by Dylan Jenkins
Jaroslav Pelikan, renowned Yale professor of history and religion, converted to Orthodoxy in the latter years of his life. Dr. Pelikan described his lifelong journey into the Church as “circling the airport.” This description fits the experience my wife Meg and I had in approaching Orthodoxy as well: initial discovery, questioning, learning, circling, and finally safely landing upon our conversion.
Unwitting Passengers
Our flight from Protestantism to Orthodoxy began in June 1996, when I was introduced to John Oliver. Two years earlier, John had converted to the Orthodox faith after a transformative visit to Russia to help restore the Valaam Monastery (documented in his book, Touching Heaven). When we first met John, he was diligently working out his faith and contemplating joining the priesthood. We clicked, and thus spent several late nights drilling into many subjects, including church doctrine and practice.
The evening before we departed, John and I locked horns in a civil but spirited discussion about the Bible, church history, and the legitimacy of the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. Toward the end of our debate, John punctuated his thoughts (and mine) with, “Dylan, I’m sure that if you continue to seek the truth, you will come to embrace Orthodoxy.”
Initially, my ego was wounded and the emotional high of making a new friendship was sobered. But in our short time together, John’s confident and gentle humility had captured my respect. I soon reconsidered his counsel as an older brother’s wisdom; and in hindsight, this moment marked the beginning of our journey to Orthodoxy.
Turbulence in the “Primitive Church”
In the years immediately surrounding our marriage, Meg and I searched for a church we could call home. We attended several, but none fulfilled our two basic needs: that a congregation be loyal to conservative biblical doctrine, and that it view and conduct itself as a tightly knit family. Further, having been exposed to Orthodoxy and knowing enough church history to begin questioning the validity of sola scriptura, we were developing a third criterion to evaluate sound church doctrine: the congregation must acknowledge Holy Tradition as a legitimate and necessary form of revelation, in addition to and inseparable from biblical revelation.
We had long ruled out mainline Protestant denominations due to their subscription to an alarmingly liberalized theology. We discovered the house church movement and began meeting with several Christian families in a local house church. Our house church was the center of our spiritual life for nearly five years. It was and is an earnestly God-seeking, Bible-loving body that fully met our first two criteria for what we believe the church is and should strive to be. Some of our closest friends are still in the house church movement.
During that same period, through texts on church history, our relationship with the Olivers, and occasional attendance at Orthodox churches, our exposure to Orthodoxy increased. Through this exposure, we began to recognize some key structural problems in the house church theology. Most notable was the disdain for “institutional” church tradition, a.k.a. the “traditions of men,” which is house church shorthand for the set of misinterpretations and innovations of the organized church that resulted in liberalized theology and departure from biblical teachings.
To this degree the house church movement is enlightened, in that it rejects modern liberal theology. However, in practice their zealous rejection of corrupted tradition has become an undiscerning disregard for all church tradition. Those in the house church movement don’t realize that the movement itself relies on Holy Tradition, which produced and for two millennia has defended Holy Scripture against every heresy thrown at the Church from the gates of hell. Holy Tradition—largely unknown and consequently unacknowledged by much of Protestantism—is nonetheless a necessary pillar of revelation without which the Bible as we know it would not exist.
Attempting to distance themselves from the traditions of men, house churches intentionally unplug from mainline Protestantism. However, in this process of unplugging, the “baby” of Holy Tradition is discarded with the “bathwater” of corrupted Protestant theology, and the opportunity to reconnect with the Apostolic Church is lost. Not connecting with Holy Tradition, the “organic” or “open church” (as the house church movement often refers to itself) has developed its own set of traditions, further distancing itself from the Orthodox faith.
To believe that the Church has died and must resurrect itself as a new movement contradicts Christ’s own words in Matthew 16:18 that the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church. If Christ’s “never” meant never, then the church never died. The only question is, where is it?
Circling the Airport
In 2004, a job change took me to Williamsport in central Pennsylvania. We made the choice to live in Williamsport in part because of the presence there of the region’s only Orthodox congregation. We sought full exposure to the Orthodox Church as a sound foundation upon which to either accept or reject it. We couldn’t learn all we needed to know about Orthodoxy by reading books and through our relationship with Orthodox family members. To fully understand Orthodoxy we had to immerse ourselves in Orthodox life and practice. Although we were not Orthodox, we knew enough to believe that we might become so. Thus we regularly attended Holy Cross for about eighteen months to find out whether or not Orthodoxy was indeed our true home.
Meg and I soon recognized that pledging allegiance to Orthodoxy was equal in commitment to marriage. Having spent 34 years in several Protestant and nondenominational churches, including five years in the house church movement, we were still unsure of our ability to commit to Orthodoxy. We needed to view Orthodoxy one more time from the outside to know for certain that Orthodox faith and practice were superior to the alternatives with which we were more familiar.
We took a somewhat restless break from Orthodoxy and attended a nondenominational church for about a year. This church had freshly separated from a mainline Protestant congregation over differences in basic Christian doctrine, and was then asking many questions to which Orthodoxy had the answers. Early on it began repeating the same set of errors that all churches disconnected from Holy Tradition are destined to repeat, the same errors we observed in the house church.
While there, I served on the pastor search committee as the “new guy,” providing guidance in that search according to the church’s recently adopted statement of faith and bylaws. During that time I occasionally mentioned the Orthodox faith, and the church elders approached me about incorporating some Orthodox practices into their community. At that point I recognized that unlike Protestantism, true and whole Christian practice is exactly that, true and whole. It is not a holy refrigerator from which an individual, congregation, or denomination can select the ingredients that best suit today’s appetite and choose new ingredients for a different appetite tomorrow.
Meg and I practice our faith imperfectly, but we are not just Sunday Christians either. We immersed ourselves in every church we attended, and we understood the theology to which these churches subscribed. All of these churches were composed of good folks who had a genuine desire to know God and His will for their lives.
But like most Protestant churches we have been a part of, our interim church suffered from a recurring structural deficiency in foundational theology: sola scriptura. This doctrine asserts that individually interpreted biblical revelation is sufficient for knowing and following God’s will in all matters. Most adherents to sola scriptura will freely concede that it is not the created conscience, but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that allows full and right interpretation of Holy Scripture. However, if the Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself, why are there so many individual Protestants and Protestant denominations with irreconcilable interpretations of basic theological truths?
The answer, we came to realize, is that the Protestant church is largely disconnected from Holy Tradition. Certainly, in some significant ways, the faith and forms of various Protestant denominations reflect fragments of Orthodox teaching. And certainly the Bible itself is the product of the Orthodox Christian Church. However, what truth is found in Protestantism can rightly be viewed as artifacts of Orthodoxy that survived the Great Schism, but are increasingly muffled in a mangled theology disconnected from Holy Tradition. For us to continue to distance ourselves from, and now that we knew better, to outright reject Holy Tradition, we felt was tantamount to flirting with the gates of hell. We could no longer in good conscience be a part of the Protestant church.
Our experience in the Protestant church instilled in us a deep respect for Holy Scripture and the search for true faith and Christian practice. But everything about our last experience with the Protestant church made us return with confidence to Orthodoxy—this time ready to make it our home.
Safe Landing
On May 19, 2007, Meg and I and our two children committed ourselves to the Orthodox faith. I am proud to note that our third child was the first Jenkins born into Orthodoxy. With the Orthodox Church as our spiritual home, we have a newfound peace. While we still have much to learn about our faith, there is great relief in knowing that our search for the True Church is complete. We have a sense of being home and not having to question where we belong or what stance to take on foundational theology and doctrine.
In the absence of Holy Tradition, we had attempted to decipher truth solely through Bible study. As Orthodox Christians, we have gratefully inherited the fullness of God’s revelation to mankind: Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Holy Scripture, and Holy Tradition. We now have great comfort knowing that our faith and our practice, like Christ Himself, is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
While our sometimes-turbulent flight to Orthodoxy lasted a decade, we are grateful to have landed relatively early in our lives; God willing, we have the better part of our lifetimes to experience the Church in its fullness. As (now) Fr. John Oliver confidently counseled us ten years earlier, an earnest search for the truth indeed leads one to discover and embrace Orthodoxy. We thank God for bringing us home. Glory to Jesus Christ!
Dylan and Meg Jenkins and their three homeschooled children attend Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Dylan is the director of forest conservation for The Nature Conservancy.
