Two weeks ago, I happened to see that someone had posted an article that Hank Hanegraaff, “The Bible Answer Man,” had officially joined the Orthodox Church on Palm Sunday. Now, I remember hearing his show on the radio occasionally back in the early 90s, but I never listened much more than a few minutes—it just wasn’t my thing.
Needless to say, I was quite surprised to find he had joined the Orthodox Church. My first thought was, “Hey, how about that? That’s pretty great.” My second thought was, “I wonder how long it is until he loses his job?” It turns out the answer was…about seven days. Bott Radio Network booted him because he had joined the Orthodox Church. The president of Bott radio said, “We want to make sure that our listeners know that the programming that we have on Bott Radio Network is thoroughly biblical.”
The Young Earth Creationist organization, Answers in Genesis, responded to the news by posting online their chapter about Orthodoxy from their book, Word Religions and Cults. Frankly, the chapter was a childish and sophomoric misrepresentation of Orthodoxy. It was already evident that Ken Ham was not a fan of Hanegraaff long before Hanegraaff become Orthodox, because Hanegraaff wasn’t a YECist. Ham lambasted him in a few of his blog posts, “Hank Hanegraaff’s Abuse of Biblical Truth” and “Hank Hanegraaff Falsely Accuses Me on National Radio.”
Christianity Today did an article on Hanegraaff, there was a response from an Orthodox writer, and then there was the utterly vile website, Pulpit and Pen, that has written numerous pieces savaging Hanegraaff, accusing him of not being saved, as well as a number of utterly hateful and vicious attacks that I won’t even repeat or link.
Now, I am not really interested in addressing any of the specific “back and forth” that has been recently written regarding Hanegraaff’s entrance into the Orthodox Church and his expulsion from his job. What I do want to write about is why this story struck a real nerve with me. To the point, I went through something quite similar…twice.
My Journey to Orthodoxy
Perhaps someday I’ll write a fuller account of my journey from growing up in Wheaton, Illinois and attending and Assemblies of God church to eventually joining the Orthodox Church, but for now, a brief overview must suffice.
During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and it changed my life. I was a Christian and had grown up in a Christian home, but I never really felt “at home” in the Evangelical world. There just didn’t seem to be too much depth to it. It was Mere Christianity that convinced me there really was something to Christianity that I could really sink my teeth into. It gave me a picture of the beauty and intellectual rigor that embodied Christianity, and it made me yearn for more. The problem, though, was that I simply didn’t see too much of the Christianity Lewis described in the Evangelical culture of which I was a part.
And so, quite frankly, I felt like I was on my Christian journey all alone. I desperately wanted to find a home in a Christian community, but I never was able to do so. In college, I immersed myself in the writings of the Catholic monk, Thomas Merton, but Catholicism wasn’t for me. Then, while I was attending graduate school at Regent College, a couple of friends of mine encouraged me to attend a compline service at the Anglican church in downtown Vancouver.
When we got there the first time, we were a minute late, and the service had just begun. The church was dark, expect for some candles and some dim lighting, the choir was walking silently down the center aisle back to the choir loft, and the smell of frankincense filled the church. It was the smell of holiness. I remember distinctly what I thought at that moment, “This is the first worship service I have ever been in.”
I fell in love with liturgy that night, and never missed another compline service for the rest of my time at Regent.
Yet, after I graduated, I found myself in California, teaching at a small Christian school, and I never found something like what I had experienced in Vancouver. I was there for four years, tried a number of different Evangelical churches, but felt out of place in all of them. During that time, though, I started reading a lot about monks, as well as a number of books on Orthodoxy. As I read them, I found myself having the same feeling I did when I first read Mere Christianity, “Yes, this is what I’ve always felt! This is what I’ve always thought!”
It wasn’t until 2003, when I had moved to Little Rock, that I finally decided to attend an Orthodox Church service. As soon as I walked in the church, a voice inside me said, “I’m home.” After the service, I went to Starbucks and wrote these lines:
I know in my heart I am a man from the east.
I know I will journey there, to that communal feast.
I must walk upon the sacred sun’s journey.
I must travel unto that ancient eastern country.
Eventually, in December of 2005, I officially joined the Orthodox Church. At the time, I didn’t feel like I was “leaving” my Evangelical background behind. I was teaching at another Evangelical Christian school, and I honestly saw no conflict at all. What Orthodoxy gave me was a historical rootedness to the Christian faith I had all along. Sure, there were some specific things within Orthodoxy I didn’t quite really buy, but what I appreciated about it was its committed to preserving and bearing witness to the faith of the early church. It clarified “Capital T Tradition” that all Christians share from the “small-t traditions” that aren’t vital to the faith.
Evangelicalism Strikes…
As things turned out, the school at which I was teaching essentially fired me a year later. The reasons they gave were evasive and foggy. The new principal and interim headmaster said they objected to what I and my fellow 11th grade Worldview teachers covered in our Genesis 1-11 unit (and no, you might be surprised, never once did anything about creation/evolution come up), but for some reason I was the only one they targeted and got rid of. I couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone. It was all general concerns about “biblical authority” and “harming the students’ view of scripture.”
The only thing that my dad and I could figure is that I had recently joined the Orthodox Church. It was at the beginning of my final year that I had casually mentioned to the new principal that I went to the Orthodox Church—I remember the look on his face…he didn’t seem impressed. It was a few weeks later that the interim headmaster suspended me from teaching Worldview and made it was quite clear that I was no longer welcome at the school, and there was no way I would be re-hired after the year was done.
Evangelicalism Strikes…Again…
As it turned out, the headmaster who originally hired me in Little Rock had moved to another school in Alabama. And since I was in need of a job, and he was in need of a Worldview teacher for his school, he hired me again to develop the entire Worldview curriculum and teach Worldview there. Since there was no Orthodox Church in the area, though, I was essentially an “Orthodox in exile,” and I ended up going to a local Baptist church for most of my time at the school. That was okay, though—I figured for some reason, God wanted me there.
Five years later, when that headmaster moved on again, a new headmaster came in, and after his second year at the school, it was déjà vu all over again. As I briefly talk about in my book, The Heresy of Ham, and as I wrote in my post “Why I Am Not Teaching This Year,” the new headmaster decided I was “not a good fit” for the very Worldview program that I had built from scratch, primarily because I was not a young earth creationist, and I had dared criticize Ken Ham in a few posts I had written about the Nye/Ham Debate.
But there was another reason too, that I haven’t really shared much: he objected to the fact that I was Orthodox. He viewed it as “other,” and as antithetical to the Evangelical views of the school. And since Orthodoxy did not make young earth creationism a fundamental tenet of the faith, in his mind, they were “putting man’s opinion” over the Word of God. No matter how much I tried to get him to see that the thing I appreciated most about Orthodoxy was its focus on the fundamentals of the Christian faith that all Christians share, he would twist my words and would accuse me of putting tradition and the creeds above Scripture, and thus undermining the authority of God’s Word. I was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” who “spoke with the voice of the serpent,” and he was deeply considered about my influence on the students…all because I was Orthodox, and all because I wasn’t a YECist.
The irony of it all was that I had not been able to regularly attend an Orthodox Church for seven years. It didn’t matter—my views were rooted in Church history, and not the narrow, ultra-fundamentalist bubble this man lived in. I was “other,” so therefore I had to go.
Back to Hank…
Needless to say, reading about Hank Hanegraaff’s decision to join the Orthodox Church, and his almost immediate expulsion from the Evangelical world in which he was a part of for his entire life made me re-live some bitter memories.
I just have to say, I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.
I have never thought that the only “real Christians” are members of the Orthodox Church. Ever since I became Orthodox, I never thought it was necessary for all Christians to officially become Orthodox. For that matter, I highly doubt that my students even knew I was a member of the Orthodox Church (they probably didn’t really know my particular view of the creation/evolution debate either).
My attitude was simple: even if you don’t become Orthodox, your Christian faith can benefit and be enriched by learning more about the early Church and the early Christian teaching that the Orthodox Church has preserved. In fact, after I became Orthodox, I ended up teaching Mere Christianity for eight years at that small Christian school, and I was amazed at how Orthodox C.S. Lewis really was in his theology. But why should that surprise anyone? He was attempting to articulate mere Christianity—the fundamental beliefs of Christianity that all Christians share…that’s Orthodoxy.
And that’s what makes all this so hurtful and frustrating. You find an expression of the ancient Christian faith that fills your heart and makes you come alive, and you’re cast out like a leper by so-called Christians who you thought were your family. If that hasn’t happened to you, I can tell you that you have no idea what a horrible sense of betrayal it is. It scars you and confuses you.
To Conclude
After having gone through all that, twice, I’ve come to realize three things. First, there is no greater threat to one’s faith than to the betrayal and hatred of people you thought were Christian brothers and sisters. To quote the 80’s Christian band Petra’s song, “Judas Kiss”:
It must be like another thorn struck in your brow
It must be like another close friend’s broken vow
It must be like another nail right through your wrist
It must be just like just like Judas’ kiss
Secondly, as ironic as it sounds, but at the exact same time, those experiences strengthened my faith, and made me more certain of the truth of the Gospel. Why? Simple: Jesus told his followers to expect stuff like this to happen. It’s on virtually every page of the New Testament. Perhaps the most vivid verse, for me at least, is John 16:2: “They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.” The specific circumstances may be different, but if you are truly following Christ, you’re going to run afoul of modern day Pharisees—expect it.
Finally, I’ve come to accept that I’m a pilgrim and an exile. I was 34 when I walked into an Orthodox Church and felt like I had come home. By 37, God had brought me to a place where there was no Orthodox Church around. Now, I love the Methodist church I now attend, and am very thankful for the love and support I feel there. But I miss the liturgy…I’ve come to accept the fact that I probably will never feel truly at home this side of heaven. I’ve come to realize that people inevitably let you down, and sometimes they stab you in the back, so get used to the scars.
As for those so-called Christians who treat their fellow servants so abominably, a few lines from the song, Duke’s Travels, by the band Genesis (oh, the irony) come to my mind:
You kill what you fear
And you fear what you don’t understand
There was a choice, but now it’s gone;
I said “You wouldn’t understand…
Take what’s yours and be damned.”
thanks for sharing, Joel. I continue to be amazed that the Christian world has room and energy for this kind of pettiness. It’s counter-productive in every way – damaging people, and the gospel.
This is exactly the sort of thing that has soured me to most of American Christianity.
Great story – I am sorry you had a rough time of it but for some people, having an insular attitude is what they consider being “orthodox.” Evangelicalism inherited an insular attitude from fundamentalism – it is part of the system.
I call it the “Fundamentalist Frown,” when they thought you might really have been “saved” but they discover that you are actually the “other.” I got that a lot from fundamentalists and evangelicals when I was a Lutheran – one minute “you seem to know the Bible” and the next minute they doubt that you are “saved.”
I have sometimes been the “other” without even going very far. I left one Lutheran denomination when it became a bit too liberal. I tried going to conservative Lutheran churches but I discovered that they are very much into Young Earth Creationism. I would attend church a few times, I would ask how optional YEC is (bracing myself because I knew the answer). Their attitude went from welcoming (I had pretty good Lutheran credentials) to – you don’t believe the Bible (or you are “confused”) so you don’t belong here.
It was depressing, being rejected over a secondary issue. What was painful was that I took the Bible seriously and studied theology and wrestled with things, but I was treated almost like a pagan. But someone could walk in with a casual attitude and as long as they checked all the right boxes on the checklist, they were fine.
I finally found a church that was pretty conservative but you could even accept evolution and no one would blink. It is a church that broke away from the Episcopal Church and they have a great liturgy, so for now I feel like I am at home. It is hard, not having a church home because you study the Bible and you take things seriously so you can’t indifferently say “whatever” and check all the boxes they want you to check on their list.
I was not clear in the first sentence of my reply above. What I meant by some people having an insular attitude and being “orthodox” that way, is that often in evangelicalism and always in fundamentalism the more you isolate yourself from and reject others, the more “biblical” or orthodox (with a small “o”) you can claim to be. Some groups measure how spiritual they are by not associating with anyone outside of their group.
Thanks for comments. I understood what you were saying. I’d probably use the word “pharisaical.”
My oldest son, 26, is joining the Orthodox Church. His brother, my second son, 24, considers it not to be a church and doubts his salvation. They had always been very close, and this strain in their relationship bothers me.