Agabus said:
Alpha60 said:
LBK said:
Alpha60 said:
The thought has entered into my mind to become a Protestant minister just to lead a congregation out of Protestantism and into Orthodoxy. Likely in a Protestant church that is experimenting with the Emergent and Ancient Future concepts, perhaps a parish of the United Church of Christ, which is ultra liberal, theologically, but this open mindedness might make them receptive to Eastern theology and so on. A parish like the ECUSA parish of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco might seem on the outside to be an easier target, but with the Episcopal church, the diocese owns all the buildings, whereas with a congregational church, the congregation owns it, and if you can persuade them to embrace Orthodoxy, they could leave the UCC or whatever group they are affiliated with to move to us.
So you'd consider apostasy to indulge in a flight of fancy which has every chance of failure. Hmmm.
:
No, because I would secretly remain Orthodox. I would engage in dissimulation, in order to take the Protestant congregation into the Orthodox church. And if the project looked to be a failure, I would abandon it.
Protestants have used these tactics against the Oriental Orthodox; I believe the Jesuits used these tactics for missionary purposes in several contexts; the real question is,
is it ethical for Orthodox to engage in dissimulation to infiltrate heterodox churches and guide them into Orthodoxy?
Phrased another way:
Is it ethical to deny Christ so that you can later praise him?
No.
However, consider this scenario:
I become the pastor of a congregational church interested in ancient-future worship. In the process of doing this I openly state I am baptized Orthodox, and if pressed, would not deny being an Orthodox Christian. In fact, I might advertise my Orthodoxy and my familiarity with the Orthodox liturgical rites in order to get hired as "their man" to get them the ancient-future worship they want.
Then, over the course of the following years, I would implement the Orthodox liturgy, while satisfying the future aspect by installing iPads in the pews to provide interactive devotional aids to the service. I would seek to build a following.
Then, at an opportune moment, I would propose to the congregation that we join the Orthodox Church. To make this appealing to the ancient-future set, I would describe the thrills of chrismation and the hierarchical divine liturgy, and also dissuade anyones fears about the church being less open or friendly to women by stressing the antidoron and reading plenty of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. Indeed we would study it actively in the years proceeding up to this.
I would also not formally renounce my membership of the Orthodox Church, and ideally, a bishop would approve of the plan as a prototype of a procedure designed to scoop ancienf-future and emergent congregations, which I believe are ripe for conversion, into Holy Orthodoxy.
This approach would avoid the dissimulation I mentioned earlier.
Another even safer approach would be for the Orthodox Church to actively market itself to ancient future congregations. Also, we should publish service books targeting them.
One great example of a book I see being perfect for the ancient future set is Praying With The Orthodox Tradition, which features a forward by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. Its actually a bit novel, in that the hours in it are composed from prayers said by the priest or bishop in ancient and disused codices, prayers which are no longer used by the Eastern church but which were a part of its liturgical life 1200 years ago.
The book, along with A Psalter for Prayer, is one of the two most user friendly prayer books I have seen. Both I believe would lend themselves to congregational use.
Now, this last bit may be controversial, but we've seen videos of Episcopalians and others attempting to celibrate our liturgy. I think we should offer to help, using the fact that they want to use our prayers as an inroad to making contact; if the people in Episcopal or other churches start routinely using our liturgy, they will be more disposed to join our church, and their congregation or denomination will in a strict sense be engaging in more correct worship, albeit in a situation of ecclesiological and canonical irregularity.
I think we should celibrate the fact that Byzantine icons are popping up in places like Westminster Abbey. This is to our advantage. The mainline churches and some evangelicals are becoming disposed to worship like we do. We are getting into their hearts. The situation is the exact opposite of that faced by the Oxford Movement of Anglo Catholics in the 1830s, when most Englishmen regarded rhe idea of the Mass as anathema; within 100 years, the Church of England had attempted to introduce a BCP reformed along Catholic lined, had large numbers of Anglo Catholic parishes, and even had parishes like St. Magnus the Martyr where the Roman mass was being said in Latin. Today, one can say that throughout most of the Anglican Communion, Anglo Catholicism has won, and what today is considered low church Anglicanism would have been considered high church a century ago, with the exception of a few evangelical parishes which have gone the praise and worship route, like Holy Trinity Brampton. High churchmanship is normative.
Also, huge numbers of English converted to Roman Catholicism, crossing the Tiber from Anglo Catholicism, a process which continues even today.
We face an infinitely better strategic situation in that people are actively copying and using our services and are trying to incorporate Eastern Christian "spirituality" into their parishes. Some are praying the Jesus Prayer! Look at the Anglican Rosary for an example. They are using our icons and praying our prayers.
As i see it, we have two options: we can resent them for counterfeiting us and bogarting our style, or we can interpret this as an opportunity for evangelism, and seize rhe day in a positive way. Surely the latter option is preferrable.
