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Going to an Eastern Orthodox church
May 29, 2008 |
Posted by ben hind · Filed Under Eastern Orthodoxy, General Discussion, Personal
I’m going for a one week holiday to Corfu (Greece) on Monday (so I won’t be posting next week), and plan to go visit an Eastern Orthodox church. I haven’t got a clue what it’s going to be like, and look forward to see how they do things. I have a couple of things I’d like to find out about the Eastern Orthodox churches. But I thought it would be interesting to see what you’d like to know about them!
What is the worship like? Do they have icons and images? How do they do communion? What ‘weird’ things did they do? Is there any preaching? What’s that like? What do the priests wear? What do they think of Protestants? Just to give you some ideas.
Just leave a reply about what you’d like to find out and I’ll see what I can do. I’ll let everyone know what I get upto and discover when I get back.
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3 Comments so far
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Theologica
Check it out here.
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There is a lot I like about the EO, I’m still not sure about the icons…I read up on there explanations….but I don’t get it.
To me they are obviously graven images and are in the most common sense of the word “worshiped”
The EO explanation seems to be to say that they are not graven images and they are not worshipped but honored or something like that, but it seemed like changing the name while the thing remains the same…..maybe you can come back with a clearer explanation?
I’d read “12 Things I Wish I’d Known” (before visiting an Orthodox Church) by Frederica Matthews-Green: http://www.frederica.com/12-things/
If you’re going in Greece, the Liturgy will certainly be all Greek to you (hah). I’d link to an English version of the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, but I don’t want to trip a filter from too many links, google will provide, however. You’ll be able to tell if it’s that or the liturgy of St. Basil by the length.
Icons are quite simple. They present spiritual realities, of Christ, of people, and of events. What can be hard to “get” however, is in an Orthodox conception of reality, to venerate the image *is* to venerate the person.
Two things are important to remember: One, the Orthodox faith predates modernity and has never embraced it. Two, it is maximalist in its conception of reality and of the Kingdom of God.
For an approachable discussion of these matters, I’d highly recommend the blog “Glory to God for All Things” by Fr. Stephen Freeman. Among other things the essay “Christianity in a one-storey universe”
Wow, it seems you guys know a whole lot more than me. In England we only have 8 orthodox churches and they’re all scattered all over the place. So you could say I haven’t got a clue what to expect, only what I’ve heard about and read. Are there many eastern orthodox churches in America? The article is really helpful by the way… I’m looking forward to aching legs.
- Ben