I was an Anglican

 

Are you interested in Orthodoxy?

You are not alone. Each year the number of Western Christians finding a secure, stable and transforming life in Orthodoxy is growing. The British Orthodox Church is made up almost entirely of converts from a wide range of Christian backgrounds, other religions and no faith at all. We have all come together to find the fulness of the Christian life in Orthodoxy.

We are very glad that you have taken the time to visit our website and we hope that these resources will help you understand a little more of what Orthodoxy is all about, experience something of our spiritual life, and even discover how you can be a part of real Christianity for yourself.

Orthodoxy has so much to offer the modern world. It has a stability of faith and doctrine that rejects our preoccupation with the immediate. Orthodoxy does not change its moral base to reflect the mores of those around us, rather it demands that we ourselves be transformed day by day. So the practice of any form of homosexuality, or indeed the practice of heterosexuality outside marriage, is not condoned. There is no agitation for the ordination of women. The Bible remains the central pillar of Church teaching, and the traditional doctrines about Christ are vigorously defended. Our life in the Church has the aim of transforming us, we do not seek to make the Church merely reflect our own spiritual mediocrity.

If you have any questions then please make sure you ask them. We will do our very best to support your spiritual pilgrimage as best we can.

 

I was born and brought up as an Anglican and went until my late teens to an Anglo Catholic parish, which I enjoyed a great deal. But like many young adults I drifted away from the church while I was a student and only came back in my late twenties or early thirties, after the birth of my eldest daughter.

Within a very short time after my return I had accepted an invitation from my parish priest to become a Reader and I served in that capacity for seventeen years. I never lost my Anglo Catholic convictions but it was difficult to maintain these in a parish that was ‘middle of the road' Anglican. I also became increasingly dissatisfied with Liberal Anglicanism, which steadily gained strength both in my parish and in the church at large. The last straw came with the ordination of women to the priesthood.

I immediately requested a sabbatical from my Office as a Reader and worshipped initially at two Anglo Catholic parishes, where I felt more at home than I had at any time before. However, both were busy exploring the possibility, priests and some laity, of being received into the Roman Catholic Church. I knew this wasn't for me and I had in any case over the years developed a strong attraction towards Orthodoxy. I started attending the Liturgy, mostly at the Russian Orthodox Church.

One day I was invited to attend a Liturgy at the Orthodox Church of the British Isles (OCBI). I had never heard of this small church before but I was strongly attracted to it, although I was reluctant to seek admission as it was an independent Orthodox church. Questions of authority and ecclesiology had been my principal objection to women's ordination and so it seemed right that I should not take any more risks.

If I became Orthodox it must be in a canonical jurisdiction, not in an independent church however attractive. Imagine my joy when I soon after received the news that the OCBI was to be received into the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, under the new title of The British Orthodox Church. I was received into Orthodoxy in November 1994 and became in time a Subdeacon, which seemed a fitting way to continue the ministry that I had begun as a Reader. This is a crucial point.

At no time was I invited to repudiate my former spiritual journey, and it continues now with a new impetus, free from dubious theological innovations and the secular liberalism that is undermining the faith of so many sincere Christians in the western world.

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