Last week I posted an excerpt of an article by Jonny Baker from “Grace,” an alternative worship community in London, about the hunger among the young for both liturgy and tradition. There have been a number of other resources documenting this same trend. And now Samuel Freedman from the NY Times has written about the movement of Protestants toward the Orthodox Church. Here’s a bit of his article:

The visible shift began in 1987 with the conversion of nearly 2,000 evangelical Christians, led by Peter E. Gillquist and other alumni of the Dallas Theological Seminary and the Campus Crusade for Christ. More recently, a wave of converts has arrived from such mainline Protestant denominations as the Episcopalian and Lutheran.

Some 70 percent of Antiochian Orthodox priests in the United States are converts, according to Bradley Nassif, who, as a theology professor at North Park University in Chicago, is a leading scholar of the religion. A generation or two ago, Professor Nassif said, converts made up barely 10 percent of Antiochian clergy.

Professor Nassif went so far, in a 2007 article in Christianity Today magazine, as to suggest that the 21st century might become the “Orthodox century” as disenchanted Protestants grew attracted to the historical roots, theological rigor and social conservatism of the Eastern Christian denominations.

Freedman goes on to recount the story of Cal Oren, a long-time Presbyterian, Bible study leader, and elder at his church. Oren walked into an Orthodox church one day on a whim:

As he entered, a vespers service was under way. Maybe two dozen worshipers stood, chanting psalms and hymns. Incense filled the dark air. Icons of apostles and saints hung on the walls. The ancientness and austerity stood at a time-warp remove from the evangelical circles in which Mr. Oren traveled, so modern, extroverted and assertively relevant.

“This was a Christianity I had never encountered before,” said Mr. Oren, 55, a marketing consultant in commercial construction. “I was frozen in my tracks. I felt like I was in the actual presence of God, almost as if I was in heaven. And I’m not the kind of person who gets all woo-hoo.”

Eventually, Oren and his family left their Presbyterian church and converted to the Orthodox tradition.

This is a growing phenomenon among low-church evangelicals and protestants, and it’s something we should be talking about. Why are more and more people being drawn into these ancient forms of worship? Why are they attracted to a format that is the utter opposite of the theater-seating-with-cup-holder-coffee-bar-in-the-foyer-PlayStation-children’s-ministry-church that we’ve been told is the model to pursue?

Popularity: 18% [?]