Am I an Evangelical?

In my Protestant days, when I began reading Medieval writers, I was often confused by their use of the adjective, “evangelical.” The reference was often made of monks and other holy people that they lived an evangelical life. At that time, the only meaning for evangelical I knew was based on my understanding of Evangelical Protestants. An Evangelical, I thought, was a Christian who emphasized evangelism: aka proselytzation. It took me quite a while to figure out, from repeated contextual jarrings, that for these writers proselytzation had nothing particularly to do with an evangelical life. Finally I succumbed to my Webster’s.

Centuries before the Protestant push to evangelize college students in the 1940s, when the name “Evangelical” came to be applied to those whom this movement produced, “evangelical” was a adjective used in religious literature to refer to a life lived according to the Gospel. For those who do not know, the Greek word translated “Gospel” is euangelion. I, unfortunately, had no excuse for my slow-wittedness, having studied Greek. I was just too bound by my own cultural myopia to look at the word itself.

As an Orthodox Christian, I have often been a little miffed that the Protestants have co-opted “Evangelical” as a sort of brand name. I find it awkward in conversations with some Protestants when they ask (for example, in the context of an interview for employment in an “Evangelical” organization) if I am an Evangelical. There is no short answer. “No,” means to them that I am not a “real” Christian—as in, “Are you a Christian or a Catholic?” [Believe it or not, I have been asked that exact question many times] “Yes,” means I am a Protestant of one of the approximately 30,000 possible varieties. If there is time, I often ask my interlocutor to define “Evangelical,” which almost no one can do. This often opens a lovely can of worms and generally leads to a meaningful conversation about Christian faith.

But am I an Evangelical? I had a long conversation with Neil Sneider, President Emeritus of Trinity Western University, about this when I first started working there six years ago. After lamenting for an hour how difficult it is to define “Evangelical,” Dr. Sneider said to me, “Well since there can be Catholic Evangelicals, I don’t see why there can’t be Orthodox Evangelicals.” Leaving the definition of Evangelical open, I agreed. In as much as I strive to live by the Gospel of Christ, I am an Evangelical. The difference between my definition of Evangelical and the broader culture’s is only about 1940 years of church history.

Orthodox Christianity: It's Better Than Nothing!

We had a work day at Church today.  We were scraping and painting the south side of the Church.  I was scraping next to one of our inquirers, so I asked him what his parents think of his interest in Orthodox Christianity.  He said, “Well, to tell you the truth, they are pretty much relieved.”

He went on to explain that after being raised by his parents who are “entrenched” Evangelicals (his word, not mine), and after graduating from a famous Evangelical college with honours, and after encountering some serious life problems, he completely gave up on God for a few years.  So now his parents are relieved that he again has an interest in Christ and the Church--even if it is the Orthodox Church.

Then the witty fellow working on the other side of him blurted out: “There’s our new motto to advertise our Church.  The bumper sticker will read: ‘Orthodox Christianity: It’s better than nothing!'”

After we all laughed, I kept thinking about that phrase.  It does seem that many people who come to Holy Orthodoxy come only after they have had a pretty serious crisis in their faith.  They often tell a story of having given up (or almost given up) on the Christ they had come to know in their Evangelical (or other Protestant) world, a Christ who just doesn’t make sense in a world full of suffering, weakness and failure.

I do not want to rag on Evangelicalism.  Evangelical Christianity introduced me to Christ.  I am a Child of Evangelicalism.  I am thankful for those “Bible believing” faithful men and women who loved me, introduced me to Christ and taught me to study the Bible.  They got me on the road.  However, the Evangelical road to Christ is not a very long road.  Or I might better say, it is not a very deep road: it does not offer many resources (beyond basic moral teaching) to a changed heart, to transformation into Christ’s image.  It does not teach prayer or psalmody, or fasting and alms giving (except as a means to get something from God).  There is no worship beyond happy or romantic songs about Jesus.  I like happy songs about Jesus (not so much the romantic ones), but that’s not worship, at least not like the worship we read about in the Old Testament and the Revelation: full of typology, theology, proclamation and mystery.  

Especially mystery.  Real life is full of mystery.  We encounter God in our often confused and certainly unpredictable and generally messy lives.  We encounter God in our joys, but more profoundly in our failures, our tragedies and our pain.  Like the whirlwind out of which Job encounters God, we too encounter God who comes to us mysteriously in the whirlwind of our lives.  This is the God we encounter, not the neat Deity of the Jesus song who makes me feel better because He loves me so much.  The God of the whirlwind is too big just to make me feel better.  He is so big and loves me so much that he will let my life be turned upside down and let the world beat me up terribly in order to get to my heart and change me, and  through me all those around me.

If you, my dear reader, have encountered the God of the whirlwind, and you are about to give up on God altogether because the God you have learned about in church is different from the God you have encountered in life, then let me encourage you to look a little further.  The Orthodox Church is certainly not the perfect Church.  It is made up of God and angels and human beings, human beings whose lives are probably as messy and confused as yours.  And yet, there is mystery.  There is a very long and deep road.  There are spiritual resources for men and women who encounter God in the whirlwind.

And, Orthodox Christianity is better than nothing.

Adam Bede (Remember Him?)

I began many months ago to read and comment on George Eliot’s Adam Bede. After only one post a few chapters in, I became so annoyed by the moralizing put into the mouth of Dinah, that I put the book down and only picked it up at points of extreme necessity: long waits in airports, mostly. I finally finished a few weeks ago.

It is not Eliot’s fault that Dinah’s moralizing bothered me so much. In fact, I was very pleased that Eliot did not present Dinah as a hypocrite. She practiced what she preached. I was bothered, nonetheless, because of my own history: Dinah reminded me too much of myself in a certain season of my life.

As a young Charismatic Evangelical, I used to sound terribly similar to Dinah in my moralizing words and thoughts, only I didn’t have the godly life to back it up. It was not that I didn’t what to live a holy life—I followed scrupulously all of the don’ts and whatever do’s I could find. It was that in the Charismatic Evangelical world in which I lived there were no saints, no real living Dinahs. The nearest thing to saints and lives of saints I had in those days (as far as I could make out) were missionaries and missionary stories, which I devoured. Bonnie and I for years were sure we were called to be missionaries, if for no other reason than the fact the we wanted to give God our whole lives and, it seemed to us at the time, missionary endeavor was the only recognized way to do that. Missionaries were the heroes of the faith, the saints.

Bonnie and I encountered two hurdles in our attempt to become Evangelical missionaries. First, we could not figure out where we were called. God “put on our heart” a different country or even a different continent every two or three months. The second problem was that we got to know various missionaries and missionary endeavors through short term mission trips. As far as I could tell, the formula was the same: enthusiastic singing, inspiring preaching and moralistic strictness. The only difference was the country. Gentleness, humility, self control, and kindness: the odds of finding these traits were no better in Bogotá than in Los Angeles.

Although Dinah’s penchant for personal revelations fit right in to my Charismatic Evangelical expectations, her self-sacrificing service to others evidences a saint-like quality that I had never encountered until I started reading, well…, the lives of saints. I don’t know if turn of the (19^th) century Methodist theology could actually produce people with the self-denying holiness evidenced in Eliot’s Dinah. One thing I must give Eliot (and the Methodists) credit for, however, is that at least they held such holiness up as an example, whether or not there were actual Methodist saints. Holding up such an ideal is much better, in my opinion, than the cynical tendency of many novelists in the 19^th century and almost all in the 20^th of presenting all seriously religious people as hypocrites, fools or mad men.

Like Jonah In The Whale

“I find myself traveling toward my destiny in the belly of a paradox.”
Thomas Merton

I am reading Jim Forest’s biography of Thomas Merton: “Living With Wisdom.” I have never read any of Thomas Merton’s work. It seems my journey has led me through communities that were not Merton readers. I knew people who read Merton, but they always seemed to be people who were on a path quite different from mine. Consequently, I early on developed a distrust for Merton (having never read him myself). There is, for me, a stinging irony in this, for I developed this distrust for Merton during a period of my life in which I somewhat prided myself in not rejecting an idea before I understood it. During that period of my life I read a great deal of what is called “theology” from perspectives as far ranging as Evangelical to liberation and “God is Dead,” and from feminist and gay perspectives to the Institutes of Calvin. But Thomas Merton I didn’t bother reading. What a pity.

I am only halfway through the biography. Merton has now become a Cistercian monk and become successful in his writing (about 1949). Throughout the book, Jim Forest highlights interesting quotations in the margins that give a flavour of Merton’s reflections on or during the season of his life that is being discussed in the main text. One of the quotes sent me into a reverie, and I felt I had to write about it. This quote seems perfectly to capture how I and perhaps many of us experience our inner life. The quote is this: “I find myself traveling to my destiny in the belly of a paradox.”

This metaphor of Jonah is quite fitting for my experience. I resist God thinking that I know better, thinking that things should be reasonable, make sense, should  line up. It is as if reason and a sense of “how things ought to be” is the ship on which I flee God’s ridiculous (in my eyes) calling. It is not so much that I know God wants me to do a certain thing like “go preach to Niniveh” and I don’t want to do it (although that can sometimes be the case). Rather, most often, it is that I cannot be at peace with where I am right now and with how things are right now. I can’t accept that God is present right now in this mess and that it is here that He has called me to trust Him. It doesn’t make sense to me. I want to be on the ship where everything makes sense, where everything fits into a plan that I understand. However, instead, I have been thrown into the sea and swallowed by Paradox as by a great fish.  

I am trapped amid many paradoxes, as in the belly of a sea monster. I am a priest and the father of a community, yet I am also married and have a wife and family of my own. I am looked to as a spiritual father, yet I am an infant when it comes to spiritual things. I am surrounded by great pain and great beauty at the same time. I say one word and it sets someone free, and to someone else my words are only annoying—and I seldom can tell the difference. I strive to live as an ascetic and friend of the poor, but I reside in a million dollar house. I love to rise early and pray, but I also like to stay up late to watch football. I am trapped in the belly of a monster called Paradox.

In the Orthodox liturgical tradition, Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of the sea monster plays a significant role. It is the theme of the sixth of the nine odes that are always sung at matins. And particularly, Jonah’s prayer (2:3-10), is read every Friday morning (in monastic contexts): “I cried aloud in mine affliction unto the Lord my God, and He hearkened unto me; out of the womb of Hades You heard my cry and my voice.” When we are swallowed by a sea monster (literally or figuratively), we find ourselves in the womb or the belly of Hades. I imagine that I am not the only person who can relate to this.

Another important liturgical aspect of Jonah’s experience in the sea monster is that it is a type of Christ’s descent into Hades and resurrection on the third day. On Holy Saturday, we read the entire book of Jonah along with other Old Testament passages during the vesperal Liturgy while the baptisms are taking place. We descend into the water of baptism and are swallowed by the deep—just as Jonah was swallowed by the sea monster. And then three times we rise again in the Resurrection of Christ—just as Jonah was spat forth from the sea monster “like a babe from the womb,” or so the Paschal canon puts it. We die and rise with Christ in Baptism, but our Baptism is not the end of the story. Like much in the Orthodox liturgical tradition, things repeated thrice signify a pattern of life. Baptism is an initiation into a life of dying and rising, a life of finding oneself enclosed in the depths of Hades, in the belly of Paradox, only to cry out to God there, from the midst of the monster, from the depths of Hades. We cry out to God in the midst of the pain and the paradoxes that make up our life.  

We have no clean life or straight path to offer God, nothing reasonable or neat. We have to pray here, where we are now. We cannot wait to pray. We cannot wait until things are better, until we better ourselves. We have tried and we know that we cannot fix ourselves, much less can we fix the craziness of the network of relationships and responsibilities we find ourselves in, the paradoxes that have swallowed us. Like Jonah, we can only cry out from the belly of the sea monster, the womb of Hades, and wait, wait for God to save us.

St. Silouan of Mt. Athos said famously, “Keep your mind in Hell, and despair not.” I think one of the Hells (or perhaps a better way to put it is one aspect of Hell) that he is referring to is the monster of the life that has swallowed us, a life full of pain and paradox. The Hell of our life is real. We cannot pretend it is not a mess. But the Resurrection is real too. God is real. Prayer is real—even, perhaps especially, from the belly of a sea monster. “How long O Lord, how long?” This is the prayer of the Psalmist and the Prophets, and it is the prayer of the saints in the book of Revelation: How long O Lord?  

The scripture says that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. We cannot put God on our time schedule. What does three days in Hades feel like? How long does it last? How long,O Lord?  Ours is to pray and wait: to pray and wait and hope. And hope is often nothing more than a stubborn refusal to give in to despair. And yet there is mercy.  There is beauty amid the ashes.  There are moments when hope even buds into something that looks strangely like faith.  God is good, even in tragedy.  Mercy is present, even in suffering.  Jesus descended into Hell so that we would know that there is no place where His presence is absent: not even in the belly of a sea monster, not even in a life full of pain, not even in a life full of paradox.  In fact, as with Jonah, it is this very sea monster that we find ourselves trapped in that is carrying us to the place God wants us to be.

A Prayer of Not Knowing

St. Philaret of Moscow

In the Missionary Letters of Saint Nikolai Velimirovich (Vol. 3) #254, St. Nikolai records a secret prayer of St. Philaret of Moscow (+1867), found among his papers after his repose. Many of us are already familiar with St. Philaret's morning prayer: "O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace..." This prayer touched me so much that for my last few years of teaching, I printed it and gave it to my students at the beginning of each semester and began every class by reciting it (which I could get away with because I was teaching at a Christian institution: Trinity Western University). Interestingly, my mostly Evangelical or agnostic students became so accustomed to the prayer that when I didn't say it because I was in a hurry or distracted, they would sometimes ask me why I hadn't said the prayer. Even Evangelicals and agnostics can appreciate liturgical consistency.

The secret prayer of St. Phiaret goes like this:

• O Lord, I do not know what to ask of You.  You only know what I need.  You love me more than I am capable of loving myself.  O Father, give Your servant that which I cannot even request.  I dare ask for neither suffering nor blessing, but I stand before You with my heart open toward You.  You see the needs which I do not know. Look upon me and act according to Your mercy.  Chasten and heal, let me fall and get me up.  I tremble and remain silent before Your holy will and before Your judgment which is beyond reach for me.  I offer myself to You as a sacrifice.  There is no desire in me except for the desire to fulfill Your will.  Teach me to pray.  You, Yourself pray in me!  Amen.

Notice how much this saint does not know. For me, the beginning of open-hearted prayer comes as I begin to know my ignorance in prayer. I don't know what to pray. I don't know what I need. And I most certainly don't know what other people need. The God who knows everything, loves everyone, and can do whatever is necessary, this is the very God to whom I am speaking. God knows. What I can do is say amen. What I can do is open my heart to either suffering or blessing, falling or rising, chastening or healing. God knows. What I can do is offer myself as a sacrifice. Or at least, this is what I can pray to do.

Those of us who are living in a context of relative religious freedom may find sacrifice, perhaps, too strong a word. However, I suggest that every kind of suffering we endure for the sake of love for others or in resisting sinful passion or in enduring sickness without complaining or even in enjoying blessings without forgetting God and those who are suffering is exactly the sacrifice St. Philaret is referring to.  

The Temptation to Press

I've gotten started on the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series. Book one, "Master and Commander," is also the title of the movie starring Russel Crowe based on a couple of the novels in this series. I was hoping to do a podcast on the first book, but I didn't find much in the novel to recommend it as an edifying read for Orthodox Christians. Nevertheless, I'm quite enjoying the novels. It's one of those reads that I feel a bit guilty for liking so much. The story is completely engaging, the characters are real, human, and, unfortunately, for the most part godless. Or I might more correctly say deeply suspicious of the Church, especially the oppressive, coercive earnestness of Evangelicals. What is understood as Evangelical in the context of the novel is the lessons of Sunday school based on "those odious little tracts" teaching that it was God's will for the poor to be poor. But as Captain Aubrey's sweetheart points out, "It's all because they cannot read and write".
However even Captain Jack is tempted to preach a sermon on obedience to authority. His new, mostly pressed, crew was not responding well to his lieutenant's cruel indoctrination techniques. For those who do not know, most sailors were captured against their will--often knocked in the head and waking up in the bowels of a navy vessel.
The Bible is indeed a powerful weapon when used against those who can't or won't read it. Like the caricature of Evangelicals portrayed in the novel, we can all be tempted to read the Bible to buttress what we already believe, and to cudgel those who doubt our wisdom (i.e. To press them into our navy).

A Parable: by an Orthodox Christian priest who has just returned from an ecumenical gathering of largely Evangelical clergy

Once there was a starving man who found a field of potatoes, and finding the potatoes, he found life.  Potatoes alone were enough to keep him alive.

One day a family took a drive out into the countryside for a picnic and happened across the man saved by potatoes.  He was a gaunt and sickly man with little strength, but he was alive and thanked God for his potatoes.

“What are all of those things you are eating?” the skinny potato man asked.

“Apples and corn and potatoes and ham and cake for dessert,” they replied.

“Cake for dessert? the man inquired.

“Yes, cake for dessert.  Would you like some?”

“Certainly not," said the potato man. "You don’t need cake and ham and corn and apples to stay alive.  Potatoes are enough.  Look at me.  I was dying of starvation and potatoes saved me.  Everything I needed was in potatoes.”

The family was shocked.  “You mean you only eat potatoes?

“Of course.  Don’t you know: God gave us potatoes to eat so that we could stay alive.  Potatoes are all we need to eat.  Everything else just gets in the way and detracts from what's really important: Potatoes.  Potatoes will give you life.  'If it’s not in the potato, then you don’t need it and shouldn't waste your time on it'--that’s my motto.”

Not knowing how to respond to this, the family sat in silence for a while.  Then one them said, “We know that God gave us potatoes, but God gave us other food too.  Potatoes by themselves are not enough.

“You’re wrong there,” said the potato man.  “Potatoes were enough for me.  I was dying and potatoes saved me.”

“Yes,” said one slightly overweight but otherwise healthy family member, “I understand that potatoes alone, by God’s grace, may keep a starving man alive for a long time, but God has also given us many other foods that are meant to be eaten along side potatoes.  These other foods supply what is lacking in potatoes.”

“Nothing is lacking in potatoes,” insisted the man.  “Everything you need is there.  Potatoes are God’s gift, and if you don’t eat potatoes you will not find life.”

Stunned into silence, the family could say nothing more.  Soon the potato man turned and made his way back into his potato field.  The family began to look a each other and eventually shared a nervous giggle.  Perplexed and a little saddened they returned to their meal and finished off all of the apples and corn and bread and ham and cake...and potatoes.

The Mill On The Floss: Dr. Kenn

"I never knew any one who did such things." These are Maggie's words after she hears Stephen describe the piety of Dr. Kenn, the parish priest. Stephen explains that Dr. Kenn is the only man he has ever known "who seems to me to have anything of the real apostle in him--a man who has eight-hundred a year, and is contented with deal furniture and boiled beef because he gives away two-thirds of his income." Stephen goes on to reveal that Dr. Kenn had also taken in a poor boy who had accidentally killed his mother and kept him with him at all times so the the boy would not fall into despondency.

It is in response to this description of Dr. Kenn that Maggie says, "That is beautiful.... I never knew any one who did such things."

In Maggie's words, I wonder if I hear Eliot's.

Eliot is famous for having abandoned both evangelical pietism and Anglicanism to embrace the Transcendentalism that was common among Victorian intelligentsia. One wonders whether or not she, and many intelligent people for that matter, would have remained faithful to the received tradition if they had ever actually met someone who had "anything of the real apostle in him."

Eliot's description of the religion of Maggie's parents as "semi-pagan" but with no heresy in it, betrays much, I think, of many people's experience growing up in religious homes. Very few people take their faith seriously enough to let it change them--or at least change them in any ways other than conforming them to the community's ideals of good citizenship. It is easy, oh so easy, even for very dedicated Christian people to slip into a comfortable lifestyle, having fulfilled all religious obligation as far as the society dictates, and to let petty sins and socially acceptable passions bring meaning to their dull, self-centered lives. And when this is the case, when selfish preoccupation within the limits of societal acceptability is all one has to illumine the Gospel handed down in the religious tradition, then it is no wonder that thinking people would look for light elsewhere.

"I never knew any one who did such things." In the absence of Christian example, of light shining in and through another, the rush of strong passion and the intellectual machinations of a mature mind are too much for the God of Sunday School. The God who seemed so real, the "friend we have in Jesus," when we were eight years old, is no match for the tribulation of maturity. Yet where does one turn to learn of the grown-up Jesus? Where does one turn when the lives of those around you and the words of those whom you would think should know provide nothing but confirmation that, probably, there is no grown-up Jesus. I wonder if this was Eliot's own experience. In The Mill on the Floss, it is almost the experience of Maggie.

Not only does Dr. Kenn live something of "the real apostle," he has the sensitivity to notice that Maggie is hurting at the Bazaar. He has a presence that made Maggie feel a childlike relief so that she "told him her whole history in three words": "I must go." And Dr. Kenn understood, enough.

But Maggie is not able to go, and the thing she fears and longs for and knows she must reject comes upon her.

When she is back in St. Ogg's and in a relatively safe place, the first thing she asks for is it to speak to Dr. Kenn. She wants to tell him everything. And Dr. Kenn listens and believes her and does what he can to help her.

I'm glad that Maggie had a Dr. Kenn. I don't know if Eliot ever did.

We cannot realize the Life or death we sow in the lives of those around us by what we do when no one is looking and by what we let past unguarded lips. One need not be a priest to be a Dr. Kenn. There is a Royal Priesthood to which every Christian belongs. Everyone of us sows life, and sows death. Who are the Maggies in our lives?

In one sense we are all Maggies, looking for someone to help us see the grown up Jesus, looking for someone a little farther down the road to help us over the rough patch we keep finding ourselves in. Sometimes we find someone who can help us. Sometimes we go for long periods lost and hungry and looking. Most of the time, I suspect, we have to make due with weak fathers, stumbling mothers, with guides who help us only a little. However, maybe we can only really apply a little at a time. Maybe if we follow the little light we have, God will have mercy and send us a brighter one. Or maybe we will realize that we have been the dull ones all along.

America Coming to Orthodoxy

I got an e-mail today from a colleague in the world of Orthodox Christian publishing who commented that "America is not coming to Orthodoxy." It was at once a statement of realism and apparent resignation. However, I do not think his observation is correct. If by "America coming to Orthodoxy" we mean a massive conversion on a popular level--revivalist fervor, tent meetings with icons, incense and golden chalices, along with the accompanying recognition in the secular media--then certainly America is not coming to Orthodoxy. And I say thank God. I don't think the American Orthodox Church (and here I mean North American) has the administrative strength to handle a tsunami.
However, if one allows that coming to Orthodoxy begins by becoming aware that it exists and is a real option for Christians in North America, then I say America is coming to Orthodoxy. When I began teaching at a major Methodist seminary about twenty years ago, the M.Div. program required two semesters of Church history: New Testament to Reformation, and Reformation to present. In none of the one-year course of lectures was there any but the slightest reference to the Eastern Orthodox. Church history was a direct line from Paul to Augustine to Aquinas to Calvin/Luther to Wesley to whatever flavor of contemporary Christianity one preferred. Theology followed the same path. When I left this seminary five years ago, one full lecture in the history cycle was devoted to Eastern Orthodoxy, not a tsunami, but certainly an introduction that had never existed before. Similarly in theology, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Palamas had been "discovered." In New Testament, (albeit without the discernment of the Church) the importance of all first and second century Christian authors had been discovered.
When I came to Trinity Western (the largest Evangelical university in Canada), I was pleasantly surprised to find many faculty members openly discussing the role of tradition (of course it sounds better and probably draws less criticism from reactionaries if you use the Greek: paradosis). Theology faculty occasionally asked to discuss with me some of the more difficult aspects of Zizioulas (Being as Communion) or Yannaras (The Freedom of Morality). I would hear professors mention Schmemann and Tillich in the same sentence. Bishop Kalistos Ware's The Orthodox Church and The Orthodoxy Way were required texts in some courses (and often available in the general reading section).
It seems to me that America is coming to Orthodoxy. But like everything Orthodox, it takes a real long time.

Hellbound? First Impressions

I just got back from Hellbound?  I have to say that I was expecting much less.  I was expecting a sort of anti-Evangelical, maybe even sarcastic poke at one traditional Christian view of hell that is, conveniently, very easy to poke.  However, I was pleasantly treated to a balanced presentation.  Yes, there were screaming and angry street evangelists glorying in the damnation of everyone but themselves.  Yes, there were scenes of a "satanic" metal concert. And yes, there was even an exorcist who bases his understanding of hell on what Jesus says in the bible and "what the demons have told me."  However, there were also thoughtful Evangelicals providing a rational defence for "eternal, conscious, torment" in hell.  There were also thoughtful Evangelicals (and at least a couple of Orthodox and one Catholic) presenting a universalist view.

I was particularly pleased that the film pointed out that most universalists do not hold that there is no hell.  Rather, they hold that hell is an experience or process or something of the sort that is not greater than God.  Further, I was also glad that both the main Orthodox source and Catholic source argue that universalism is not a dogma, but rather a hope.  In the end, only God knows.  But we can hope, and indeed the prayers of the Church teach us to hope in God's mercy and love.

Finally, I think the strongest point the movie makes is not that universalism is right and eternal, conscious torment in hell is wrong.  The strongest point the film makes is that different opinions on the matter of afterlife have existed in the Church throughout history, and these differences have been tolerated and should be tolerated today.

I encourage everyone to see this film.  It will make you think.

The Staretz Never Came

When I was inquiring into Orthodox Christianity, I (and the group I was a part of) became convinced early on that we needed a staretz, an elder of profound holiness and insight to guide us. At the time, it made perfect sense. In the milieu from which we came, sincere earnestness was the primary—if not the only—indicator we had to spiritual vitality. And since we were an intensely earnest bunch of enquirers, we seemed to ourselves (although we never would have actually said this) to be spiritually alive to such a degree that normal guidance from just any priest would certainly not be adequate for us. We thought we were a special case, but the staretz never came.
After our community had been Orthodox for a year or two, we began to experience a lot of strife among the leaders of the community. The “system” of relationship, leadership and decision making that had created our community and led it to Holy Orthodoxy began to crack. From my perspective, the crisis was perhaps most acutely precipitated by the events leading to the death of our great friend and head chanter, Dn. Timothy. Suffice it to say that our new milieu, the Orthodox Church, provided ways of thinking about conflict and loving those who succumb to weaknesses of various sorts, ways that our community’s leaders did not equally recognize or appreciate. And then, of course, there was the bishop.
We were the first large group of converts that Bishop Joseph had received into Holy Orthodoxy. He had only been in the United States for one year, his English skills were still developing and he was completely unfamiliar with American Evangelical sensibilities. This was a recipe for misunderstanding and confusion if ever there was one. And still no staretz came. Misunderstanding and accusation bloomed like a red tide. Quickly factions emerged. It’s a funny thing about factions in a community: you don’t really have to be on anyone’s “side” to be on someone’s side. The very fact that you don’t vociferously defend (or accuse) the villain (or hero) of the moment makes you a de facto member of one party or another.
The most painful few years of my life were these years of trouble: wishing, hoping and praying for a holy man who could speak definitively and clearly, who could draw a line in the sand so that we could know which was the right side to be standing on. But the staretz never came. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that God did not confirm our delusionary self importance; rather, he let it self destruct. There was no right side or wrong side. There was no line to cross or not cross, as is the case with almost all conflict in the Church (and it’s that “almost” that makes conflict in the church so difficult to negotiate). There were only confused and frustrated people who wanted earnestly to do the right thing; and that earnestness itself was part of the delusion that needed to be purged, along with the assumption that the right thing was anything more than to love one another.