To be honest, folks, while I have a deep appreciation of Eastern Orthodoxy as a faith, I am still on the fence as to whether I plan on staying for the long-term. Like I said originally, I am returning after a four year absence to sort of test the waters.
My wife is from a Protestant background and it's unlikely that she'd ever be comfortable with converting to Orthodoxy. I therefore have to choose whether I want my wife and children to attend church with me, albeit a non-Orthodox church, or if I want to be a separate faith from my own family.
That's not an easy decision to make. I do know that I want to belong to a church that is sacramental, liturgical, and apostolic. In my estimation, that includes Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. Going from Protestant evangelical to Anglican would be a much shorter leap for my wife than going full on to Orthodoxy.
I am respectful toward a diversity of opinion on these matters and I am sorry if I am offending anyone for bringing them up. I've never visited an Anglican church before, though I am curious as to what their services are like and how faithfully they've preserved early church tradition.
There was a regular Anglican poster on an Eastern Orthodox forum a few years ago who didn't identify himself as Protestant. Instead, he considered himself a member of the historic Church of England that existed before the Vatican took control of it.
Hey bro, I think that I can sympathize with much of your predicament as I'm in nearly the exact same situation as you. The only differences may be that I'm not yet baptized into the Orthodox Church (where I think you said you were previously Orthodox) and I also don't have kids yet.
Other than that, Church has been a very tense issue between my wife and I over the past few months. Work has provided an escape of sorts because my boss has needed me to work Sundays, but I have had a couple Sundays off in the last year and when I have it's become a very difficult and sometimes heated discussion about where I'll be going to church. My wife has made it abundantly clear that she has absolutely
no intention of ever attending an Orthodox church again, let alone becoming an Orthodox Christian, much to my dismay.
Her and I both come from Evangelical backgrounds, although she comes from a family who distrusts all forms of organized religion (including your garden variety non-denominational church) and they are extremely charismatic/pentecostal in their praxis, her mom regularly "speaks in tongues" (emphasis on the quotes) and believes in prophesy and all sorts of end-of-the-world conspiracy theorist nonsense. So spiritually, while my wife is a very solid Christian, her ecclesiological and theological background is a complete bag of cats!
For me, I just became completely disillusioned with the entire evangelical motif from the sermon to the worship style and have found that a liturgical style is much more proper.
It continues to be an issue though, and sadly I've somewhat swept it under the rug recently just because I haven't had the energy to get into a debate. I do deep down feel that I want to join the Orthodox Church though. My priest began to ask me if there was any indication that maybe my wife would approve of my becoming a catechumen and I had to tell him that there hadn't really been much discussion or movement in any regard just because I've been trying to maintain peace in my home.
Sorry for the long-winded post, I can be a blowhard sometimes. This is all to say that I can relate somewhat to your situation and if you ever want to chat about it feel free to shoot me a PM about it or something.
