Let's be honest, David: the more one knows, the more one becomes what, from the perspective of most believers, looks like only a nominal adherent of one's faith (or faiths). This is a good thing. It means you are able to distinguish between the truth that religion only partly conveys and the religion that truth cannot fully inhabit.
Hi, David. Thanks for sharing this. I found it quite powerful, although my own path has been very different, coming out of the borderlands of New Age and occultism to become Orthodox. I certainly feel your pain in regard to the triumphalism of many the Orthodox parish, and I think you've expressed very well the tragedy of the divisions within Christianity and the need the churches have of each other, not to mention what Christians can learn from those beyond their tradition. There's something to be said for being comfortable on the margins, as that's where mediation can be fostered. I hope you can continue to live that calling and find a place where you feel at home.
Thank you. A very good description of my own pilgrimage as well. Even more embarrassing to explain the “church hopping” as clergy - multiple Protestant ordinations, Anglican priesthood, and work in that direction in Orthodoxy. I’m now more at home than ever in a simple house church. Godspeed on your journey!
Thanks for this. It’s good to know I’m not the only one who has had the theological rug pulled out from under their feet multiple times. Although my experience has always been within Catholicism, I’m sure most Catholic theologians would call me a heretic if they actually got to know me. Shoot, my own parents told me I was on my way to hell in a handbasket when I was 12, and all I was trying to do was find the Truth... we just have to keep searching. Never give up.
This is helpful. Following a Baptist childhood and noncommittal Presbyterian phase, I leaned Orthodox through much of my 20s, lived in a solidly Orthodox country for several years, and have had many Orthodox convert friends. But I never crossed the border. My hope that Orthodoxy might represent a uniquely authentic form of Christian practice was never quite solid enough to justify the costs and risks of the transition. While still seriously inquiring into Orthodoxy, I began to attend services with my fiancee at a local Anglican congregation. At the time, it was more of a refuge from my big ecclesial questions than something that positively appealed to me. But almost nine years later, it's still our church, and I am entering the postulancy for the diaconate this year. Have I found "it"? I don't know, but the question seems a lot less important to me now than simply growing in my practice and nearness to Christ, wherever I am planted, and serving those around me.
Mar 14, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022Liked by David Armstrong
David, thanks so much for sharing this story!! I loved it. It was thoroughly enjoyable and very relatable. I was baptized at my grandmother's Presbyterian Church (USA) at 13, read Eknath Easwaran's Classics of Indian Spirituality in my mid-teens (mostly because of the Beatles), contemplated a conversion to Islam, joined the Episcopal Church at 17, joined the Catholic Church at 19, went back to the Episcopal Church where I half-heartedly pursued vocations, attended a Quaker meeting, and in the past 3 years contemplated joining the Orthodox Church. The pandemic stopped this most recent endeavor from taking shape and gave me time to think. I love the liturgy, but I also found that the Orthodox parish I attended for 6 months was not quite the Orthodox Church I dreamed of when reading those English speaking Orthodox writers you mention. In the end I think I decided that Anglicanism, its liturgical traditions and diverse theological landscape, was a good fit for me. So now I attend the 8 o'clock service at the Episcopal Church, and sometimes go to meetings of the Vedanta Society near me. I leave open the possibility of becoming a Ramakrishna devotee, a Sufi, or an Episcopal priest in the future.
What you say here resonates with me because that is what I worry it will be. I've wanted to move out from Protestantism because I want to approach church in such a way that is both authentic and beautiful (and I am now worried that perhaps there will never be such a place) - Orthodoxy has always seemed to be that for me, though Catholicism has had its attractions, what with its honorable tradition of liberation theology and the examples of certain priests and orders who's care is for the poor and the marginalized. But of course, Christianity in America has always been tied to reaction and sometimes cruel conservatism. I've just started moving out of various Protestant denominations, having an eye on Orthodoxy. I live in America and as such certain expressions of the church such as Eastern Catholicism or the Assyrian Church of the East are far too few, regrettably so.
All this to say that both that I understand completely and am also a bit discouraged because of that fact.
I attended several Episcopal churches going up, depending on where my parents wanted to attend. While in the Marine Corps (1977-1991) I did not attend any church, as I found being an infantryman incomparable with being a practicing Christian. I church-hopped for several years - Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal - in Wisconsin and in Texas. I settled into the Mennonite Church in 2001 and have pretty much stayed there ever since. Besides theological issues, or maybe because of them, I found that there was little substance at the churches that I had visited/attended. Most were interested in making me a proper <denomination member> than actually making better Followers of Jesus. As one Catholic priest said to me "being a good Catholic and being a good Christian are not the same thing."
I spend a lot of time studying now. The Northwoods of Minnesota are a good guide.
David, your journey has embodied & your ministry has expressed the teachings found in Nostra aetate? You have avoided the pitfalls of a facile syncretism, false irenicism and insidious indifferentism? You have earnestly sought the most nearly perfect articulation of truth in creed? most nearly perfect celebration of beauty in cult? most nearly perfect preservation of goodness in code? most nearly perfect enjoyment of our unitive intimacy & destiny in community? most nearly perfect liberation of our wills in freedom? most nearly perfect realization of our unitary intricacy in cosmotheandric solidarity? Despite your disappointments in & hesitancies toward different forms of belonging, despite experiencing them as acutely & nearly as agonizingly as Simone Weil apparently did, you have courageously & compassionately ventured beyond the boundaries which she could not bring herself to cross. I totally get both of you, brother. Thanks for the generosity of your personal sharing & for the decades of virtuosity in your apologetic writings. God bless you & your family. Godspeed on the next leg of your inspiring journey.
Let's be honest, David: the more one knows, the more one becomes what, from the perspective of most believers, looks like only a nominal adherent of one's faith (or faiths). This is a good thing. It means you are able to distinguish between the truth that religion only partly conveys and the religion that truth cannot fully inhabit.
Hi, David. Thanks for sharing this. I found it quite powerful, although my own path has been very different, coming out of the borderlands of New Age and occultism to become Orthodox. I certainly feel your pain in regard to the triumphalism of many the Orthodox parish, and I think you've expressed very well the tragedy of the divisions within Christianity and the need the churches have of each other, not to mention what Christians can learn from those beyond their tradition. There's something to be said for being comfortable on the margins, as that's where mediation can be fostered. I hope you can continue to live that calling and find a place where you feel at home.
Thank you. A very good description of my own pilgrimage as well. Even more embarrassing to explain the “church hopping” as clergy - multiple Protestant ordinations, Anglican priesthood, and work in that direction in Orthodoxy. I’m now more at home than ever in a simple house church. Godspeed on your journey!
Thanks for this. It’s good to know I’m not the only one who has had the theological rug pulled out from under their feet multiple times. Although my experience has always been within Catholicism, I’m sure most Catholic theologians would call me a heretic if they actually got to know me. Shoot, my own parents told me I was on my way to hell in a handbasket when I was 12, and all I was trying to do was find the Truth... we just have to keep searching. Never give up.
This is helpful. Following a Baptist childhood and noncommittal Presbyterian phase, I leaned Orthodox through much of my 20s, lived in a solidly Orthodox country for several years, and have had many Orthodox convert friends. But I never crossed the border. My hope that Orthodoxy might represent a uniquely authentic form of Christian practice was never quite solid enough to justify the costs and risks of the transition. While still seriously inquiring into Orthodoxy, I began to attend services with my fiancee at a local Anglican congregation. At the time, it was more of a refuge from my big ecclesial questions than something that positively appealed to me. But almost nine years later, it's still our church, and I am entering the postulancy for the diaconate this year. Have I found "it"? I don't know, but the question seems a lot less important to me now than simply growing in my practice and nearness to Christ, wherever I am planted, and serving those around me.
David, thanks so much for sharing this story!! I loved it. It was thoroughly enjoyable and very relatable. I was baptized at my grandmother's Presbyterian Church (USA) at 13, read Eknath Easwaran's Classics of Indian Spirituality in my mid-teens (mostly because of the Beatles), contemplated a conversion to Islam, joined the Episcopal Church at 17, joined the Catholic Church at 19, went back to the Episcopal Church where I half-heartedly pursued vocations, attended a Quaker meeting, and in the past 3 years contemplated joining the Orthodox Church. The pandemic stopped this most recent endeavor from taking shape and gave me time to think. I love the liturgy, but I also found that the Orthodox parish I attended for 6 months was not quite the Orthodox Church I dreamed of when reading those English speaking Orthodox writers you mention. In the end I think I decided that Anglicanism, its liturgical traditions and diverse theological landscape, was a good fit for me. So now I attend the 8 o'clock service at the Episcopal Church, and sometimes go to meetings of the Vedanta Society near me. I leave open the possibility of becoming a Ramakrishna devotee, a Sufi, or an Episcopal priest in the future.
What you say here resonates with me because that is what I worry it will be. I've wanted to move out from Protestantism because I want to approach church in such a way that is both authentic and beautiful (and I am now worried that perhaps there will never be such a place) - Orthodoxy has always seemed to be that for me, though Catholicism has had its attractions, what with its honorable tradition of liberation theology and the examples of certain priests and orders who's care is for the poor and the marginalized. But of course, Christianity in America has always been tied to reaction and sometimes cruel conservatism. I've just started moving out of various Protestant denominations, having an eye on Orthodoxy. I live in America and as such certain expressions of the church such as Eastern Catholicism or the Assyrian Church of the East are far too few, regrettably so.
All this to say that both that I understand completely and am also a bit discouraged because of that fact.
Go raibh maith agat,
I attended several Episcopal churches going up, depending on where my parents wanted to attend. While in the Marine Corps (1977-1991) I did not attend any church, as I found being an infantryman incomparable with being a practicing Christian. I church-hopped for several years - Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal - in Wisconsin and in Texas. I settled into the Mennonite Church in 2001 and have pretty much stayed there ever since. Besides theological issues, or maybe because of them, I found that there was little substance at the churches that I had visited/attended. Most were interested in making me a proper <denomination member> than actually making better Followers of Jesus. As one Catholic priest said to me "being a good Catholic and being a good Christian are not the same thing."
I spend a lot of time studying now. The Northwoods of Minnesota are a good guide.
David, your journey has embodied & your ministry has expressed the teachings found in Nostra aetate? You have avoided the pitfalls of a facile syncretism, false irenicism and insidious indifferentism? You have earnestly sought the most nearly perfect articulation of truth in creed? most nearly perfect celebration of beauty in cult? most nearly perfect preservation of goodness in code? most nearly perfect enjoyment of our unitive intimacy & destiny in community? most nearly perfect liberation of our wills in freedom? most nearly perfect realization of our unitary intricacy in cosmotheandric solidarity? Despite your disappointments in & hesitancies toward different forms of belonging, despite experiencing them as acutely & nearly as agonizingly as Simone Weil apparently did, you have courageously & compassionately ventured beyond the boundaries which she could not bring herself to cross. I totally get both of you, brother. Thanks for the generosity of your personal sharing & for the decades of virtuosity in your apologetic writings. God bless you & your family. Godspeed on the next leg of your inspiring journey.