My Conversion: Leaving Anglicanism for Western Orthodoxy

If you haven't already, I encourage you to read my previous posts (Orthodoxy Not Eastern Orthodoxy and Searching for A Historic Faith) before reading this one.

Before converting to Orthodoxy, I was an Anglican for about two years. I had become an Anglican because I'd been searching for the apostolic Christian faith of the West. And while the Anglican Church was indeed Protestant, I believed it was also an apostolic tradition rooted in the ancient Church. In other words, I was an Anglican because the Anglican Church was, one, Western, and two, supposedly apostolic. Yet, anyone who knew me while I was an Anglican knew that I loved Orthodoxy, too -- never at the expense of Anglicanism, though. I still loved Anglicanism with all my heart, and I never thought to leave the Anglican Church for the Orthodox Church. I was content loving and emulating Orthodoxy as an Anglican.

Clearly, I don’t feel that way anymore. After two years, I did in fact leave the Anglican Church that I had once loved so dearly and to which I had once been so committed, and I became Orthodox. Why? What changed so significantly that I would no longer be content loving Orthodoxy from the outside as an Anglican?

Anglicanism: Western But Not Apostolic. As I already mentioned, I became an Anglican because I believed it was a Western, apostolic tradition. As a Protestant, I believed that Protestantism was about reviving and reconnecting with the apostolic heritage of the West that had been corrupted in the Roman Catholic Church, and when I found the Anglican Church, I was assured insistently that Anglicanism was precisely that. It was just as apostolic as it was Protestant -- "truly catholic and truly reformed" as they like to say. Keep in mind, however, that while an apostolic tradition requires a historic connection to the ancient Church, apostolicity is much more than just a historic connection. It also means being in complete continuity with the ancient Church, in both belief and practice. But after becoming Anglican, it didn't take me very long to realize that the supposed apostolicity of the Anglican Church was more of a historic connection than a true continuity with the ancient Church. Both in belief and practice, Anglicanism showed again and again that it fell short of a genuine apostolicity, and every time I considered the reason why, I came to the same answer: Protestantism. To my great disappointment, I concluded that Anglicanism cared more about retaining a Protestant identity than its ancient one, and in so doing, forfeited a fully apostolic Christianity. So, while it was Western, and it was historic, it wasn't apostolic.

Eastern Orthodoxy: Apostolic but Not Western. Not long after becoming an Anglican, I began to learn more about Eastern Orthodoxy, and I quickly fell in love with it. In the midst of so much disappointment in the Anglican Church, I found hope and comfort in the great faith of the Eastern Orthodox tradition that reassured me that an ancient and apostolic faith was indeed possible in the 21st century. I eventually came to regard Eastern Orthodoxy as the purest expression of historic, ancient, and apostolic Christianity. But keep in mind, I was still in search of a Western, apostolic tradition. I didn't believe an apostolic Christianity belonged exclusively to the East, nor that I needed to become Eastern to be apostolic because the ancient Church was just as much Western as it was Eastern. So, I had no intention of leaving the West for the Orthodox East. Instead, I chose to use Eastern Orthodoxy to revive and reconnect with the apostolic tradition of the West. Anglicanism became my way of being Orthodox (i.e. apostolic) in the West. I held myself and the Anglican Church to the apostolic standard of the East. I emulated my Orthodox brethren, aspired to be like them in every way, and exhorted my Anglican community to be like them, too. But, it seemed like an uphill battle, if not an impossible dream. Even if I myself cared to maintain an apostolic faith as an Anglican in the West, it seemed not many others cared.

Western Orthodoxy: Western and Apostolic. I was hungry for the ancient beauty of a full, faithful, Western, apostolic faith that was ever-living and ever-true. But lamentably, it seemed that the whole of my desire would never be met -- I could have the Western-ness of the Anglican Church or apostolicity of the Orthodox Church. Then, everything changed when, by the grace of God, I discovered Western Orthodoxy (through a 40-minue short-film called The Orthodox West). And upon this discovery, I realized I'd been wrong about Orthodoxy. This whole time, I thought that I had to choose between the apostolicity of the Orthodox Church or the Western-ness of the Anglican Church because I had made the mistake of thinking that Orthodox was synonymous with Eastern when in fact, Orthodox was synonymous with apostolic. Orthodoxy had nothing to do with East or West because the Orthodox Church did not claim to be half of the Church -- the Eastern counterpart to the Roman Catholic/Protestant West. The Orthodox Church claimed to be the Church in complete continuity with the ancient Church which had been equally Western as it had been Eastern. But if this was true, then I was in the wrong place. I was in the Anglican Church because I thought Anglicanism was my way to be "Orthodox in the West," but now I realized that if I wanted to be Orthodox in the West, the answer was being Western Orthodox, not Anglican.

Western Orthodoxy was what I'd been searching for this whole time: the apostolic faith of the ancient Church in the West. So, when I finally found it, I smiled, I cried, I gave thanks to God, and I became an Orthodox Christian.