A typology of converts Beware of converts It matters whether they're coming or going Believe me, it takes one to know one
Garvey, John
JOHN GARVEY A TYPOLOGY OF CONVERTS Beware of those who are running away When I joined the Orthodox church twelve years ago I made a decision that I had been circling for twenty-one years. It...
...My approach to this has been to tell any potential convert to take some time, to hang around the church for a year or so, seeing what it is like to be Orthodox, and finally to make sure it is Orthodoxy they are coming to, and not something else they are fleeing from...
...There is a certain sort of Episcopalian who in joining Orthodoxy joins the church that does not ordain women, and the idea that the subject might be discussed leaves them furious, as if the thought alone meant a betrayal of Orthodoxy...
...Six years after I became Orthodox I went to seminary, and was later ordained a priest...
...This seems about right...
...Half of the Orthodox seminarians I met came from non-Orthodox backgrounds, and the range was surprising...
...At the same time, I dreaded becoming a convert...
...It became necessary because I realized that my only reason for remaining a Catholic was what other people might think if I became Orthodox...
...Almost any question can be approached with clarity, and all can be approached with charity...
...It was so "either/or"-ish...
...It is one thing to sing, as the church does at the end of the liturgy, "We have seen the true Light...
...They are sometimes disappointed when they meet bishops who are not as authoritarian as they think bishops should be, and they are especially upset at any notion that Orthodox liturgy might undergo any change of any sort in any way...
...I took some consolation in the fact that it had taken me so long to move toward Orthodoxy-maybe this would protect me...
...That sense of "a place that seems right" can be found in almost all converts, but in a significant number it does not involve gratitude so much as a form of fleeing, a refuge, a need for the feeling of certainty which is arguably neurotic...
...That wasn't me...
...My hunch is that what I have seen applies to converts to any religion (or, for that matter, any deeply held system of belief, political or philosophical...
...This has given me plenty of time to know converts to Orthodoxy and a modest ability to generalize about them, with at least a little authority...
...Given the state of many churches these days, I can understand some of what worries these people...
...I believed in Orthodoxy, worshiped as often as I could in Orthodox churches, and remaining Catholic wasn't morally possible...
...Referring to God as "Father-Mother" sounds and should sound weird to anyone with ears to hear, and I have been to some Catholic liturgies that were downright awful...
...We have found the true Faith, worshiping the undivided Trinity, who has saved us...
...We have received the heavenly Spirit...
...A great many of the people who defend the ordination of women do so for reasons that have more to do with cultural politics than with the deepest needs of the church...
...But no one seems to be arguing about these things...
...It didn't feel at all like the healthy, lived-in sort of Catholicism I grew up with...
...There are certainly non-negotiable Christian teachings...
...The problem here is that some people do not convert to a belief so much as they convert away from another...
...they have experienced a kind of homecoming...
...a few came from Catholic homes...
...But there was no ambivalence in the mentality of some converts, no sense of grey...
...A lot of the people in America's mainstream churches buy into a primarily secular approach to every moral and ethical question (and the Orthodox are not immune from this...
...One is that in most converts there is a profound sense of gratitude: after years of searching they have found a place that seems right...
...Where the church's tradition is plainly against the drift of the culture, it must be firm, but it also owes the culture an explanation, and this must be offered with compassion...
...there were some former Anglicans, and one of my classmates spent most of the year before becoming Orthodox in a Buddhist monastery...
...A few weeks ago I was talking with a priest friend about the times when you have to bend liturgical rules a little to accommodate people pastorally...
...at that point it was no longer really a choice...
...there were a couple of Jews, and one Unitarian...
...There was an enthusiasm about many converts which I distrusted...
...People who move from one tradition to another for negative reasons bring all those negative reasons with them...
...Let me explain what I mean: I had known people who converted to Catholicism whose version of Catholicism made Torquemada look laid back...
...An Orthodox who proposes a Unitarian theology, or denies Christ's eucharistic presence, is not an Orthodox...
...I have also been to some Orthodox liturgies that were, from an aesthetic point of view, pretty dreadful...
...Several were from evangelical or fundamentalist backgrounds...
...Baron von Hugel told an Anglican niece who wanted to become Catholic that she should learn the strengths of Anglicanism, and not become Catholic until it would be clearly a sin for her to remain in her own tradition, until it was completely necessary for her to convert...
...At the same time, if we believe that Christ has overcome death itself, what do we have to fear...
...I have, however, seen nearly hysterical fury directed at bishops who dare to say that the fact that Orthodoxy ordains only men to the priesthood should not be seen as a subject closed to discussion, or at those priests who use "you" rather than "thee" when addressing God in liturgical prayer...
...It is another thing to add, "And the true faith means only what I say it means, and any questions about this, or disagreements with me, are heretical...
...The need to be right which fuels so much argument has nothing to do with a genuine love for the truth, but rather with the protection of the ego...
...Later on I was to meet a number of converts in parishes, and I saw in all of them-seminarians and parishioners alike-a couple of patterns...
...I think we'll be OK on judgment day," he said, "as long as God isn't an Orthodox convert...
...I had become aware of Orthodoxy's many institutional problems, and, despite my disagreement with Catholic ecclesiology, I was aware of Catholicism's many strengths...
...There is a certain sort of Catholic who, by becoming Orthodox, has joined the church that did not go through what is often called "the chaos" following Vatican II...
Vol. 123 • June 1996 • No. 11
