Orthodox Christianity in the Americas has grown significantly in the last few decades. We have, however, seemingly done so by primarily recruiting mature or near-mature Christians from other traditions. Ex-Catholics and ex-Protestants abound in parishes today (alongside cradle Orthodox), but the ex-Pagans, ex-Muslims, ex-Atheists, etc. are a bit harder to find. They ARE there, but are fewer in number than we would like.
In particular, Orthodox Christianity seems to have found a niche recruiting theological conservatives who have become disillusioned with liberalizedWestern mainline churches - in particular, we do well recruiting intellectuals who are willing (and capable) of questioning the normative terminology of the faith around them. Given that we use a lot of the same words in slightly different ways (even with just slightly different connotations), this can be an intellectually demanding conversion process. Those of us who are converts may then struggle to present the faith effectively to, as my spiritual father calls them, "Joe Lunchbox." Given the intellectual gymnastics we had to undergo in our own conversion process, phrasing this stuff in ways accessible to someone who doesn't have the time or desire for that sort of thing becomes increasingly difficult. It remains, however, necessary.
The ether of our society brims with ready-made cliches and simple language suited to presenting the Evangelical perspective on the Gospel. We're saturated in it (to the point that even non-Christians in America will tend towards symbolic views of the Eucharist, iconoclasm, and assumptions that Christianity is about God forgiving our sins because we prayed a sinner's prayer). Roman Catholics run into difficulty with explaining the nuanced differences between Catholicism and Evangelicalism - Orthodox even more so.
So when someone who is untrained in Christianity (i.e. casually secular agnostic) says to you, "So... tell me about this Orthodoxy thing," what do you say?
We have to develop a language that can effectively, yet simpy, present the power of the Gospel as recieved by the Orthodox. I do not have an easy solution to this, but I'd like to propose a possible route to take and recieve feedback.
The goal: concise, yet complete, presentation of the Gospel graspable by people unaccustomed to Christian-ese and unadorned by theological vocabulary.
If someone asks me to explain Orthodox Christianity, I like to start with what I consider to be the most unique, central teachings: God's universal love and its fullest expression - the Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection. I might phrase it like this:
Orthodox Christians believe that the universe was created by God out of love - indeed, we believe that God IS love. God made humans unique in the universe in that we are also made capable of expressing and experiencing love. We were meant for that - to love and be loved; yet Orthodox Christianity also observes that we often don't do that. Look at our society, at our world, and you can see that as often as not we fail to love one another, fail to love and care for our environment, and fail to love or even pay attention to the God who gave us our lives.
We also know that, most of the time, we feel alone. We can connect with people around us, even profoundly so, but underneath all of that we live isolated in our heads - alone in our thoughts. If we call out to the universe, we hear an echo in response. God chose, in love, to end that isolation by becoming human. The very master and creator of all became a limited, regular man. Why? For love. We, in our rejection of love, chose to make a pig-sty of this paradise we'd been given. God said, fine - you want to live in a pig-sty? I'll come roll about in the mud with you. Since, in rejecting God's love we were, in essence, rejecting God's gift of life, God ALSO chose (freely, out of love) to join Himself to our DEATH. God died for us - entered the lowest and darkest parts of humanity, just to be with us - just for love - so that we could be with Him. God took our suffering, our lonliness, our hate, even our death, and He went through it all Himself. Why? So that when we are lonely, when we suffer, when we experience others' hatred, and when we die, we do not have to do so alone. We are with God.
If we realize that, REALLY and FULLY realize that, it can transform our lives. It helps us to see the suffering in our world and still trust that God is in control - in that sense, it transforms all of our weeping into joy. And, since we no longer fear death, we are liberated from the motives that tend to make humans selfish. People often justify the "eat, drink, and be merry" lifestyle (which, if we're honest, is selfish and causes a lot of harm in our world) by saying "for tomorrow you may die." But take away that fear of death, and suddenly we're free to love. So this joy that we have, we want to share it. We want others to be liberated - free to love - free to be who they were made to be. We want people to love creation, love one another, and love God (as that's the whole reason He came down to us). You can't have love without faith, so we believe that this transformation of our lives begins by us beginning again to trust God - to rely on Him rather than on ourselves.
Yet this transformation is difficult to accomplish. We have the habits of our fear & self-reliance deep within us. For that, God gave us the Church to help us. Here we have a community of like-minded individuals who help one another learn how to love - and this includes transforming the whole human person: body, mind, and soul. So our Church has various tools at its disposal to help us become who we were meant to be - that's why going to Church is so important for us. It isn't a guilt-ridden obligation; it is a hospital for those who seek spiritual health.
That still feels a bit long to me, but it gets the Orthodox message (God of love, human failure to respond, Incarnation, Resurrection, repentance back to love, need for the Church) in a smaller form than I typically encounter it. I could use some help paring it down even more, though - not to reduce the Orthodox Gospel (which is quite maximalist), but rather to package those essential, introductory doctrines in a language that isn't entirely beholden to Western (or, specifically, Evangelical) Christianity, as I think that creates more confusion and, ultimately, makes Orthodoxy come across as inaccessibly academic.
I'm also struggling to include sufficient reference to the ascetic & sacramental dimmensions of Orthodoxy without lapsing into heavily Christian-ese vocabulary. Likewise in making certain to include the importance of faith & repentance which, though not as fundamentally linked to the cross as they are in Western Christianity, are still quite central to the Orthodox understanding of the spiritual life.
Suggestions and help are welcome! How can we, as Orthodox, present the faith to those who are not trained in the normative vocabulary of Christian culture?
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