|
Go to
Archive
of Frederica Mathewes-Green articles
An Interview with Frederica Mathews-Green
The
Church
-A View From the East
Frederica Mathewes-Green
Author
 The
author of numerous books, most recently, The Illumined Heart, Frederica
Mathewes-Green is a commentator on NPR's Morning Edition, a book
reviewer for the Los Angeles Times and a columnist for ecumenical
websites. Her book, Facing East, charts her movement from being an
evangelical Episcopalian to her embrace of Eastern Orthodoxy. Among
other things, we asked Frederica to help us understand why a number of
evangelicals are attracted to Orthodoxy.
MR: Can you tell us a little about your spiritual pilgrimage?
FMG: I was raised nominal Roman Catholic and abandoned Christian faith
as a young teen. More than abandoned it, I emphatically rejected it as
something embarrassing. I spent my high school and college years
exploring various alternative religions, though I praise God that I was
protected from becoming deeply involved in any of them. By the time I
was a college senior I'd settled on Hinduism as the "grooviest" of all
faiths. When my husband and I were married, out in the woods in 1974, I
read a Hindu prayer at the ceremony.
But he, an erstwhile atheist, had read a Gospel as a philosophy class
assignment, and was moved by the authority of Jesus: "If Jesus says
there is a god, there has to be one." This fell far short of Christian
faith, but he nevertheless arranged to enter Episcopal seminary in the
fall-not intending to be a pastor, but wanting only to continue to study
theology. At the time he was most attracted to the German
deconstructionists and Bultmann. I was wary of all this and firmly
anti-Christian, but willing to tolerate his odd hobby.
We spent that summer hitchhiking in Europe. On June 20, 1974, we arrived
in Dublin and went out sightseeing. We went into a church, and I
wandered around evaluating the architecture and sculpture. Near the
altar I saw a statue of Jesus and stood looking at it. The next thing I
knew I was on my knees. I could hear a voice within speaking to me,
saying, "I am your life."
It was a galvanizing experience. I didn't know what to make of it, and I
still was alienated from Christianity, but I did feel from that moment
on an irresistible pull toward Jesus. I bought a Bible and began reading
the Gospels, and didn't like them. Yet that heart-pull kept dragging me
forward, against my stubborn mind. In the fall, when my husband started
seminary, I enrolled as well. It wasn't until December when a friend
asked whether we'd ever given our lives to Christ that we actually knelt
down and made that faith commitment. God was very patient with us, and
led us continually into deeper faith.
When we graduated my husband was ordained, and I decided to wait to be
ordained later; the Episcopal church had just approved women's
ordination, and it was still hard for women to get jobs. After a few
years, when I saw how hard a pastor's job is, I decided that it wasn't
my calling. We had babies, I taught natural childbirth classes, and we
were generally very happy pastoring Episcopal churches that were in the
"renewal" movement."
But gradually we noticed that the main body of the church was moving
away from us, with approval of theological and moral innovations that we
couldn't support. The turning point came at the General Convention of
1991, when the House of Bishops voted on a resolution stating, "Clergy
should abstain from sex outside of marriage." The resolution was
defeated. We realized that something cataclysmic was happening in our
church, and for the sake of our faith and our children we would have to
leave. We felt that this would have to mean returning to the roots of
the faith, since we had seen firsthand what can happen in a church that
is swayed by the times. We considered joining a breakaway "continuing"
Anglican church, but that felt like going further out from the limb to a
twig. We then presumed that Roman Catholicism was our destiny, but as we
read its theology we felt that it had altered the faith (they would say
"developed") that was held by the earliest Christians.
MR: What brought you to Eastern Orthodoxy?
FMG: We probably would not have known about Eastern Orthodoxy on our
own; it didn't seem like a church you could join, but like something you
had to be born into. However a Lutheran pastor contacted us saying that
he was inviting a number of pastors to his home to hear Fr. Peter
Gillquist speak. My husband went and asked some hard questions, very
suspicious that Orthodoxy taught mistaken doctrines or
works-righteousness. Fr. Peter later said that he thought of all the
group my husband would be the least likely to convert. But my husband
was impressed by Fr. Peter's answers, and particularly that he didn't
give his own answers but referred my husband to sources in the church
fathers that supported Scripture.
It was attending an Orthodox vespers service that really sealed it for
my husband, however. The worship just overwhelmed him, and he felt that
this combination of awe, gratitude, submission, and love was how
Christians were supposed to be before God. I remained concerned that we
were supposed to "stay and fight" in the Episcopal church, and kept
saying to him, "God needed chaplains on the Titanic. Even if this ship
is going down, maybe we're supposed to stay with it to the end." My
husband responded, "God needed lifeboats on the Titanic. We know where
the ship is that isn't going down, and the best thing we can do is get
people over there."
We were chrismated in January 1993, ten years ago now. We left a very
comfortable living in the Episcopal church-my husband was on his second
chief pastorate-to start all over at the very bottom with only five
other families. Holy Cross Church has been a wonderful success, and our
only regret is that we didn't do it sooner. All three of our now-grown
children are active in church and see their dad as a hero who risked
everything to do what he knew was right.
MR What does "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church" mean to an
Orthodox person?
FMG: Orthodox people have a lively sense of living in the church of the
early centuries-not merely keeping alive the memory of early church
practices and teachings, as in a scrapbook, but of being in one living
timeless church that arches over the centuries. So this phrase from the
Nicene Creed would mean what it did in the fourth century. In the face
of multiple heresies (particularly Arianism, at that point), the Church
is one, is united. It is one because the Holy Spirit keeps eliciting the
same faith all over the world and through all cultures and in all times
(at that time, meaning, of course, the known world, Africa, Asia, and
Europe). So we mean the "one" faith of that era, not the
lowest-common-denominator faith you'd arrive at if you added up the
beliefs of everyone who call themselves a Christian today. It is the
faith held by all true Christians of that era, which arises from the
grass roots and directs us in the Holy Spirit, which is what discloses
the "one" church.
Holy-we believe that Jesus intended to found a visible church on earth,
a recognizable Body. "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my
church;" we may disagree about what he meant by "this rock," but there's
no such doubt about "my church." Insofar as the visible church lives up
to its calling, it is Holy, but of course in practice it strays from its
calling due to fallenness of its leaders and members. Weed and wheat
grow up together till the last day. Nevertheless, there is a real field
with recognizable borders; the field isn't theoretical or invisible.
Catholic-Roman Catholics interpret this term as meaning "universal," so
that each individual parish is just a little piece of the whole. For
Orthodox the term means "whole, complete," and each parish is the entire
Church; all the parishes added together are also the entire Church.
Where the faith is, there is the one, holy, and Catholic church, in
entirety.
Apostolic-continues the meaning above. It is apostolic if it continues
in the faith of the apostles, teaching unchanged the faith of the
Scriptures and early church. I say both Scripture and unwritten
teachings transmitted from one believer to another, because some things,
of course, were not written down. This was either because of the
difficulty of circulating books, or because of the danger of books
falling into the wrong hands. Some elements of the faith were
transmitted only by word of mouth during the centuries of persecution. A
person who was trained to follow in the footsteps of the apostles and
entrusted with teaching the faith would be carefully examined and
commissioned by the laying on of hands, as St. Paul mentions. This
laying on of hands didn't magically transmit authority, but it
recognized and sealed it, in a worthy person. So when we say "apostolic"
we're not primarily talking about the laying on of hands, as if that
magically transmits authority. We're talking about the preservation of
the faith accurately from generation to generation, and this was
confirmed and sealed by the laying on of hands.
MR: Most Protestants believe that the Scriptures teach that the
"gospel" (specifically, the "forgiveness of sins and resurrection of the
body") creates the church, not vice versa. What's the relation of
gospel and church in Orthodoxy?
FMG: Orthodox would agree that it is the Gospel that creates the
Church. Jesus' saving acts, followed by the sending of the Holy Spirit,
permits us to be reconciled with God and instructs and leads us in the
faith. So you might say that the Gospel (meaning, the events of the
Gospel), or the Holy Spirit, or the faith, create the Church-all would
be true.
On the other hand, the Scriptures are something that welled up within
the Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Church was
obliged to discern which writings were worthy of being read in worship
and which were not; which went into the Gospel book kept on the altar,
and which into the Apostolos book kept elsewhere. There was as you know
heated debate about some of the books. By the end of the fourth century
it was pretty well decided; the Church had arrived at a reliable list of
books for both Gospel and Apostolos. Those Scriptures were then the
Church's main authority and guide; the Church had given birth to its
teacher.
MR: Does the church ever change in the Orthodox understanding? For
instance, the debate over icons: at one point Orthodoxy banished icons,
but then accepted them.
FMG: Change is a word that requires a backdrop. I once had an Orthodox
priest insist to me that the Church does change, because we have now
added to St. John Chrysostom's prayer "for those who travel by land or
sea" the words "or air." The entire last ten years of the Episcopal
Church flashed before my eyes, and I thought, "Ignorance is bliss."
A good analogy might be to whether a family's Christmas traditions
change. If the family ceased going to worship on Christmas, that would
be a cataclysmic change! If they decided to open two gifts, not just
one, on Christmas eve, that would be a minor change. Likewise, one who
enters the Orthodox "family" gradually comes to see what it means when
it says, "We don't change."
Here's an example. The general rule for fasting is to abstain from meat,
fish, and dairy products on Wednesdays and Fridays, and during the four
major fasts. Already in the second century Church fathers are speaking
of these fasts. Some Orthodox today follow these guidelines closely, and
others mostly disregard them; furthermore, under the individual
spiritual direction of your pastor you might increase or decrease these
fasts to suit your health, ability, and spiritual maturity. (The fasts,
by the way, are meant to strengthen self-control generally; they are
like exercises, and not ever seen as penances or ways of paying for past
sin.) Ways of keeping the fast can vary, from person to person and even
community to community. This is why St. Ambrose told St. Monica, "When
in Rome, do as the Romans do," and don't worry about keeping the
Saturday fast that we do in Milan.
However, the rule for receiving communion at the Eucharist is to fast
from all food and drink from the time you get up that morning. Nobody
would think of changing that fast (except for serious health reasons).
Preparation for the Eucharist is taken very seriously in Orthodoxy, and
this fast is one thing that cannot change.
Now, you wouldn't necessarily know that until you had been "in the
family" for awhile. Some things change, some things don't.
The tumult over icons is not quite the same thing. Iconoclasm was
instituted by the state and resisted by the church; many faithful
Christians died because they refused to trample on pictures of Jesus,
whom they loved so much. The sixth and seventh ecumenical councils
vindicated the use of icons and established safeguards so that icons are
not worshiped or treated idolatrously. No ecumenical council rejected
icons.
MR: As an Orthodox person, how do you respond to the obsession in
contemporary culture with relevance, being "postmodern," etc.?
FMG: I think it's entirely misguided. Even two old boomers like my
husband and myself knew ten years ago that we didn't want to join any
church that prioritized being relevant. The Gospel is already relevant,
because it's timeless; hitching it to time-bound fashion only
trivializes it. I think this insight is the wave of the future,
ironically; I think that we will increasingly see it become fashionable
to disdain passing fashion, a situation that makes Orthodox heads spin.
For example, a friend recently told me that her Southern Baptist church
has established a Celtic service, complete with chant, candles, and
incense (at least until those with allergies complained). She said that
boomers mostly go to the 9:30 "contemporary" service, where they can
have all those middle-aged things like rock music and humor and skits.
"But the older people wanted an earlier service, and the young people,
of course, wanted something more traditional." Those words keep echoing
in my mind: "The young people, of course, wanted something more
traditional." If the church of the future wants to be up-to-the-minute,
hip, and relevant, it had better look into tradition
Go to
Archive
of Frederica Mathewes-Green articles
********
Frederica Mathewes-Green
www.frederica.com
|
|
|
