very compelling, and I certainly understand the quest for liturgy. As an Episcopal priest, however, I found the following sentence a tad confusing, explaining her move from the Episcopal Church to Rome: “While we had made an intellectual and theological leap of faith toward the tradition that would give us the Transubstantiated Body of Christ, it felt like moving to the desert.” I wonder: Why would Ms. Wassell move from the Episcopal Church (not “Episcopalian church,” by the way; the adjective form is shorter than the noun) to Rome in search of “real presence”? Most Episcopalians I know—including myself—emphatically believe in the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist. (I don’t have statistics for Episcopalians, but according to a 2019 Pew survey, only one-third of U.S. Catholics believe in transubstantiation.)

Ms. Wassell goes on to say, “It was belief in the sacraments that fed us, along with spiritual reading and the scaffolding of Catholic piety.” Again, though I’m not certain what the author means here by “Catholic piety” (and there’s little in the essay to suggest what that might be), Episcopalians certainly believe “in the sacraments”; during the recitation of the Nicene Creed every week, for instance, we affirm our belief in “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”

So I’m left to wonder whether the migration from the Episcopal Church to Catholicism to the Traditional Latin Mass is motivated by something else.

I understand the lure of tradition and history, which many find in the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). And I absolutely share Ms. Wassell’s sense of the centrality of the Eucharist—not music or the sermon—in worship: “The whole point of Mass for Catholics is what happens at this moment on the altar.” I’m also sympathetic with her preference for Gregorian chants over “impoverished Catholic worship tunes,” though I confess a certain fondness for some of the Taize music. I don’t agree, however, that the priest facing the congregation during Holy Eucharist necessarily gives rise to showmanship; I have come to appreciate the holy beauty of a priest celebrating with reverence and care.

But here’s my confusion (and I’ll doubtless raise a similar question when we get to the Reformed tradition): Why does fondness for the Latin Mass necessarily go hand-in-hand with reactionary politics? It seems to me eminently plausible for someone to evince a preference for the Latin Mass on aesthetic or historical grounds without having to buy into an entire conservative agenda. It’s no secret that the TLM leadership—and, I gather, many of the followers—regard Pope Francis as a flaming liberal. That caricature is ludicrous, of course, but it appears to be fervently held by the TLM contingent—and it is suggested in Ms. Wassell’s statement that she and her family “were engaged in a fierce battle against the culture with our dear Catholic friends, but this battle wasn’t truly led by our Catholic priests and bishops.”

This sort of sentiment, I surmise, is behind the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ attempts to deny President Biden access to the communion rail because of his prochoice stance on abortion. Curiously, those same bishops have yet (as far as I know) to censure Roman Catholic politicians who support the death penalty, which also violates Church teaching. Hmmm. Although I disagree with the bishops’ position—in what moral universe is Joe Biden subject to episcopal censure when the same bishops fall over themselves to extol Donald Trump?—I’d have a lot more respect for them if they made even a cursory stab at consistency.

I wonder if TLM has devolved into a kind of signifier, much the way that even displaying the flag in recent years has become, for many, a signifier of allegiance to Trumpism. That’s a pity, in my view. Both the flag and the Latin Mass have their own rich history and integrity; reducing either one to a kind of totem for, let’s face it, division diminishes both.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that conservatives have glommed onto the Latin Mass. One sure way to wage “a fierce battle against the culture,” I suppose, is to embrace Latin. But I still see no necessity for the Traditional Latin Mass to be braided with reactionary politics.

Following Jesus as a traditional Roman Catholic

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There is an ancient maxim, “Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.” Loosely translated, this means, The law of praying is the law of believing is the law of living. While this captures a universal truth, it has become a motto of significance for traditionally minded Roman Catholics. Our family has been attending the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) for almost 3 years, and it has propelled us into a radically new place of belief and practice, one we had perhaps not dared to hope for. I humbly offer here just a bit of what it means to follow Jesus as traditional Roman Catholics.

Lex Orandi

When our family converted to Catholicism in 2010, we had worked our way through a gamut of Protestant traditions, moving steadily toward more liturgy as we went. We experienced everything from home Bible churches to mainline denominations. We finally settled at an Episcopalian church which embraced rather high Anglican sensibilities about worship. We received the Eucharist kneeling, sang from the beautiful English hymnody, and enjoyed a rich sense of the liturgical year as it moved through seasons of feasting and fasting.

When one comes from a ‘high church’ context, it can be jarring to convert to Catholicism. It was the theology of the Eucharist and the sacraments that drew us to Rome. Reading and study and prayer confirmed for us that God was drawing us to the Roman Catholic Church. Yet, our visits to many average Catholic parishes often had us shaking in our boots. The Masses felt ‘hokey’ and at times irreverent. The music was abysmal, and while it was not impossible to find priests who could preach a good homily, these visits often smacked a little too much of campfire singalongs for our Anglican palettes. While we had made an intellectual and theological leap of faith toward the tradition that would give us the Transubstantiated Body of Christ, it felt like moving to the desert. It was belief in the sacraments that fed us, along with spiritual reading and the scaffolding of Catholic piety. We found a Cathedral parish where the Masses ‘weren’t that bad’ and hunkered down.

While we had no doubts about our choice to convert, and while we were growing in our Catholic faith, there was a lingering empty feeling around our actual experience of worship at Mass. The otherworldly notes that ring out in the human heart when a truly transcendent kind of worship takes place were far and few between. The ‘summer of shame’ in 2018 brought a new toxicity to what it meant to be Catholic in the United States, with the news of the sex scandals involving then Cardinal McCarrick and his cronies across the U.S. Our hearts were broken. We certainly believe that the Church can be chastised by God, and that some remnant of the faithful are called to repent and do penance for a wayward bride of Christ (see the old Testament for plenty of examples…Oh Israel!), but we also feared that like so many families around us, we would fail to keep our children in the Church. We were engaged in a fierce battle against the culture with our dear Catholic friends, but this battle wasn’t truly led by our Catholic priests and bishops.

As laypeople we homeschooled, we prayed together, and we dug into the faith with our kids and our friends, keeping time with the year the Church lays out. We aimed to rebuild authentic Catholic culture centered on Christ and the good life He offers. And indeed we did this! The domestic church we kept in our home, along with our likeminded friends, yielded a robust Catholic life full of fireside singing, delicious homemade meals shared with friends on feast days, dancing, storytelling, games, and resurrecting old world Catholic traditions. But sadly, this countercultural push to follow Jesus fizzled at Sunday Mass. We met our Lord there in the bread and wine made Flesh and Blood, but our offering of worship never felt quite worthy of our King and our God. What we believed theologically and lived ‘on the ground’ with our community versus what happened at Sunday Mass did not keep stride. In our weakness, we complained. We longed for more. We grumbled and lamented about the state of things. Then, almost on a whim, we visited a new Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) parish dedicated to celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass. And everything changed.

Lex Credendi

In a technical sense, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that what happens on the altar at the Novus Ordo Mass (the ‘new order of the Mass’ instituted after Vatican II around 1970 worldwide) is the same thing as what happens on the altar at the Traditional Latin Mass (which endured essentially as-is since circa A.D. 600, with many elements dating to the 1st century). All faithful Catholics assert that what happens at Mass is the unbloody re-presentation of Christ’s Sacrifice at Calvary. The priest is there in persona Christi, or as a stand-in for the one true priest, Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man. He offers the bread and the wine, each in turn, to show the separation of body from blood on the cross which resulted in Christ’s death. When the priest says the words Christ spoke at the Last Supper, that bread and wine becomes Christ as perfect victim, offered for your sins and for mine in the mystery of the Eucharist. It happens here on earth at every Mass, at a given place and time, but when it happens we step ‘outside of time’ and enter once again mystically into the perfect sacrifice at Calvary.

Catholics assert that true religion needs sacrifice. Sacrifice must involve gifts offered to God which are then destroyed, and consumed. In the same way that so many aspects of Jewish faith are brought to a fulfillment and a completion in Christ, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a new and perfect form of the sacrifice the Jewish people had been offering to God for eons. The whole point of Mass for Catholics is what happens at this moment on the altar. The music can be great. The sermon can be helpful. But this sacrifice is why we show up. This sacrifice is the praxis of our religion.

While our family understood (if imperfectly!) this theology of the Mass, attending the TLM answered our longing for a fitting form for our worship. This sigh of relief, however, was merely the beginning of a true transformation of our faith. When the lex Orandi changed for us in the TLM, the lex Credendi followed, just as the maxim describes. Without expecting it, we were drawn deeper into the wonder and mystery of the Eucharist and of following Jesus.

It would take another whole essay to describe the differences between the post Vatican II Mass and the Mass of ages, but let me skim the surface. In the TLM the priest spends the vast majority of the Mass facing the altar, with his back to the people. He is at the head of the congregation, and we are all facing God. The priest’s personality essentially disappears in this Mass, allowing the in persona Christi aspect of his role to emerge. The new Mass, with the priest behind the altar table facing the people, invites a kind of showmanship, with the priest highly aware of his ‘command of the crowd,’ using voice and eye contact as features of the Mass, and creating a closed loop focused more on the horizontal experience of faith in a community than on the vertical experience of worshipping God on high.

The TLM is brimming with silence. While the new Mass follows a ‘call and response’ format where the priest says essentially everything out loud and the congregation joins in or responds, there are many places in the TLM where the priest is praying quietly, only to God. The congregation can follow along in missals, but the silence invites a meditative prayer hard to find at the new Mass, where we learn to unite our own sacrifices to Christ’s on the altar. The TLM uses primarily Gregorian chant. This other-worldly music was created for worship and draws the heart and mind up to God in a way that impoverished Catholic worship tunes just…cannot. The TLM offers confession throughout the Mass, and the faithful avail themselves of this sacrament frequently. As we approach Communion, we want to be forgiven and prepared to receive our Lord. Desperately aware of our need for grace, we pray at each Mass (as the Centurion did), “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” We only receive our Lord kneeling in humility, and on the tongue. Only the consecrated hands of the priest feed Him to us, taking such reverent care not to drop a single crumb, as each crumb is the whole of the body, blood, soul and divinity of the Lord.

Lex Vivendi

Before we found the Traditional Latin Mass, our experience of following Jesus was, in a sense, upside down.   Now, our experience of Christ flows out from the Mass. The Mass itself, in its structure, its music, its gestures, its engagement of all the human senses, continually teaches us about Jesus Christ and his Church. We meet Him there. The Eucharist, the centerpiece of the Mass, and the source and summit of our faith, shines more brilliantly for us than it ever did, illuminating our efforts to follow Jesus.


What I learned from other Christian Traditions

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Concluding Response from the Orthodox Tradition

 

Dear Conversation Partners,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I’d like to thank each of you again for your very thoughtful, insightful, and appreciative responses to my attempt to provide at least a glimpse into the riches of Orthodox spiritual life in 1500 words!  I’m very encouraged and inspired by your positive interest in Orthodoxy’s understanding of following Jesus through having heartfelt intimate communion with Him, as well as our cosmic sacramental world-view, which undergirds our great concern for environmental issues; our vibrant communion with the Saints, including our special love and gratitude for Mary the Theotokos; the Icons as windows into Heaven; the very deep historical grounding of the Orthodox tradition; and the constant calling and aspiration to live in holiness in thought and action, with the ultimate goal of theosis—participating in the very life of God Himself through His Uncreated Energies.  To the extent that many of you indicated that you had been relatively unaware of these aspects of the Orthodox tradition as a whole, I am all the more motivated to try to make these treasures more widely known, so that more people may find benefit in them.

I’d also like to especially thank those of you who pointed out that my essay did not give much attention to the crucially important realm of self-sacrificial service to others—especially to those suffering from various forms of economic and/or social oppression and injustice.  The particular emphasis that your traditions place on this aspect of following Jesus is certainly something that can and should inspire Orthodox Christians in general to take a more active role in—especially as we have the long historical experience of many centuries, going back to the Constantinian era, during which our Church has worked to alleviate suffering and poverty through establishing hospitals, almshouses, homes for destitute new mothers and repentant prostitutes, and so on, as well as providing charitable assistance for poor widows.  The Church also gradually impacted the legal system of the Empire, as the State came to incorporate ecclesiastical canons into its legal code; the legal code promulgated by Emperor St. Justinian the Great (6th century) remains the foundation of nearly all of Western law.  One example of Christian influence in this code is the equalizing of penalties for adultery for both men and women.  The East Roman (Byzantine) Empire also had an outstanding health care system, in which doctors treated the poor for free, while charging those who were well-off.

So even though Orthodoxy is a small minority in North America, it’s certainly very important for us Orthodox Christians to keep trying to bring relief to those having material needs, as well as to influence the institutions, values, and spiritual well-being of our surrounding society as a whole.  May we all be praying to our All-Compassionate Lord Jesus for His clear guidance concerning what He would have each of us do along these lines, and for His grace to empower and sustain our efforts.

Thanks again for your input.  Looking forward to more conversation!

Sincerely yours, in Christ,

David Ford

Orthodoxy: An Immersion in Sacred Belief and Practice

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I so appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this e-conversation. More than twenty years of extended interfaith dialogue with scholars and church leaders from Evangelicalism, the Church of the Nazarene, and Community of Christ (formerly Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) have been transformative for me—both mind-expanding and spiritually invigorating. I know now, more than ever before, how very crucial it is to understand and to be understood.

One of our senior Church leaders offered the following Latter-day Saint perspective on sacraments: “A sacrament could be any one of a number of gestures or acts or ordinances that unite us with God and his limitless powers. We are imperfect and mortal; he is perfect and immortal. But from time to time—indeed, as often as is possible and appropriate—we find ways and go to places and create circumstances where we can unite symbolically with him and, in so doing, gain access to his power.”[1]

While not totally uninformed about Orthodoxy before reading Dr. David Ford’s essay, I marveled and was moved by the depth and breadth of sacramentalism within the Orthodox faith. So many facets of the Orthodox life seem to point one toward divinity and focus the mind and heart on the sacred. This is crucial Christian conduct in a day like ours, when religion and religious discourse are being pushed to the margins of our ever more secular society. Orthodoxy appears to me, at least, to engage the human senses—sight, smell, touch, hearing—in ways that involve the whole person in daily, regular, and consistent worshipful practices and habits.

I am impressed and fascinated by the antiquity of this faith. That is especially the case with one like myself who belongs to a religious movement that came into being in the Restorationism or Christian Primitivism of the early nineteenth century. On the other hand, Latter-day Saints do believe we are a part of a restoration of first century Christianity. Because of that, I have in recent decades grown to love and appreciate the Early Church Fathers, those noble souls who lived much, much closer in time to our Savior and his ordained Apostle than do we. I find many of their teachings to be not only stimulating but also deeply inspiring.

Reading and reflecting on the “resources for spiritual growth,” some of which are enumerated in the fifth paragraph of Professor Ford’s essay, was mind-boggling: daily scripture study, the Church’s centuries-long interpretation of scripture, ancient prescribed prayers, a rich liturgy, psalms, devotional hymns, the Eucharist, confession, holy days, writings of Church Fathers, veneration of the Saints, the creedal formulations, Icons, the Cross, Patron Saints and Guardian Angels. Wow! It’s obvious that no member of the Orthodox faith will ever be lacking in things to do when she or he feels the need to draw closer to God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.

I came away with a few questions that I would like to ask—not as criticism but for clarification. First, could the grand and vast sacramentalism of Orthodoxy be overwhelming for an investigator of the faith, one who is contemplating life as an Orthodox Christian? Could the massive list of “resources” frighten persons with no religious background, or perhaps those who had spent much of their life as conservative Protestants, perhaps Evangelicals, for whom many of the Orthodox practices could appear to be a staggering list of “works” that fly in the face of the grace of God? If a man or woman of the Orthodox faith were asked whether the seeming complexity of Orthodoxy would in any way complicate the “simplicity of Christ” mentioned by the Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 11:3), what would be a reasonable response?

I ask this question for somewhat selfish reasons. As a person who was raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and then as a 21-year old moved to the west, I have watched my own Church through the last 6-7 decades with much interest. It seems almost inevitable that a religious organization that grows considerably in numbers and in influence will eventually have to wrestle with the problem of what I call institutionalization. Namely, how do you continue to grow in numbers of people, meetinghouses, church publications, handbooks, guidelines, procedures, policies, etc. without suffering what Max Weber described as the almost inevitable “routinization of charisma”? As Latter-day Saints, for example, how do we ensure continuity in what we do and orthodoxy in terms of what we believe and teach, and at the same time enjoy the kind of spiritual spontaneity that characterized the meetings and the members in the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young? To what extent would the Orthodox Church face similar challenges?

I was especially interested in Dr. Ford’s reference in the 8th paragraph to how important the “communion of the saints” mentioned in the Apostle’s Creed (or the “cloud of witnesses” in Hebrews 12:1) is within Orthodoxy. I love that expression “vibrant communion/fellowship with His Saints—the living, the departed, and in a very special way, the glorified.”  It’s pretty important to people of my denomination, as well. Mention is made of prayers made to the Saints, presumably for divine assistance, for guidance, or protection. Is there, within Orthodoxy, any sense in which those on earth may help or assist or bless those who have passed on? I ask that in light of the reference in Hebrews 11:39-40: “All these won God’s approval because of their faith; and yet they did not receive what was promised, because, with us in mind, God had made a better plan, that only with us should they reach perfection” (Revised English Bible; emphasis added).

Mention was made in paragraph 6 of the Orthodox Church’s high standards for sexual purity, namely, “total abstinence for the monastics, and total faithfulness to one’s spouse for the married (with marriage understood between one man and one woman, mirroring Christ the Bridegroom’s love for His Bride, the Church).” I wondered to what extent the Orthodox Church is taking hits from the media or criticism from individuals or groups insisting on the propriety of same-gender marriage. The Latter-day Saints are certainly being attacked for our position, which is basically the same (although we have no monastics).

One of the facets of the Orthodox faith with which I am particularly interested is theosis or deification. I wish Dr. Ford had been able to engage this matter and to what extent it is discussed and taught by the rank-in-file of the Church, as well as the scholars. It would be worthwhile to learn how the sacraments and practices can assist individuals to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Finally, Professor Ford’s mention in paragraph 15 of the synergistic relationship between the individual and our Lord Jesus Christ (as taught in Philippians) in the quest for salvation and glorification is a teaching that simply makes good sense. It reminded me of C. S. Lewis’s words: “Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or faith in Christ. . . . It does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary. . . .You see, we are trying to understand, and to separate into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and man does when God and man are working together.”[2]

I express appreciation for Dr. David Ford’s excellent paper. It was both informative and deeply inspirational. I look forward on my own in learning much more about my brothers and sisters of the Orthodox faith.

[1] Jeffrey R. Holland, On Earth as It Is in Heaven (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), 193-94.

[2] Mere Christianity (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 131-32; Book 3, Chapter 12.

How Do We Ultimately Gain Access to & Knowledge of God?

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After reading the thought-provoking and engaging post about “what does it mean to follow Jesus” from the Orthodox tradition, I left with two competing thoughts. On the one hand, I have a greater appreciation for how the “Saints” are venerated, with particular emphasis on the consistency of that veneration. Such a commitment to the ancestors of the faith signals that belief in Jesus is something that is most richly and authentically developed in community. On the other hand, I question to what extent this community is challenged by the Orthodox practice of confessing one’s sins to God under the guidance of a spiritual director. How does such a ritual potentially shift the focus away on reconciliation with God to ensuring good standing with the priest? From restoration with Jesus to acquiescence to human authority?

The Orthodox attention to the Saints reminds me that we have a rich history of people before us who have attempted to model following Jesus. As someone rooted in the Black Church tradition, we have always held our foremothers and forefathers in high esteem. It goes without saying there are some well-known, self-professed African American followers of Jesus on this list – Fannie Lou Hamer, Mahalia Jackson, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. However, for most of us, it was (and is) the way our grandmothers taught us how to pray and talk to Jesus that has sustained us. It was the testimonies of our grandfathers, about how Jesus Christ “made a way out of no way” and “picked us up, turned us around, and placed our feet on solid ground,” that convinced us Jesus could do the same for us. Because of their witness, we yearn to be in community with other Jesus believers who can go to Jesus when we are unable to do so ourselves and remind us of what Jesus has done when we struggle to trust Him.[1]

But what I believe can enrich the Black Church experience is the structured way Orthodox adherents worship the Saints (by Saints, I mean those persons, many of biblical lore, who gave witness to the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ). It is one thing to appreciate the people in our families who have raised us up in the faith, a reality that many in the Black Church tradition know quite well. It is another to name the biblical figures that are essential to the dissemination and proliferation of the Jesus narrative; Black preachers often name these individuals throughout the sermonic moment. However, it is an altogether different tradition to, as Dr. Ford puts it, commemorate numerous saints every day of the year – “the day we particularly honor them, asking for their prayers and being inspired by the holiness and fruitfulness of their lives.”

I believe this specific tradition could be a tremendous import to many Black churches. Yes, Black ecclesial spaces discuss the challenges that some of these revered persons endured, as an indication that submitting ourselves to the way of Christ does not come without obstacles. Furthermore, there are some African-American congregations that already closely adhere to the consistent celebration of the Saints. But what greater depth of insight could more Black congregations gain if we dedicated a day to investigating and processing the life of John the Baptist amid persecution? How might we grow in our ability to radically trust Jesus if we construct an entire liturgy during a service around the life of Mary, Jesus’ mother?

In pursuing such an extensive practice of honoring the Saints, it would help Black congregants further realize that faith in Christ is something that is strengthened in community. Mary was the mother of Jesus, but Joseph, the magi, and the shepherds all had integral roles in His birth. John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, but he does so by referencing the words and traditions of those before him. Mary and John the Baptist, in other words, did not become Saints “ex nihilo.” Rather, they were formed and shaped by their experiences with Jesus and their contemporaries. Likewise, no follower of Jesus comes to faith in Him by herself, much less a greater understanding of His will for her life. It is, as mentioned earlier, the testimony of one’s ancestors or the witness of one’s colleagues that helps us to make conclusions about our faith journeys that we may not otherwise observe.

By giving more structured attention to the Saints and how their path to sainthood began, people in the Black Church tradition might be more able to see that following Jesus takes a village. No one can claim to be a disciple of Christ and not be in fellowship with people who can support, strengthen, challenge, and encourage her along the way.  I am not claiming that such a communal emphasis will lead one into “sainthood,” at least not in the traditional sense. However, the prominence given to the Saints in the Orthodox Church could be an invaluable resource to assist those in the Black Church tradition who have declared an abiding trust in Jesus.

Despite the benefits of such a worship of the Saints, I wonder how a singular focus on an individual might be detrimental – a focus on a spiritual father during the confession of sin. In the Black Church tradition, there is a strong belief that because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, believers of Jesus have direct access to God for all things. We believe in the “priesthood of all believers” – that is, each person who has faith in Jesus can go to God for herself, without the need of a human intercessor. This conviction is rooted in biblical scripture from texts such as 1 Timothy 2:5 (For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus). For those in the Black Church, Jesus democratizes the process to get in contact with God. Her belief in Christ is the key which unlocks the door to a space where God invites her in for intimate communication and relationship.

But how might this ease of access and one’s relationship to Jesus be compromised with the (re)introduction of an earthly mediator? Dr. Ford mentioned that for those in the Orthodox tradition, to follow Jesus also means the need for a priest “before whom one confesses one’s sins to God regularly in the Sacrament of Confession,” but how do we reconcile this need with Jesus’ model of direct engagement with God? To follow Jesus means to imitate Him, including his straightforward and unfiltered method for talking with God. It is then difficult for me to figure out how to process a conciliator’s role if we are to follow the example Jesus provided.

I also question how such a hierarchical framework might interfere with a person’s vulnerability before Jesus Himself. We all have things we do not want others to know; there are “skeletons in the closet” that we would only trust Jesus with (and even then, we are not always honest with Him!). It is very conceivable that in such a human intercessor model, someone may not be truly transparent with Jesus out of fear of judgment from the priest. In doing so, she might risk not asking Christ for what she really needs, simply because she believes the human authority might condemn her. Furthermore, she might consider that the priest himself is a gatekeeper to Jesus, and therefore responsible for whether her request is both received and answered by God. Such a thought is not out of the realm of possibility, as history offers countless examples of those who tried appeasing a religious figure to gain favor with the divine. To me, confessing one’s sins before a priest weakens the expansive work Jesus came to Earth to do and replaces it with a patriarchal system that restricts communion with God.[2]

I do not mean to declare there is no need for religious leaders. Dr. Ford makes an excellent point that these priests also provide spiritual counsel during the Sacrament of Confession. It is helpful to have third parties that can identify areas of growth in us that we may be unable to see. However, I am curious to know if there is a reality in which bearing our souls before a human does not complicate the freedom of access to God that Jesus created for us.

 

 

 

[1] I do want to acknowledge that when I use the term “Black Church,” I am writing about my own experience in the tradition. The Black Church, as many scholars note, is not a monolith – there is no “one” way the Black Church worships, believes, preaches, or observes religious practices.

[2] I use the word “patriarchal” here because men have dominated this priestly position for centuries.

Context Matters: A Response to Orthodoxy

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I have the toughest job of all the reviewers, I fretted as I read David Ford’s posting on the Orthodox tradition.   True, we all share the daunting task of speaking for the people in our respective Christian traditions – in my case, the world’s estimated 279,000,000 Pentecostals, a notoriously fractious assemblage of people. (If we add charismatics, the number will include a quarter of the globe’s Christians, a combination some academics refer to as “renewalist Christians.”)  This burden of representation is one we all face as commentators, but I harbored another fear as well.  Orthodox and Pentecostal?   Are there any Christians so different in provenance, in practice, in theology?!  But as I read Prof. Ford’s posting, familiar terms leapt from the page:  glory, saints, holiness, miracles, and joy   Were these terms a path inside a Christian tradition that I probably know least, in both academic and personal senses?

Those terms led me directly into Ford’s discussion of Orthodox liturgy.  I deeply appreciate Ford’s emphasis on practice as well as theology, specifically how Orthodox liturgy embodies and furthers the quest to follow Jesus.  None of the worship that takes place in Orthodox settings would be familiar to Pentecostal folks, except, of course, for the convert who steps from one tradition into another. (Anecdotal evidence suggest that conversion usually happens, at least in U.S. contexts, from Pentecostal to Orthodox.)   Nothing would seem so strange to most Pentecostals than Orthodox forms of worship – antiphonal chants, incense, vestments, icons, and a very formal Eucharist.  The flip side almost certainly would be the case. Orthodox Christians might be puzzled by a worship tradition where contemporary praise music calls us to follow Jesus – no, to experience Jesus – through speaking, singing, and dancing in the Spirit. The embodied forms of worship are completely different, obviously, but I began to wonder if the goal of worship is similar within each tradition. Orthodox worship exists to guide people along toward intimacy with Christ and the Holy Spirit. So does Pentecostal worship, although in ways that differ wildly in style but perhaps not, after all, in substance?

Which brings me to sanctification. This is not the place to rehearse the many variations on the theology and experience of sanctification within Pentecostal traditions (and I wonder, within Orthodox traditions as well?)  But Dr. Ford’s words – glory, saints, holiness, miracles, and joy – that initially captured my attention got me wondering about the ways and means of sanctification in Pentecostal and Orthodox settings.  In both traditions, sanctification is one of the goals of Christian life. Being sanctified means that we walk in the way of Jesus, and that when we do, we become partakers of Jesus’ glory, the glory of God (II Peter 1:3-5).  For both Pentecostals and the Orthodox, this happens in private devotions but especially in corporate worship.  For both traditions but in very different ways, worship and praise are central to following Jesus, enveloping us in divine glory, protection, and holiness that we call sanctification.

This process of “making holy” requires, as Dr. Ford tells us, attention to purity.  This language of purity would sit well with most Pentecostals, descended as many of us are from Methodism and Holiness movements.  But this purity is never detached from the realities of human life and love.  And power. Whose purity are we talking about?  Who defines what it means to be pure?  Prof. Ford offers a controversial ethical claim, if only parenthetically, when he links purity and sexuality: “. . . (with marriage understood as between one man and one woman).”  Most Pentecostals would agree.  But . . . perhaps one person’s purity is another’s abjection, as my Pentecostal bishop, a lesbian woman, often reminds me.  Does same-gender love, even when it leads to marriage, inhibit the call to follow Jesus?  Make that claim about marriage to members of Axios, a fellowship of LGBTQ Orthodox Christians, and I doubt if they would agree.

The phrase “holy envy” is credited to the late Krister Stendahl, Harvard Divinity professor of New Testament and Bishop in the Church of Sweden, who coined the term to express the respect and admiration one has for another’s faith tradition.  I assume one aim of this project is to stir up holy envy, while also highlighting areas of disagreement or puzzlement.  The holy envy I harbor toward Orthodox Christians is the antiquity of their traditions, and the way in which Orthodoxy’s deep roots influence its way of living in Christian time.

Within Orthodoxy, the anchorage of the past makes the church a holy and continuing vessel of wisdom and practice.  Orthodoxy expresses this in both teaching and worship, presenting itself as the ekklesia that carries the tradition forward with unquestionable authority.  Part of that tradition involves an annual circular calendar commemorating incidents in the life of Jesus and in the lives of the saints who followed him in the spirit of holiness. Time looks very different to most Pentecostals.  For over a century many Pentecostal preachers have insisted  that we live at the end of time, awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.  This view too often leaves Pentecostals suspended between the apostolic age as recorded in the Book of Acts and our contemporary end-of-days, ignoring most of the history in-between as little more than a parenthesis.  There are thousands of variations on this Pentecostal way of telling time, but the tendency persists.  In short, my holy envy focuses on the more expansive Orthodox way of telling time. The Orthodox understanding stitches together generations in a much longer and slower unfolding of salvation, a salvation prefigured in a liturgical tradition that evokes what Ford rightly calls “awe and majesty.”

What’s the shadow side to this holy envy, my inner Protestant wonders?  Orthodoxy insists that the church under the direction of its bishops are the custodians of the practices and meanings of following Jesus.  Sure, there are some Pentecostal networks that hold similar understandings of apostolic succession and the episcopacy but truthfully, my Protestant mind and heart bridle at this kind of conservatorship, trapped as I am in my own modernism and its emphasis on individual conscience.  Who are the custodians of Christ’s holiness?  And who are the saints?  Many Pentecostals might answer:   the saints participate here and now in God’s holiness, with the guidance of their communities, to be sure, but in ways that startle (or annoy) the gatekeepers of tradition.  Put another way, the Holy Spirit is not mediated by the church nor by its bishops:  the Holy Ghost falls of its own accord, lured by collective singing, praise, and prayer.  At least that’s one Pentecostal’s opinion.

Finally – and this observation has more to do with our collective project than with Dr. Ford’s comments.   Setting this up as a conversation between Christian traditions has the effect of collapsing differences within a specific tradition.  After all, one tradition’s path to following Jesus is another’s road to perdition, a reality that is played out not just between traditions but even within the same tradition.

When reading Dr. Ford’s gracious and insightful response to an almost impossible assignment  – surveying a complex set of beliefs and practices of great antiquity and geographical reach – I kept wondering about the tensions and disagreements within the tradition.  Where are the fractures within Orthodoxy, both historical and contemporary, and what do those divisions have to tell us about following Jesus?  Who are the dissenters and the marginalized within the tradition? What makes them so?  Can we speak of a developing “American Orthodoxy” that eschews the ethnic and national divisions and the allegiances with imperial powers that have plagued Orthodox traditions for centuries?  If so, what does such a modern Orthodoxy teach about following Jesus?  Does the experience of Orthodox Americans shape their understanding and practice, sometimes in tension with the tradition they’ve inherited?  What about African Americans in the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black?   How does the experience of being black in America shape their following Jesus in ways that are different from, say, a Russian peasant under the czar, or the Czar himself, or from the saints of old?  What I’m trying to say is that context matters deeply, no matter the antiquity or reach of one’s tradition.  The question that haunts me as this project kicks off is this: is it possible to think about these traditions less as abstractions outside of the lifeworld, and more as protean faith movements that are shaped not only by divine forces but also by a welter of material realities and cultural assumptions. In other words, context matters. For all of us.

 

Mary the Mother of God and Sacred Tradition as Fundamental to East and West

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My response to David Ford’s essay on ‘What it Means to Follow Jesus in the Orthodox Tradition” will post on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  It is a high, holy day for Catholics worldwide, and indeed, for the Orthodox Church worldwide the same is true.  In that venerable Eastern tradition the feast is called “The Dormition of the Mother of God,” and while there are slightly different emphases for East and West, the essence of the feast is the same:  that upon her death or ‘falling asleep’ at the end of her earthly life, Mary was assumed bodily into heaven in a state of spiritual peace and without suffering.  

Why would I choose to highlight this, as part of my response to David’s posting?  First, because it illustrates my primary reaction to each and every sentence of his lively articulation of the faith of the Orthodox Church.  At every turn my response was complete agreement and affirmation, even where a slight touch of ‘translation’ was needed to accommodate different ‘flavors’ in the Western tradition.  The essence of what David expresses in his post is in complete alignment with the ancient faith of the Roman Catholic Church.  The ‘whole life approach’ of the Church’s reach that David so aptly describes is indeed true for Roman Catholics.  Each day as we rise and move through a given period of waking hours, the Church offers us a scaffolding of tradition in the prayers we say, the pious practices we enact and in the spiritual sustenance of the liturgical year, which lends significance to each day of the week in a given season.  The saints we lean on, the songs we sing, the readings of the Church Fathers we take instruction from, and the sacraments that lend actual grace to our daily existence (even moment to moment as we struggle to love those around us in a Christ-like manner) are all provided for us by the Church in our respective traditions, both East and West.  The overlap is striking.  Where David has an icon corner, I have a little oratory. Both ‘translations’ of this reality accomplish the same thing: a space in the home dedicated to living out a practice of prayer.  On this August 15th, I am celebrating the Assumption of Our Lady, and David is celebrating The Dormition of the Mother of God, but the ancient Church of both East and West is united in its purpose of commemorating this holy day.   

This brings me to another reason to highlight this glorious feast day in my response to David’s post.  Taking a nudge from Providence, I think it is worth noting that David beautifully lays out the most Christ-centered aspects of the ancient faith, and rightfully so, considering the question about following Jesus in our given traditions. There is room to discuss, however, some of the more controversial aspects of both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity for our Protestant brothers and sisters in this response.  The illustrative nature of this feast day raises the issues of how we understand Mary, the Mother of God, and also our belief in Tradition that comes to us from outside of the Holy Bible.  

We cannot read about the account of the end of Mary’s earthly life in the Holy Bible.  It is simply not included in Sacred Scripture.  And yet, for both David and myself (if I may speak boldly for both traditions), this makes this glorious day no less real for us.  Indeed, there is no stumbling block to the richness or fullness of our joy and celebration on this day because we cannot turn to read about it in the Bible.  Now, there are plenty of passages we can read that point to our understanding of Mary and her role in salvation history.   These would include passages in the Old Testament about the glory of the ark of the covenant and what it contained: the law of God on the stone tablets Moses brought down from Sinai, the manna with which God fed the Israelites in the desert, the rod of Aaron that bloomed to confirm his priesthood.  We can also read about this ark in the New Testament, in Revelation when St. John sees the same ark of the covenant:  “And the temple of God in heaven was opened, and there was seen the ark of his covenant in his temple, and there came flashes of lightening, and peals of thunder, and an earthquake, and great hail.And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars”(Revelation 11:19-12:1). The early church understood this woman, who appears as a sign immediately following the ark of the covenant, to be the blessed Virgin Mary.  As this new ark, how much more did she hold in her very womb the law of God, Christ the Word made flesh?  How much more did she hold that manna, the very Bread of Life Himself?  How much more did she hold that flowering rod of the priesthood, Christ the great high priest as the little baby boy inside of her?  

This rich reading of scripture, and this understanding of Our Lady as central to the mystery of faith, comes to us through Tradition.  Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373) wrote: “O noble Virgin, truly you are greater than any other greatness. For who is your equal in greatness, O dwelling place of God the Word? To whom among all creatures shall I compare you, O Virgin? You are greater than them all O [Ark of the] Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold! You are the ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which divinity resides” (Homily of the Papyrus of Turin).  For both the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, who shared the same Fathers for a thousand years before they parted ways, our understanding of the Mother of God (or Theotokos) comes not only from Sacred Scripture itself, but from the body of writings we have from the early Church which makes up our Sacred Tradition.  What those earliest Christians believed holds a tremendous amount of weight for us.  Both East and West see Mary’s role not as an optional side note to a life in Christ, but rather as a glistening and central jewel in a tapestry of the mystery of faith.  Christ came to us through Mary, and our contemplation of Christ can only be most fully realized through that same channel.  Our very salvation came to us through this blessed Virgin, and the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions see her role in the salvation of the world as ongoing, even if our understanding and expression of faith around Mary the Mother of God has subtly different ‘flavors.’  

My response to David Ford’s essay, therefore, is intended to affirm his very eloquent and concise statement of what it means to follow Jesus in the Orthodox tradition.  As a Roman Catholic, there is nothing I can disagree with, even if in my tradition we might phrase things a little differently.  Though, I hope my response will also dive into some of the places that will be the ‘known sticking points’ between Catholic and Orthodox believers and Protestants.  As a convert to Roman Catholicism it is quite easy for me to recall being Protestant and feeling mystified and even angry about the way Catholics dealt with issues around the Blessed Virgin Mary and Tradition outside of the Holy Bible.  I raise these issues here not for the sake of being controversial, but rather to expose (hopefully with both charity and courage) the areas we may find it most challenging to discuss.  I hope this response gives even a little glimpse of the love, awe and wonder we have for our Lord’s mother, and for the early Church that paved the way for our belief to come down through the centuries.  As it is for Orthodox Christians, loving the Blessed Virgin and Sacred Tradition are at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus as a Roman Catholic.

How Orthodoxy Might Offer Anabaptists Resources for the Spiritual Journey and Anabaptism Might Counter-Offer Social Justice Passions

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As I’ll explore more fully in my main post (Nov. 2021) on how Anabaptist-Mennonites view following Jesus, the fragmentation of my tradition(s) makes it a challenge to discern the most fruitful vantage point from which to write. Not only is Anabaptism embodied in multiple traditions but its expressions in Mennonite Church USA, to which I belong, are increasingly fragmented.

MC USA is currently only about a generation old after being formed in 2002 from the merger of prior Mennonite denominations with their own centuries-long histories of fragmentation. Yet already in the past decade or so, inability to resolve deep differences, not limited to but certainly often revolving around whether and how to welcome LGBTQ participants, has caused MC USA to lose almost half its members. The pre-merger denominations had a total of 130,000-some members, the merged denomination initially 120,000-some, and the current denomination in the 60,000s.

As I’ll touch on again in my November post, each fragmentation sends sub-traditions rippling this direction and that. As I wrestle then with what standpoint to adopt in responding to David Ford’s insightful, inspiring, even moving overview of what it means to follow Jesus in the Orthodox tradition, I find myself drawn to remembering the main emphases, often enough stereotypes, within which I was shaped from boyhood on. Let them provide, helpfully or not, hints of a grid for approaching Orthodoxy and engaging how Ford’s articulations fit or challenge the impressions within which I was formed.

A primal emphasis I imbibed practically from cradle on was that Anabaptism and specifically my Mennonite expression of it had reclaimed the purity of the early church after centuries of corruption. Such Anabaptism was not only a reaction against the historic church, particularly Roman Catholic as experienced in 1500s Europe, but also a Radical Reformation reaction against or at minimum beyond the “establishment” Protestant Reformation. This is why early generations of Anabaptists and Mennonites were often persecuted and killed for their beliefs. I’ll always remember the Church of the Brethren (another Anabaptist tradition) seminary friend who, sitting among our Reformed-tradition friends, told the professor and class he still could hardly fellowship among those whose forebears had drowned, burned, beheaded his ancestors.

Still a core enemy was commonly viewed as the Roman Catholic Church,  casting its thought-to-be-corrupt shadow over the entire church but perhaps more malignantly than Eastern Orthodoxy. The latter seemed almost too distant and different to be meaningfully engaged.

If there was an error particularly linked to Orthodoxy it was perhaps iconography. As a visit to many long-established Mennonite church buildings devoid of sacred imagery will sometimes immediately make clear, Mennonites have long been iconoclasts, sharing with many Protestants the view that icons are idolatrous but in their Radical Reformation way rejecting icons with even greater passion. The distinctive style of Orthodox iconography has sometimes made it seem even more greatly “other.”

A second emphasis was that in contrast to Catholics and Protestants, often viewed as “buying” their salvation through such practices as infant baptism, the Mass/Eucharist, and/or “cheap” grace,” Mennonites embodied the saving power of Christ through literally living out the teachings of Jesus. Hence Mennonites (stemming from the Anabaptists whose name means “rebaptizers,” a label imposed by enemies) viewed infant baptism as not being faithful to the Jesus who invited adults to make a conscious decision to follow him. Even quite conservative Mennonites frequently resisted the state through refusing to take up arms because Jesus taught love of enemies. They resisted swearing oaths because Jesus taught us to let our yea be yea and our nay be nay. And so forth.

Today some branches of Anabaptist-Mennonitism have moved far beyond the more stereotypical aspects of such emphases. Mennonites engage in interfaith dialogues with Roman Catholicism and sometimes Orthodoxy and even become converts. So it would be misleading to suggest that attending appreciatively to David Ford is anomalous. But I do want to underscore—appreciatively indeed!—that Ford does ease the path for respectful conversation. While not minimizing or disrespecting such traditions as my own, he offers an Orthodoxy radiating significant strengths and appeal.

I experienced particularly this paragraph as summarizing Orthodoxy as an integrating tradition ranging across Scripture, theology, liturgy, the historical church from apostolic age on, spiritual practices, and more:

For this endeavor, the Orthodox Church provides many resources for spiritual growth, including daily study of the Holy Scriptures, being guided by the Church’s long-standing interpretation of them; time-honored prayers for many occasions; rich liturgical life, replete with psalmody, and including hymns filled with devotion and sound doctrine; the Sacraments—especially the Eucharist, celebrated at every Divine Liturgy, and the Sacrament of Confession; celebration of the many great holy days (Feasts) of the Church Year; the writings of the Church Fathers; the Lives of the Saints; the doctrinal proclamations and canons of the Ecumenical Councils—especially the Nicene Creed; veneration of the Holy Icons; the sign of the Cross; the connection with one’s Patron Saint and Guardian Angel; and the spiritual direction of one’s spiritual father.

Though no doubt partly due to my own blind spots, particularly my early experiences of Anabaptist-Mennonitism left me feeling that the key requirement of following Jesus was to live correctly, in faithful and even almost slavish embrace of Jesus’ teachings, particularly in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. We were to live in conformity only to Jesus, not the false and pagan practices of “the world.” Sixtysome years later, I can still relive the weeks my my parents forbade my taking part in a first-grade play that included bearing fake weapons. I’ve remained haunted by the near-contemptuous look on my teacher’s face, seeming to say that my family’s values were not only strange but idiotic.

But I had less idea how to nurture a spirituality that would empower such practices. I experienced my tradition as telling me how to live but no so much how to do the living. Ford also emphasizes holy living, at times perhaps echoing a perfectionism I’ve experienced in my own heritage. Yet he also offers a tradition rich in resources for the journey. As for me and my house, we can learn much from that.

We can as well from the “Holy Icons.” For some years I had a Mennonite university colleague who had invested passionately in learning about Orthodox icons and allowing them to inspire his own art. There is a power in visual expressions of holiness sometimes hard to find in traditions focused on words and practices.

When it comes to ethical living, Ford generates two responses for me. First, as a neophyte in encountering Orthodoxy, I was surprised at how strong—and for me stereotype-shattering—the above-introduced emphasis on holy living is. As Ford observes, echoing my own tradition’s commitment to Jesus’ commandments, “Growing in communion with Jesus is accomplished in large measure through keeping His commandments (John 15:10; also 15:14 and 14:15).” Ford relatedly highlights “Endeavoring to surrender our own will to His will (Luke 22:42); this includes surrendering our own will appropriately as we self-sacrificially serve others, placing their needs and desires ahead of our own.”

Second, I did look for Anabaptist-type determination to address the social justice implications of the Sermon on the Mount. I searched for ways Orthodoxy might champion the cruciality of not allowing social, economic, political idols, the nation/state, or the Powers as some might put it, the last word on such matters as, say, how we solve conflicts or share resources, including within and between nations. Or how vital it is to disobey the state if it insists on practices–such as accepting being drafted and sent to war–that violate Jesus’ teachings.

Or seeing major implications for social justice understandings in such calls as Jesus offers in his Luke 4 “inaugural address” proclaiming good news and release to the the poor, captive, blind, bruised. For at least some Mennonites (by no means all amid our many splits but certainly evident in a variety of Mennonite position statements of recent decades) there are resources here for analyzing the troubled state of U.S. creation care, economics, governance, politics, policies, and how to proceed when societies tilt toward the rich, the powerful, those who amass and exploit rather than care for the least of these.

I’d expect that implicit in Orthodoxy as described by Ford are paths for social analysis and justice. At that same time, the explicit focus is particularly on individual, personal, interpersonal, internal spirituality and its nurture and expressions. It seems to me that Orthodoxy would benefit in this area from interaction with Anabaptism.

On the conversation with Orthodoxy could go. And on I hope it will, with my tradition and others, as we share and together find our mutual treasures.

An Outsider’s Appreciation for Orthodoxy

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I open, if I may, with some personal references and intersections with Orthodoxy, which have occurred several times in my life. As I was finding my way past the fundamentalism of my childhood during my years in graduate school, I became enamored of Orthodox Christianity—in part because it was (as I believed at the time) such a dramatic contrast to fundamentalism. My interest, I suppose, was a classic case of reaction formation.

I followed up on that interest under the guidance of one of my mentors at Princeton, Horton Davies, and with Karlfried Froelich at Princeton Theological Seminary. I remember being dazzled at the time by the intricate liturgy, each gesture and utterance suffused with significance, sometimes several layers of meaning. The notion of saints and the veneration of Mary Theotokos were a bridge too far for this cradle evangelical, but I was intrigued nevertheless.

My second intersection with Orthodoxy occurred during my time at Columbia, when a promising graduate student, Philemon Sevastiades, asked me to be his mentor. Any mentorship, it turned out, went in the other direction. He answered my endless questions about Orthodoxy and introduced me to the vagaries—and the internecine politics—of Greek Orthodoxy, a tradition that sets itself apart from the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). Philemon was ordained a priest during his doctoral studies, but as nearly as I can tell he backed the wrong candidate during an ecclesiastical succession and headed off in a kind of exile to lead Twelve Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in Duluth, Minnesota. I visited him there once, and he continued my education in Orthodoxy. (Tragically, he died shortly thereafter at the age of forty-eight.)

Philemon was a kind and gentle man, and I miss him. But he was not without his opinions on ecclesiastical matters (for reasons I’ve forgotten, he treated George Stephanopoulos’s father with special obloquy). And Philemon had nothing but scorn for the Antiochian Orthodox Church, which he regarded as a redoubt for fundamentalists, like Jack Sparks, who had converted to Orthodoxy.

Finally, for the past decade I have been working on a documentary about the Orthodox Church in Alaska. During several visits there, I have come to appreciate what David Ford calls “the profound and boundless glory of what it means to follow Jesus in the Orthodox tradition.” We have filmed in churches and cathedrals from Sitka in the east all the way to Atka in the Aleutian Islands (far closer to Russia than is Sarah Palin’s front porch). Time and brutal winters have worn down some of the churches, but the liturgy and the icons are magnificent. The quality of the singing varies from place to place, but during the annual St. Herman pilgrimage from Kodiak to Spruce Island in 2015, it was nothing short of sublime—perhaps in part because Metropolitan Tikhon was participating that year.

David Mahaffey, archbishop of Sitka and Alaska, has been my most recent Orthodox interlocutor (he passed away, or as the Orthodox say, “fell asleep in the Lord,” last year). Bishop David, as he preferred to be called, couldn’t have been more gracious and welcoming, continuing my education in Orthodoxy. When I learned while filming the Pascha celebrations at St. Innocent Orthodox Cathedral in Anchorage that my mother had passed away, Bishop David immediately conducted a special liturgy for her and assured me that in the Orthodox tradition anyone who dies during Holy Week goes immediately to heaven (I doubt that the earthly Nancy Balmer would have appreciated such concessions, but I expect that the newly transformed Nancy did).

The burden of this far too lengthy prologue is to say that I have profound appreciation for the Orthodox tradition. I love its liturgies and icons, its devotion to sacred space and its deference to history. That said, I suspect—and Mr. Ford’s essay confirms—that I was very mistaken those many years ago to believe that I was drawn to Orthodoxy because it seemed to be the antithesis of fundamentalism. I wonder if Orthodoxy isn’t the ultimate—and original—fundamentalism. (I say that in full knowledge that the term fundamentalism derived from the series of pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915, so my use of the term here is in that sense anachronistic.)

We’ve all seen the spiritual migrations of many evangelical adolescents. The come out of fundamentalism and then migrate to the Episcopal Church. A few then continue to Roman Catholicism and then, ever fewer, to Orthodoxy. They give different reasons for their journeys: appreciation for history, love of aesthetics, a connection to something deeper and more durable than the latest praise song.

But I wonder whether, for some, something else isn’t at work as well: the search for a weightier, more venerable form of fundamentalism. The clue here lies in a single parenthetical statement in Mr. Ford’s essay, where he stipulates that marriage is “understood as between one man and one woman.” I’ve had enough conversations with Orthodox theologians to know that this statement is treated as more than parenthetical.

Fair enough; this has been the understanding in Christianity throughout most of church history. But when does a commitment to tradition shackle the faith to irrelevancy? The same might be said about other issues as well, including women’s leadership. Let’s remember that Jesus said little or nothing about homosexuality (or abortion, for that matter), although he said a good bit more about divorce—which Orthodoxy allows, though only one remarriage.

The beauty of Orthodoxy lies in its appreciation for the past. But Jesus also told his followers to look to the future, toward a fuller embrace of the gospel—the good news—and an appropriation of the kingdom of God, one that includes all of God’s children.