Greetings! And welcome to the Evangelical Expatriate! My name is Josh. I'm a born and raised Evangelical who became Orthodox along with my wife and children in April of 2015, the culmination of five years of inquiry. Why this site? Does the internet really need another recent Orthodox convert presuming to tell people what Orthodox Christianity is all about? Probably not! That's why this site is a little different. Evangelical Expatriate exists primarily as a kind of "spiritual brochure rack", like what you'd find at an interstate rest stop. While I do compose my own content on rare occasions, this site's core purpose is to aggregate trustworthy, English-language Orthodox content from across the internet that can hopefully save a would-be convert (or antagonist, for that matter) significant time and trouble in the search for answers. Such a resource was not available to me during my own period of inquiry between 2010 and 2015, and it's by Divine grace that I was able to remain grounded during those years while navigating what was then a much more crude internet landscape for Orthodox inquirers.
What do I mean by "trustworthy" you may ask? If you're an earnest inquirer seeking to understand the claims and teachings of the Orthodox Church, you have no doubt already found numerous people online, whether priests or laity, proffering various theological and spiritual assertions under the guise of being "the teaching of the Orthodox Church". Those assertions likely run the gamut from bias confirmation to the alarming and perplexing. On the one hand, no Christian tradition is immune from the confusion resulting from competing, so-called "representative" voices on the internet. On the other, the Orthodox Church suffers from a unique, two-fold susceptibility to this: it is both ancient and devoid of an official catechism. That void, especially in the "information age", is filled by an untold number of information merchants intent on framing "true" Orthodoxy for anyone lucky (or unlucky) enough to pass by. Of course, not all such voices are to be distrusted. But finding trustworthy Orthodox voices on the internet can be a little like trying to find an onion at your grocery store that doesn't look like someone has recently played soccer with it.
With this in mind, I began Evangelical Expatriate as a project for gathering together in a single place the most reasonable, non-sensational, informative Orthodox resources I've found on the internet in my years of scouring. On the right hand panel of my blog page, you'll find a number of links to various helpful Orthodox websites. On the "Topics" page, you'll find links to several articles that speak to common theological and spiritual themes typically of interest to those coming from a Protestant/Evangelical background. On the "Books" page, you'll find a list of volumes that were instrumental in shaping my own journey from seminary educated Evangelical to Orthodox catechumen. And finally on the "Videos" page, you'll find several embedded videos speaking to various topics germane to Orthodox inquiry.
Why the name "Evangelical Expatriate?" If an expatriate is someone uprooted from one's native land and living in another, it is a fitting term to describe me as an Evangelical-turned-Orthodox Christian. While I continue to develop an Orthodox heart and mind, my DNA remains inextricably evangelical, and for this I am grateful. I post a variety of spiritual, theological, and autobiographical reflections here, and on no particular schedule. I'm not a prolific writer, which is fine, since this site's primary mission is its ancillary content. I hope you find your visit here useful. Feel free to submit questions of any kind through the email form below, and before you leave, be a friend and answer the poll question on the home page. Thanks and God bless!
Χριστός Ανέστη!
What do I mean by "trustworthy" you may ask? If you're an earnest inquirer seeking to understand the claims and teachings of the Orthodox Church, you have no doubt already found numerous people online, whether priests or laity, proffering various theological and spiritual assertions under the guise of being "the teaching of the Orthodox Church". Those assertions likely run the gamut from bias confirmation to the alarming and perplexing. On the one hand, no Christian tradition is immune from the confusion resulting from competing, so-called "representative" voices on the internet. On the other, the Orthodox Church suffers from a unique, two-fold susceptibility to this: it is both ancient and devoid of an official catechism. That void, especially in the "information age", is filled by an untold number of information merchants intent on framing "true" Orthodoxy for anyone lucky (or unlucky) enough to pass by. Of course, not all such voices are to be distrusted. But finding trustworthy Orthodox voices on the internet can be a little like trying to find an onion at your grocery store that doesn't look like someone has recently played soccer with it.
With this in mind, I began Evangelical Expatriate as a project for gathering together in a single place the most reasonable, non-sensational, informative Orthodox resources I've found on the internet in my years of scouring. On the right hand panel of my blog page, you'll find a number of links to various helpful Orthodox websites. On the "Topics" page, you'll find links to several articles that speak to common theological and spiritual themes typically of interest to those coming from a Protestant/Evangelical background. On the "Books" page, you'll find a list of volumes that were instrumental in shaping my own journey from seminary educated Evangelical to Orthodox catechumen. And finally on the "Videos" page, you'll find several embedded videos speaking to various topics germane to Orthodox inquiry.
Why the name "Evangelical Expatriate?" If an expatriate is someone uprooted from one's native land and living in another, it is a fitting term to describe me as an Evangelical-turned-Orthodox Christian. While I continue to develop an Orthodox heart and mind, my DNA remains inextricably evangelical, and for this I am grateful. I post a variety of spiritual, theological, and autobiographical reflections here, and on no particular schedule. I'm not a prolific writer, which is fine, since this site's primary mission is its ancillary content. I hope you find your visit here useful. Feel free to submit questions of any kind through the email form below, and before you leave, be a friend and answer the poll question on the home page. Thanks and God bless!
Χριστός Ανέστη!