Posted 11:03 pm Saturday, October 08, 2011
Orthodox Church Finds Home In Tyler
By REBECCA HOEFFNER
Staff Writer
When Father John Mikita of the parish of St. John of Damascus Orthodox Church goes anywhere in public, he wears his traditional Orthodox robes.
“I get a lot of folks who stop me in Walmart and they want to know, ‘What's the difference between Orthodoxy and the Baptist church?'” he said. “And it's like, ‘OK, where do we want to start?' It's really challenging, but it's a joy as well.”
Orthodoxy is generally outside the main stream conscious, Mikita said, but it is a faith that is growing in the American South.
The parish of St. John of Damascus Orthodox Church in Tyler is a 55-member congregation, made up of many converts. About 90 percent of the founding members who began the church in 2006 were converts, Mikita said. Their numbers have tripled since the parish began, he said.
Staff Writer
When Father John Mikita of the parish of St. John of Damascus Orthodox Church goes anywhere in public, he wears his traditional Orthodox robes.
“I get a lot of folks who stop me in Walmart and they want to know, ‘What's the difference between Orthodoxy and the Baptist church?'” he said. “And it's like, ‘OK, where do we want to start?' It's really challenging, but it's a joy as well.”
Orthodoxy is generally outside the main stream conscious, Mikita said, but it is a faith that is growing in the American South.
The parish of St. John of Damascus Orthodox Church in Tyler is a 55-member congregation, made up of many converts. About 90 percent of the founding members who began the church in 2006 were converts, Mikita said. Their numbers have tripled since the parish began, he said.
“Sort of like myself, who discovered Orthodoxy through biblical and theological examination and inquiry, a number of the people here came from a variety of different Christian backgrounds who found Orthodoxy and started reading books,” he said.
Mikita was raised Episcopalian and was studying to be a priest when he encountered Orthodoxy when he was troubled by the theology of Calvinism.
“I laid out Biblical commentaries on Hebrews from a range of different perspectives — world class Baptist scholars, world-class Anglican, Catholic, the spectrum,” he said. “One of the things I found was that they all tend to interpret the Scripture based on what their tradition says it ought to be. So that was, for me, a real eye-opener. We all bring to the Scriptures pre-conceived ideas and notions. There's no such thing as a completely blank slate when we read the Bible.”
Mikita was raised Episcopalian and was studying to be a priest when he encountered Orthodoxy when he was troubled by the theology of Calvinism.
“I laid out Biblical commentaries on Hebrews from a range of different perspectives — world class Baptist scholars, world-class Anglican, Catholic, the spectrum,” he said. “One of the things I found was that they all tend to interpret the Scripture based on what their tradition says it ought to be. So that was, for me, a real eye-opener. We all bring to the Scriptures pre-conceived ideas and notions. There's no such thing as a completely blank slate when we read the Bible.”
Mikita and his family eventually converted to Orthodoxy. He stepped down from his rectory, left the Episcopalian church, and started over from scratch at a monastery in Pittsburg, Pa. He was assigned to the Tyler parish in 2008.
“When I started reading Orthodoxy I saw this incredibly full comprehensive expression of Christianity as life itself. It was a total surprise to me,” Mikita said. “The surprise to me was that this seemed to have the answers. This seemed to have not just the answers I was looking for, but Christianity as life.”
“When I started reading Orthodoxy I saw this incredibly full comprehensive expression of Christianity as life itself. It was a total surprise to me,” Mikita said. “The surprise to me was that this seemed to have the answers. This seemed to have not just the answers I was looking for, but Christianity as life.”
There are more than four million Orthodox in the United States, according to the 12th edition of the Handbook of Denominations, published in 2005. Orthodox churches are also known as Eastern churches; Catholic and Protestant churches are known as Western. The Protestant Reformation began in 1517, but the Orthodox and Catholic Church separated much earlier in the Great Schism of 1054. While there are Orthodox churches all over the world, the main difference between them is the language of the services and the tonality of the chanting, Mikita said.
While there are significant differences between the Orthodox church and Western churches — Orthodoxy rejects the idea of human infallibility and relies heavily on the use of icons in their services — there are significant similarities. Last week the parish hosted three lectures with Father Demetrios Carellas, a Protopresbyter of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and chaplain to the Nativity of the Theotokos Orthodox Monastery in Saxonburg, Pa.
Faith, hope and love were the topics for the lectures, cherished virtues for Christians across denominations found in the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.
“Brothers and sisters, now more than ever it is essential that we keep to these things,” he said in his lecture last Wednesday.
Faith, hope and love were the topics for the lectures, cherished virtues for Christians across denominations found in the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.
“Brothers and sisters, now more than ever it is essential that we keep to these things,” he said in his lecture last Wednesday.
