Tag: conversion

Do Orthodox Converts Have to Reject Their Religious Past?

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
I recently received an email from a Protestant who read Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy and was puzzled by some passages that were seen as being inherently contradictory. From the appendix “How and Why I Became an Orthodox Christian” (pp. 373-384): I am convinced that my life as a Christian before I discovered Orthodoxy was both real and fruitful. […] I had been in…

Orthodoxy in America Has a Convert Problem

· Fr. Photius Avant
The Orthodox Church in the United States has problems. One of the problems the Orthodox Church currently suffers in this country is a lack of converts. There are other problems as well: overlapping jurisdictions, lack of communication across jurisdictional lines, and a tendency to isolate ourselves from communities in which we live. But it is our lack of converts that strikes me…

Utah’s Largest Newspaper Interviews Mormon to Orthodox Christian Convert

· Cameron Davis
Editor’s Note: A couple of weeks back, a reporter at the Salt Lake Tribune contacted us on the O&H Facebook page to get in touch with former Mormons (LDS) who had converted to Orthodoxy. One of those who responded to this inquiry was Cameron Davis. He was one of several interviewed for this piece (which is well worth reading). Like all newspaper…

Ed Stetzer on Hanegraaff Switch: What CT Gets Wrong About Orthodox Conversions

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Writing in Evangelical flagship publication Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer, who is a professor at Wheaton and heads up the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism, made some guesses about why Evangelicals become Orthodox Christians in “Hank Hanegraaff’s Switch to Eastern Orthodoxy, Why People Make Such Changes, and Four Ways Evangelicals Might Respond“: The obvious question is what draws evangelicals to more liturgical traditions—and…

Why Should Pentecostals Become Orthodox Christians? A Short Answer

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The following is adapted from the working text for the revised, expanded edition of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape, which is available as an updated podcast, with a new episode available weekly. The first edition of the book from 2011 is still available. This passage is adapted from the concluding passage of the all-new…

One Quote from St. Ignatius Converted this Guy to Catholicism?

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
I happened upon this article today. Here’s an excerpt: Like St. Paul before him, St. Ignatius, in his capacity as Bishop of Antioch, is writing with authority against those who break off from the Church founded by Christ. Anyone, says Ignatius, who walks in heresy—that is, against the teachings of Ignatius and the other appointed Bishops—is, alarmingly, “out of sympathy with the…

The Problem of Authority: How Do We Know What Is True?

· Guest Author
By Mark Meador When formerly Protestant converts to Orthodoxy (or Roman Catholicism) recount the theological reasons for their conversion, it is not uncommon to hear among those reasons that they were persuaded by “the authority of the Church.” Once you become convinced of the Church’s authority, the telling goes, everything else falls into place. While this seems to be sufficient for the…

Orthodoxy and the Problem of Choice: Converting Out of Postmodern Pluralism

· Richard Barrett
C. S. Lewis once famously remarked that “mere” Christianity, as he conceived of it, …is… like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms…[and] it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a…

Losing our Religion: On “Retaining” Young People in the Orthodox Church

· Seraphim Danckaert
A recent article on the challenge of interfaith marriage in Greek Orthodoxy has been circulating widely on Facebook.[1] One reason for the article’s popularity is its startling claim that 90% of Americans with Greek roots are no longer in communion with the Orthodox Church. Similarly dismal statistics are likely true for most Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States, but the article in…

Why I Stopped Being a Calvinist (Part 5): A Deformed Christology

· Robin Phillips
By Robin Phillips A Deformed Christology About the same time that my wife and I started to question Monergism, we began to be interested in the early ecumenical councils of the church. We were fascinated to learn that the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680-681) had provided a framework for understanding the relationship between the human and the divine when it rejected the heresies…