Converting from Protestantism to Orthodoxy - Part 1

In the Orthodox Church today there are many converts from Protestantism. They have seen in Orthodoxy that which they found lacking in their former Protestant experience, but very often they speak and act in very Protestant ways still.

 

Does this mean that a convert from Protestantism can never really become authentically Orthodox? I sure hope not. What it does mean however, is that we have a more difficult road ahead of us then would a convert from paganism.

 

Former Protestants have the advantage of being more familiar with the Scriptures, and knowing much of Orthodox terminology, but often they do not move beyond their Protestant understanding of these things to an Orthodox one, or else they revert back to it at times in a pinch.

 

The convert from paganism, doesn't think he has already understood something that he has not -- and so is more easily instructed.

 

What converts must realize is that they must become white belts in the Orthodox Church -- regardless of whether or not they had been 5th degree black belts in Protestantism.

 

People often wonder why it is that the Russian Missionaries in Alaska were able to evangelize the Indians there very quickly and convert entire tribes, and yet here in Protestant America, converts have only in the last few decades become numerous, and even still they mostly all come only after a good and long fight.

 

The reason is very simple. When the Aleuts heard the Orthodox Gospel from the Russian missionaries, they did not wrongly think that they already knew what these missionaries were talking about, and so they got it right the first time, and so never had to contend with heterodox misinterpretations of the Faith. Protestants, on the other hand, have in a sense been inoculated against the truth by having first been injected with a dead form of the Christian Faith. They thus have an immunity which is only over come with difficulty. A Protestant is almost never going to be able to accept Orthodoxy immediately upon his first exposure to it -- only after a long and painful period of dealing with the issues that separate them from Orthodoxy can they usually come to terms with it.

 

But this only takes us to the point of conversion -- the point at which a Protestant is prepared to accept Orthodoxy as the True Faith. What needs to be understood, but which too often is not, is that that is only the beginning. The whole conversion process is a subject unto itself, but what I would like to focus on today is what happens next, after one comes to accept Orthodoxy as the True Faith, is made a Catechumen, and what continues even after baptism.

 

To become convinced that Orthodoxy was the true Faith is a revolutionary change in and of itself for a Protestant -- but becoming Orthodox in mind and spirit is in many ways even more of a revolution, and it certainly is a much more involved process. Even those raised in the Church have to develop an Orthodox mind -- if you doubt that, then just consider for a moment those whom you've met that were raised Orthodox, but who do not have an Orthodox mind. Many people who have been Orthodox all their lives have more of a Protestant mind than they do an Orthodox one -- and some have more of a pagan mind than anything. So no one in the Church is exempt from this struggle.

 

Essentially what this transformation requires is a worldview shift --and that is true for pagan converts as well -- the difference being that because the Orthodox worldview is so radically distinct from a pagan worldview, it is clear what changes must be made and there is little room for confusion. With Protestants, there is much room for confusion -- they are in many ways so close, but as a result, so far away.

 

What do I mean by worldview?

 

A worldview is a set of mental paradigms with which we evaluate our experiences.

 

Our worldview determines our expectations of reality, and our expectations largely determine our perception of reality. If we are faced with something that does not fit into our paradigm, then we are likely to be blind to it, or to try to make it fit artificially in our worldview.

 

For example, in some cultures they only distinguish between two or three colors, bright and dark let's say -- so to such a person, blue and black are both just dark, the distinction is missed. Or for an example that is more close to home: what our cultures predominant worldview would call an emotionally disturbed person, another (such as that of the Bible) might call demonized. The expectations of these worldviews will either open or blind a person to certain possibilities.

 

An animist would be blinded to the role that germs play in sickness, or that a head wound or brain damage might play in mental illness -- an animist would see everything in terms of spiritual forces.

 

A modern Empiricist, on the other hand, would be completely blind to the very possibility that spiritual forces could even play a part in such things as sickness or mental illness.

 

Our worldview is the way that we think. It is the way that we look at things, process information, it is the paradigms that with sort things through. Especially for converts but for anyone who lives in a Protestant culture such as this, we must clearly understand what the Protestant worldview is and how it differs from the Orthodox Worldview.

 

to be continued....

 

Written by fr. John Whiteford