An E-mail from Down Under

Our friends at Journey to Orthodoxy have posted an e-mail from a "convert" out of the Baptist church...in Australia. He joined ROCOR and found the JTO blog on the web (and, naturally, liked what he saw). The two unique parts of his story (to me) are that he had dabbled in many non-Christian religions before finding Christian Orthodoxy, and that he was brought to Orthodoxy, in ROCOR, by two people: one an atheist and the other a Jew. The story picks up from there:

After establishing a friendship with this Orthodox friend, I decided to go to an Orthodox Bookshop. As I entered the store, I was warmly greeted and sat down to explain my situation to the workers. They recommended me to go to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia rather than the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, even though they were Greeks themselves. The reason being the purity of the faith generally retained by ROCOR as opposed to the involvement with ecumenism and World Council of Churches on the part of GOA. I even arranged to speak with the Archbishop of Australia, His Grace, Hilarion.

After much discussion and investigation into Orthodoxy, I came to the conclusion (in conjunction with the Church Fathers) that the Church of Christ Visible is One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church retained in Orthodoxy...Orthodoxy is the way of unchanging conviction in Christ being lived out in an ever-changing world...

In the heart of every hardcore Fundamentalist is someone who is truly Orthodox. They just do not know it yet.

Thanks to JTO, and the move of the Holy Spirit, many hardcore fundamentalists are finding this out and finding their way home to the Orthodox Church founded 2,000 years ago, and not a few are finding their way to the Western Rite of canonical Orthodoxy. We welcome them home (and hope they'll bring their friends). :)

It's well worth reading this whole story on JTO.

(Hat tip: Journey to Orthodoxy, but you knew that, didn't you?)