Are Orthodox permitted to confess with non-Orthodox?

[LuxPerpetua]

. . . not necessarily to confess and receive absolution but to confess and pray for forgiveness? If so, then I have an inquiry thread posted in PRE that some of you may be interested in. I thought a thread like that might be good at building Christian unity across "church" boundaries. If you are not allowed to participate in anything like this, just ignore me

 

[Matthias]

I do not believe so.

 

[countrymousenc]

Lux, I think that the Orthodox Church either discourages or forbids participation in formal prayer services with other denominations. It's to protect us from accidentally participating in heresies - You know that in many denominations you never really know what might be said or sung. (The pastor of my former church preached modalism on his first Trinity Sunday, simply because he didn't know better. Of course, I should have realized that I should not have been agreeing in prayer with him because it could be argued, and would be by the Orthodox, that he was praying to a false god. Unless you know that the theology of the person leading the service is basically sound, you don't know whether you should worship under his leadership or not.)

 

[nicodemus]

It does forbid participation in formal events which you describe, yet some of our hierarchy frequently ignores it (unfortunately.) It is important to note that our not participating in those types of things isn't arrogance, it is a protection of the flock like others mentioned. We don't know what will be said at these things and cannot therefor, participate in them. It's better not to go at all than to storm out if something unsound is preached.