Source: The Orthodox Evangelist
by Joseph Abbate / President – St. Symeon the New Theologian Orthodox Evangelism & Renewal
If you are a member of the Orthodox Church in the United States, you cannot help but notice the large increase of people in the Church. In fact, Orthodox Christianity has grown substantially just in the past few years.
Unlike the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska, which had been there for hundreds of years, many Greeks and Armenians came to this country in the early 1920’s because of the Asia Minor Disaster, when these communities were being all but wiped out by Turkish military forces. Most of them arrived here with only a couple of dollars in their pockets. I remember talking with survivors of that terrible event who ended up in Church parishes in the Chicago area.
These Greek communities had lived and thrived in Asia Minor before the time of Alexander the Great, and in a matter of days were killed, displaced or sold into slavery and their homes burned to the ground.
The Orthodox Christian faith is still, for the most part, unknown or misunderstood in America. This is mostly due to the fact that Orthodox Christians, such as Greeks, Eastern Europeans, Africans and Arab communities did not arrive in America until rather recently, unlike the Western Europeans who had arrived to these shores in the 1500’s and 1600’s. The Americas were primarily settled by Spain, France and England who were Catholics or Protestants.
At the same time, this makes Orthodoxy unique and unstained from many controversial issues of past history which at times can bring divisions regarding different ethnic arguments. Orthodox peoples did not bring slavery with them and were not involved with colonial ambitions. In fact, these matters had diminished several centuries ago in the Byzantine Empire mainly due to Christian ethics demonstrated by the Orthodox peoples of the day.
For example, The Justinian Code had brought an equality during the Medieval period rarely seen at that time. The Greek citizens saved many people of the Jewish and Muslim communities and came to their assistance during the siege of Constantinople while the armies of the Fourth Crusade sacked the city.
At the time of the great influx of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, many of these migrants worked along with other ethnic groups in America during the turn of the 20th Century. There is a multicultural assembly of Christians in many of our Orthodox parishes today. It is not uncommon for African, Arab and Eastern European Christians to worship together on Sunday mornings. This cannot be said for many other Christian denominations.
During the founding days of the Church, the Apostles and early Christians spread the Gospel to Asia Minor, Africa, Greece and the Italian peninsula. It was all part of the Roman Empire. The ancient capital cities such as Alexandra, Antioch, Athens and Rome became multicultural centers filled with Orthodox Christian believers.
These multicultural communities have shared a common faith, often through the bond of martyrdom. To this day, we have witnessed over the news the persecution of Orthodox Christians at the hands of dictators, extremist terror groups and systems of governments, such as Communism, which have been hostile to the faith. Greece and much of Eastern Europe suffered at the hands of the Ottoman Empire for 400 to 500 years. There are countless saints and martyrs of this period who are remembered on our Church calendars and during our services.
Converts to Orthodoxy
Overall, the recent converts which I have talked with have come into the Church with a genuine hunger for Christ. They also wish to learn more about the doctrines of the Orthodox Church. Many converts have come out of some abusive teachings and at times off the wall doctrines from their former denominations. However, some of them like to believe that the Church is in a perfect, static state, as if the Church is not made of people who are sometimes imperfect, as if the Church popped out of a fifth century time-warp. They are often unaware of some past and present issues in the Church.
Sometimes, they may frown upon any Orthodox priest or layperson who has been involved in the practice of evangelism either from the pulpit or in writings, or mission outreaches. Many converts fail to comprehend that Sunday morning sermons are actually quite new in the Orthodox Church. Having been a cradle-Orthodox, priests hardly preached. A sermon delivered after the Divine Liturgy was rare, and if the priest did give a message, it was often a just generalized one on moral issues which could be heard in a secular meeting.
Back in the day, the Lord’s prayer used to be said out loud only by the priest in front of the Holy Altar. Such new innovations, as parishioners touching the hem of the priest’s garment during the Great Entrance was never done before. Neither was praying with one’s hands up. The Divine Liturgy in the Greek Orthodox Church was also done primarily in the Greek language. Bible study groups were also a rarity. The Renewal Movement in the Orthodox Church was to urge Bible Studies and stress a personal relationship with Christ, to bring Him out of obscurity and into a daily reality. Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, Fr. John Meyendorff, Fr. Alexander Schmemann and groups such as the Orthodox Christian Laity (O.C.L.) helped to usher many practices to have the lay people more active in the Church. It took decades to get some of these things accomplished, often with resistance and trials.
Many of the protestant denominations which the new converts had come out of, were often used to strong Gospel messages being proclaimed by their former pastors. They should not relegate preaching to being a Protestant stand-alone tradition. It is a sad fact that many cradle Orthodox Christians had left the Orthodox Church and joined non-denominational or Pentecostal denominations because they never heard the Gospel proclaimed to them. This will probably shock many converts to Orthodoxy, but back in the day many more people had left the Orthodox Church than joined it. I can attest as someone who grew up as a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, that I did not know of God’s love or plans for my life because I never heard it in Church. This was not relegated to just one parish. Having Greek relatives, I attended several Orthodox parishes on a good number of occasions.
It was for this reason that the late Father Stephanou wrote the books such as Sacramentalized but not Evangelized. Regarding some converts that Fr. Stephanou had observed in his day, he wrote in the Booklet Converts to Orthodoxy, a Grave Concern: “They are totally absorbed with the ‘riches of Orthodoxy.’ They are more eager to convert their former coreligionists (evangelicals, for example) to Orthodoxy rather than convert unbelievers and sinners to the Lord Jesus Christ. Conversion amounts to converting to Orthodoxy, rather than to Christ!
Such converts are more excited about making an Orthodox out of a Baptist, rather than making a Christian believer out of an atheist, an unbeliever, a drug-addict and an alcoholic. Rather than preach the Gospel to the world at large for the redemption of the lost, they prefer preaching Ortho-dox ecclesiology, history and liturgy to prove Orthodoxy as the true Church.
What I want to admonish our zealous converts is to bring the lost souls to Christ. Once they have received Christ in a life-changing experience, they will desire to join the Church whose member brought them to salvation. They won’t need historical and theological arguments. Don’t start with the intellect. Let the Lord change their hearts first. Then you can follow later with the doctrinal superstructure, the blessings of incense and icons!
Is not Orthodoxy a redeeming experience of Christ? After everything is said and done about Orthodoxy’s historical claims, the bottom line remains: Is Jesus Christ known in a love relationship? Christ remains at the core of Orthodoxy, not simply a commitment to sound doctrine and Orthodox ethos. The salvation of the soul is at stake—not saving the Byzantine superstructure.
Ex-Roman Catholic priests tend to bring excess baggage with them when they are admitted into the Orthodox Church, like Roman, clerical authoritarianism. On the other hand, many evangelicals and Pentecostals bring with them an aversion for anything that sounds like revival and spontaneous worship. You can hear them saying something like this: ‘O, I left all that kind of stuff behind me. Don’t talk to me about being born again and all that Protestant jargon.’
We who are cradle members of the Church want to see Orthodoxy vibrant. We do Orthodoxy a disservice when we varnish over all the spots, wrinkles and blemishes that disobedience and rebellion have caused to appear on the body of Christ, (the Church). Converts have a special calling from God; to help put our own house in order, to help get the savor back into the salt and to trim our lamps with fresh oil.
The best testimony we can give to the world about Orthodoxy is the spiritual power that we manifest. Let the world see our works of faith. Let the world see our changed lives. Let the world see the transforming power of Christ in our lives.
Let the world see that Orthodoxy is the place to go to have human needs met, spiritual, emotional and physical. Let the world see the fruits of the Holy Spirit in Orthodoxy.”
Amazing Writings Now Available
The past number of articles published in the Orthodox Evangelist have been excerpts from some older writings of Fr. Eusebius Stephanou. Many of these works are from the 1950s and 1960s. They are very rare and, in most cases cannot be found for sale anywhere else. While we may have 10 or 20 copies for some of them, others, we are down to only one or two originals.
We are making these very rare and insightful writings available for sale. We have made some print copies of some of them. Please tell your friends about them. You may contact us by email or phone for prices.
Titles include: “An Orthodox Interpretation of the Crisis of Western Society”, “Charisma and Gnosis in Orthodox Thought”, “An Orthodox Approach to Christian Philosophy”, “The Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement”, “An Analysis of Religious Language Within a Christian Framework”, “The Importance of Apostolos Makrakis to Orthodoxy”, “Toynbee and the Orthodox Christian Society”, “The Orthodox Church Militant”, “The Holy Spirit in the Creation of Man”, “How the Orthodox Church Differs from Roman Catholicism”, “Belief and Practice in the Orthodox Church”, “The Charismata in the Early Church Fathers.”
We are also in the process of converting these writings to a PDF computer format. Please remember to watch the YouTube videos: The Logos Outreach with Fr. Eusebius Stephanou and listen to the Podcasts on Apple and Spotify: The Logos Orthodox Outreach.
Source: The Orthodox Evangelist, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2025