Advertisements for Orthodoxy

In my occasional and loose study of Evangelism (if that is really a word), along with its associated devolved concepts (like "church growth," "heterogeneous mission," "survival of the species"), I've come across some quirky ideas that have been floating about in the murk.

For your reading pleasure, I have gathered them into two lists. The first and longer of the two is the category of rather strange motives for why one might consider joining the Orthodox Church. It is not so much an explanation for why Uncle Sam Wants You: it is rather a series of explanations for why you – whoever you are, and what you are is a definition that changes mightily across the span of the list – might want to join Uncle Sam.

All of you know by now that I think that denaturing the evangel into the Phoenician nickelodeon agenda of marketing bullets and population-needs-assessment is shnit-witted at best, and probably diabolical. So the very idea of trying to get you attracted to the Church by baubles and sweets, instead of offering Peace and an escape from vile Shadow and Death, is blazingly vain.

So here, in this first list, are a few dubious examples of why you should find Orthodoxy appealing:

• It is friendlier to modernism
• It is more open to darwinistic academic orthodoxy
• It is friendly to recovering fundamentalists who feel hurt
• It is welcoming to catholics who could not get an annulment
• It is more accepting of divorce
• It is more possible to pursue mainstream re-definitions and re-delineations of human nature, like abortion, suicide, gender re-shufflement, fetal vivisection
• It speaks the language of existentialism, and you can even be a heideggerian if you want to
• It is better able to bury the old authorities under sophisticated dialects without explicitly denying them
• It is more "mystical" in a way that shields against the unpleasantries of dogma
• It is more intellectual
• It offers a more pleasant view of morality as "ethos," and happily showers contempt on the unwashed certainties of pietistic moralisms
• It is archaic, boutique-fashion, and esoteric, like a goth-tattoo
• It is mason-friendly (along with, perhaps, the other societies)

I hasten to remind you that these advertisements are very much non-traditional. I should like to think that Tradition guides all our efforts at recruitment.

Here is a bullet from St. Paul, who offers a much less dubious example of why you should find Orthodoxy indubitable:

• But if all [speak in] prophecy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed; and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. (1 Corinthians 14.24-25)

Comments

[s-p]

Yes, thank God He takes on all comers, even those with dubious motives... it's much like getting married. :)

[Fr. Jonathan]

No, Fr. Greg, it is NOT problematic (how I hate using all-caps, a sure decadence of English) to be so attracted. Notice this point is not included in the dubious list. Cheers, the Chardonnay is beside you.

[FrGregACCA]

How about the fact that God, the Christian, Triune God, is not the unconditionally predestinating deity of Augustine or the wrathful, vengeful overlord of Anselm, requiring divine-human sacrifice in order to assuage his anger and/or his honor? Is it problemmatic to be attracted to Orthodoxy because it proclaims the truth of this, that God really IS Love in spite of all our sinfulness, venality, and weakness?

[Fr. Jonathan]

Interesting possibility. I will not hide the fact that I, too, was attracted to Orthodoxy by some of these very motives. I wish I could say that the only reasons for my attraction were those of beauty, truth and grace.

But these commendable reasons were accompanied -- and sometimes obscured -- by reasons of a lesser sort, say a reaction against my natal fundamentalism; an ambiguous boutique sort of new identity, predicated on a mysticism that was more convenient than ascetic.

Thank God that He takes all comers, even those like me who were -- and continue to be -- impelled by motives that are less than best.

[s-p]

Would those "secrets" include that I was attracted to Orthodoxy for the reasons you listed? :)