Considering Western Rite Orthodoxy

Our desire at Holy Cross Anglican Church (REC) was to build a church that would be around until the second coming of Jesus Christ. We were convinced theologically that ancient, Biblical Christianity was sacramental at her core and we wanted to pass on to our children and the town of Alpine, TX a sacramental worldview. As I began to think about the future of Holy Cross and what exactly I was doing there, it occurred to me that this sacramental worldview could be shattered by the next priest that came to Holy Cross after me since Anglicanism is not sacramental at her core. The Anglican church allows room for both sacramental and non-sacramental theologies to exist side by side within the same church. For example, there are priests or ministers that understand Holy Communion to be a mere symbol, like J.C. Ryle, and others who understand it to be the very body and blood of Christ like Edward Pusey. Ryle and Pusey hold two theologies that are totally the opposite of each other and yet they are both Anglican theologians. I began to see that within the Anglican world there was no way to guarantee a continuation of a sacramental worldview because of the plurality of theologies within Anglicanism which has always been part of the character of Anglican theology from the beginning. About this time I remembered hearing about the Orthodox Church allowing the use of the Western Rite. Western-rite Orthodox Churches use the liturgy of St. Tikhon which is basically the Anglican liturgy (BCP) without the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed and a stronger wording that expresses the change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Since Orthodoxy is sacramental at her core and the Antiochian Orthodox church allows for the use of the same Anglican liturgy that we used every Sunday with good improvements, then I started thinking that this might be a more stable place for us to build a church that extends into the future for our children and their children. I also noticed that in our present Anglican situation that the sacramental worldview depended on the priest being sacramental and not the church. In other words, the foundation of each parish in Anglicanism seemed to be the priest and not the church. In Orthodoxy you have a sacramental worldview because the church at her core is sacramental. So I approached two leaders on our church council (Vestry) about looking into the possibilities of Holy Cross moving to the more consistent sacramental place of Orthodox Christianity. There are more reasons that I had for considering Orthodoxy that I will share in later posts.