John W. Oliver

After a minister declared Friends "support the president" in the 1991 Gulf War, I began to attend an Orthodox Church, drawn by liturgy and a "hireling priest," a former Episcopalian who converted to Orthodoxy after leaving the College of the South at Sewannee, Tennessee. This was my first exposure to a liturgy that retains forms and much of the content of early Christian worship. My son, now studying to be a priest, joined first. Marge, my wife, whose Quaker roots go back to 1660, was second. A daughter joined next. I was fourth. Another daughter came later. My first daughter, Kim Pandorf, and her family now attend an Orthodox Church in Tampa.

I came looking for truth. Writing a chapter on the history of the college for Cradles of Conscience: Ohio’s Independent Colleges and Universities (2003) and for a forthcoming book on Quaker colleges, I was impressed by how much Ohio’s evangelical Quakers had changed in the later twentieth century. Thinking about killing had changed, with little or no reference to Quaker tradition or history. Even the "Christian world view" we talked about at the college had undergone major revisions, dropping or de-emphasizing some nationalistic and capitalistic baggage from the early and (with some) mid-1960's, but still far removed from the Christian mind of Francis of Assisi or John Chrysostom. There was no catechism to call us to account. Rules by church and college for how to live – having to do with war, movies, and dancing – changed as a broader evangelicalism supplanted "holiness" theology, church and college in sync with one another, with little, if any, effort to cite Biblical texts to support or oppose change. The questions were: "What is being done at other Christian colleges?" "What is wanted by the constituency, Christian or secular?" It is one thing to put out to sea. It is quite another to have no fixed compass, whether Scripture, book of discipline, or stable theology, to direct where to go. Tactics change. But truth?

After I became Orthodox, as if in confirmation of this decision, other evangelical Friends underwent similar treks to this ancient worship. But, was this a mere local phenomenon, perhaps induced by the water in northeast Ohio? After my spiritual odyssey, I learned about the Orthodox Peace Fellowship (www.incommunion.org), led by Jim and Nancy Forest. Jim, while International Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, had been a Friend. A peacemaker, he explores in Orthodoxy a vision for non-violence that embraces all human life.

In 1998 I joined six others to establish a North American chapter of OPF (Orthodox Peace Fellowship in North America.). Talking around a table in Dayton, Ohio, it popped up that every one of us had at one time been a Friend: Conservative, Evangelical, FGC, and FUM. Our journeys had been remarkably the same. We had looked for a fuller vision of the sacred, experienced in worship, and carried from there to all creation. (My son’s writings on the sacred character of the creation appear in Touchstone magazine.)

As a convert, this vision came to include three things. The first has to do with incarnation, the second with icons, the third with liturgy and the Eucharist.

As an evangelical, I believed God is incarnate in Christ. As Orthodox, I see the holy God of Scripture incarnate everywhere and in everyone. If "the American story" is the "John Wayne story" – good guys vs. bad guys, the bad needing to be killed – as an Orthodox Christian it can no longer be my story. Good and bad are incarnate in me. More than that, the liturgy requires me to say, "Christ came into the world to save [not kill] sinners, of whom I am first." We are to convert, not kill, enemies. My war is with the enemy within me, the chief of sinners.

The liturgy, with the Eucharist , may be the most wondrous of all. In the liturgy I plead over and over for mercy. After this, how can I demand justice – not mercy – for another? The mystery of the Eucharist cannot be neatly defined as transubstantiation or consubstantiation. It is, well, mystery, to be adored, not defined. Christ’s body and blood in each communicant in the most intimate possible way will appear obscene to some, but it is capable of being understood by every lover.

Finally, it is only fair to note that this vision is not to be confused with ugly Orthodox realities: phyletism (religious nationalism), a readiness to deny religious freedom to others, ethnic cleansing, and tainting legitimate authority with pride and arrogance. A loving priest or hierarch offers guidance in times of crisis, with wisdom, love, and encouragement. But power can change some personalities for the worse, or attract persons seeking power. Orthodoxy can expect to be influenced by American culture, as it has already been influenced by cultures in other lands. While Orthodoxy does not welcome revision or change, it is always relevant to reexamine Scripture, Tradition (Orthodox distinguish between "Tradition" and "tradition"), canons and councils for wisdom, guidance, and correction.

I also do not find the argument of some Orthodox that war is "a necessary evil" any better than the "just war" view: not when these whisper "necessary" and shout "evil" in times of peace, then, in times of war, reverse the volume. Nevertheless, I am helped by Fr. Stanley Harakas, whose "Orthodox motif" for looking at war insists that "peace in its multifarious dimensions, was central to the ecclesial, patristic, canonical, and ethical concerns of [historic] Orthodoxy." I am also helped by hesychast (inner silence) spirituality that calls for war only within me, and refuses to judge others, even enemies. The "Jesus prayer:" ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.") asks only for mercy. Hesychasts see all creation as holy.

Perhaps I have followed a path foreseen by T.S. Eliot, who said "The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time." It is a place for reason and "speaking truth." But now I find consummation in mystery, glory, and wonder. Seeing you I can only babble "holy, holy, holy." Friends, Enemies. Criminals. The unborn. All are holy.

Incarnation. Icons. Eucharist. Liturgy. Hesychast spirituality. These are windows to something beyond categories that shape Western minds. These vistas permit me to step outside the box, to see a world that transcends categories that once dominated my thinking. In this world, neither gender nor nationalism trump non-violence. Questions of "just" or "necessary" war fall away. My calling is to bring brothers and sisters to mercy, not to justice.

Finally, will this vision make us irrelevant? Will it disengage us from the modern dialogue? Or is this vision of glory our sole hope, a shift in thinking that makes killing unthinkable?

Indeed, it may disengage us from the present dialogue. But, as Robert Skotheim notes in The Historian and the Climate of Opinion, our understanding of American history changed in the twentieth century in ways that "coincided with alternations in the prevailing climate of opinion." The shift from progressive to consensus to New Left did not occur because historians came up with better answers to old questions. Rather each succeeding school posed, researched, and answered its own questions about the past. As Louis Hartz remarked, the best way to refute someone is "to substitute new fundamental categories for his own, so that you are simply pursuing a different path."

Mystery and holiness change the categories. They transform how we see every other human being. Is this the radical revisionism we need for an age when, as Auden said, our choice is to love one another or die?

Mystery opens our eyes to wonder, to cherish what is holy. John Chrysostom said:

"Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, ‘This is my body,’ and made it so by his word, is the same who said, ‘You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.’ Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor, for what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls."

Christ incarnate in the Eucharist: so sacred to early Christians that only believers were permitted to be present at this holy consummation, a mystery mirrored in the unity of the Trinity, or the physical/spiritual consummation of oneness between male and female, or the connectedness that comes from sharing the Spirit of God?

What is it about God that seraphim sense, but dare not see, that shrinks language to "Holy, holy, holy. . . ."? Is it a vision akin to what Walter and Emma Malone saw that led them to shout "Glory. Glory. Glory." Is this vision of incarnate glory needed to rightly see, and save, the earth? Do we dare set our minds to think about and write about the presence of this vision in history and theology? Or, if this is inadequate, what am I missing?

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