It began with Jaroslav Pelikan's The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, Vol. 2 of his magisterial The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Describing the 7th-century debates over icons, he quipped that, for Protestants, the veneration of icons is forbidden, for Roman Catholics, it is permitted and for the Orthodox, it is mandatory. When I came to understand why it is mandatory, my interest was piqued. Without realising it at the time, I had started on a journey that would lead me to my Chrismation on Holy Wednesday in 1996.
Pelikan, born and raised a Lutheran, himself followed a path that led to Orthodoxy by the end of a long and studious life. My own journey was more tortuous, from a fundamentalist Baptist childhood to atheist and socialist adulthood to a rediscovery of my Christian roots—and a slow drift in politics in a conservative direction, 'a liberal mugged by reality,' in Irving Kristol's phrase.
Pelikan, born and raised a Lutheran, himself followed a path that led to Orthodoxy by the end of a long and studious life. My own journey was more tortuous, from a fundamentalist Baptist childhood to atheist and socialist adulthood to a rediscovery of my Christian roots—and a slow drift in politics in a conservative direction, 'a liberal mugged by reality,' in Irving Kristol's phrase.
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