Becoming Orthodox

What Becoming Orthodox is

Becoming Orthodox is Peter E. Gillquist's first-person account of how he and a group of fellow evangelical leaders — many of them formerly on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ — spent roughly two decades studying early church history and were eventually received together into the Eastern Orthodox Church. First published in 1989 and later revised and expanded, it is a short book, well under 250 pages, that blends memoir, travelogue, and apologetic. It traces the questions that drove the group's search — worship, the Eucharist, the authority of bishops, the canon of Scripture — and the long road that led to their reception into the Antiochian Orthodox Church in 1987.

The book is written from inside the evangelical world its author came out of, and Gillquist never pretends otherwise. He writes warmly about the faith that formed him and the ministry that set him searching, and he makes a candid case for the conclusions he and his companions reached. It is not a neutral history, a systematic theology, or a comparative survey; it is a story told by a participant who is persuaded of where the story led. That first-person, evangelical-to-Orthodox vantage is the book's defining feature and the reason it has remained the usual first title handed to an evangelical exploring the Christian East.

Why this is the book evangelicals get handed first

Most introductions to Orthodoxy are written by lifelong Orthodox authors, or by scholars, and they begin where the tradition begins — with history, doctrine, and worship explained from the inside. Gillquist starts somewhere else entirely: in a college ministry, with the questions an evangelical actually asks. He shares the reader's starting vocabulary, the reader's reflexes about the Bible and the local church, even the reader's initial wariness about icons and incense and bishops. He is not translating Orthodoxy for an outsider so much as narrating his own surprise as an insider who went looking and found something he had not expected.

That shared starting point is what makes the book travel. An evangelical reader does not have to cross a vocabulary gap to follow it, because Gillquist is speaking their language the whole way through. A reader from another background gets an honest look at how a particular group of Protestants reasoned their way toward the Orthodox Church — what questions moved them and what answers they found persuasive. The book argues those questions from the authors' perspective rather than adjudicating them, and it does so without disparaging the tradition the authors left. That combination — an insider to evangelicalism telling the story of becoming Orthodox, respectfully toward both — is why a curious friend, a worried parent, and an inquiring believer all tend to be handed the same paperback.

The search: reading the early church back to its source

The engine of the book is the search itself. Gillquist recounts how the group set out to answer what sounds like a straightforward question — what was the New Testament church actually like, and what happened to it? — and how that question pulled them into the writings of the early Fathers and the history of the first Christian centuries. They read about how the earliest Christians worshiped, how they understood the Lord's Supper, how leadership and the office of bishop developed, and how the books of the New Testament were recognized as Scripture in the first place. Each thread, in Gillquist's telling, kept leading back toward forms and convictions the group had not associated with their own evangelical practice.

What makes this section work for its intended reader is that the questions are ones evangelicals already care about — the authority of the Bible, the nature of the church, the meaning of communion — rather than concerns imported from outside. Gillquist presents the group's reading of the historical evidence and the conclusions they drew from it, and he is candid that he is making a case. A reader who weighs the same history differently will encounter this as one well-told account of how a particular group reasoned, not as a neutral verdict on the questions. Read on those terms — as the story of a search and the answers that persuaded the searchers — it is genuinely compelling, and it is the part most readers remember.

The long road home: from a new fellowship to a canonical church

The middle of the book is the most novelistic, and the most distinctive. Convinced by their study that they were seeing something they wanted to recover, the group did not simply join an existing church; they first tried to rebuild what they had found, forming a loose fellowship of congregations and an organization that experimented with ancient worship while working out where they belonged. Gillquist narrates the years of effort, the wrong turns, and the search for a canonical Orthodox jurisdiction that would receive them — a process that was neither quick nor guaranteed and that involved real disappointment before it resolved.

It resolved in 1987, when the bulk of the group was received into the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, a story connected to the founding of what became the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission. Gillquist tells this stretch with evident relief and gratitude, and it is here that the book is most plainly a testimony to where the authors landed. A reader does not have to share the destination to appreciate the honesty of the account — the false starts are left in, the difficulty of being received is not glossed, and the people involved come across as searchers rather than salesmen. It is the human center of the book, and it is what keeps it from reading like a tract.

The voice: an evangelical writing to evangelicals

The least technical strength of the book is its tone. Gillquist writes the way an evangelical pastor talks — anecdotal, warm, plainspoken, quick to a personal illustration — and that register is a deliberate bridge to his intended reader. He does not adopt the cadence of an Orthodox theologian or a church historian. He explains unfamiliar terms as a fellow newcomer would, recalling his own first reactions to practices that initially struck him as foreign, which lets a reader feel accompanied rather than lectured. The book reads like a long, candid conversation with someone who has been exactly where the reader is wondering whether to go.

That voice is also what keeps the book respectful in two directions at once. Gillquist does not caricature the evangelical world he came from; he credits it for teaching him to take Scripture seriously and for setting him on the search in the first place. And he presents the Orthodox tradition he entered as the answer he came to believe, without framing the move as a triumph over the faith of his youth. The book is unmistakably an argument for the path its authors took, but it makes that argument as a grateful insider to both worlds, and many readers report that the generosity of the telling is what made them willing to keep reading even when the conclusions were new to them.

Pricing

Where Becoming Orthodox falls behind

Balance. The book is one group's story and an apologetic for the path they took, and it does not pretend to weigh the alternatives evenly. On the questions it raises — worship, church authority, the sacraments, the canon — it presents the answers its authors found persuasive rather than setting competing readings side by side. That is the right call for the book Gillquist set out to write, but a reader who wants an even-handed survey will need to read other voices alongside it.

Academic depth. Gillquist is narrating a journey, not writing scholarly church history, and the historical material is presented in service of the story rather than with the apparatus a specialist expects. Readers who want rigorous, heavily footnoted treatments of the early Fathers, the development of the episcopate, or the formation of the canon will outgrow this book quickly — and Gillquist points them onward to fuller works rather than claiming the last word.

A single vantage point. Because the book is told from inside the experience of becoming Orthodox, it reads the questions it raises from that destination. A reader who does not share the conclusion will encounter the historical and theological claims as the authors' perspective, not as a neutral verdict. That is worth knowing going in: the book is doing what a conversion narrative does, which is tell the story persuasively from where it ended up.

Currency and practical help. The events run through the 1970s and 80s, and some of the cultural texture dates the book. It also explains how the authors got to Orthodoxy far more than it walks a present-day reader through visiting a parish or the process of inquiry and reception. A reader who mainly wants a contemporary how-to for exploring the Orthodox Church will need to supplement it, or simply talk to a local priest.

Becoming Orthodox vs. The Orthodox Church vs. The Orthodox Way

These three are the short list an evangelical exploring Eastern Orthodoxy is most often handed, and they do genuinely different jobs. Becoming Orthodox (Gillquist, 1989) is the conversion story — a first-person, evangelical-to-Orthodox narrative that argues for the journey its authors took. The Orthodox Church (Kallistos Ware, 1963) is the standard introduction-as-overview — half history, half doctrine, the book that lays out the whole landscape from inside the tradition. The Orthodox Way (Ware, 1979) is the shorter, more devotional companion — Orthodox spirituality organized around six names for God, with prayer at the center.

Different strengths. Gillquist is the most personal and the easiest first step for an evangelical reader, because he starts where they start and tells a story rather than a system. Ware's Orthodox Church is the most informational — the book you consult to understand the tradition as a whole. His Orthodox Way is the most contemplative — the book you sit with once you want the interior, prayerful dimension. If you are an evangelical wondering why anyone makes this move, begin with Becoming Orthodox. When you want the history and doctrine in full, add The Orthodox Church. When you want the spiritual path, add The Orthodox Way.

The books also differ in posture. Gillquist's is openly a testimony, arguing its case from the authors' perspective and respectful toward the evangelical world they left. Ware's two books are expositions of the tradition rather than conversion stories, presenting Orthodoxy as it understands itself without adjudicating against other traditions. A reader from any background — Catholic, Protestant, Latter-day Saint, or simply curious — can use all three to understand the Christian East, with the caveat that Becoming Orthodox is making a case where Ware is mapping the terrain.

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