Fifty Years of Recent History
Nearly fifty years ago, in 1976, a scandal took place in the Orthodox Church in Guildford, England. A very young, poorly educated and inexperienced Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) priest, married off to the first woman come so he could be ordained at the uncanonical age of 22, rebaptised a group of recent converts. The converts had previously been received from the Church of England into the Moscow Patriarchate in the usual Orthodox way by chrismation. Here they had been receiving the sacraments for some time until they had been told by a rather fanatical priest that they needed to be rebaptised! The local Moscow Patriarchate bishop, supported by all other canonical Orthodox, complained.
His petition went to the then still Orthodox ROCOR Synod in New York. Its leader, Metropolitan Philaret, whom no-one would ever suspect of liberalism, commented that this rebaptism was a form of Neo-Donatism. The priest was rebuked – later he divorced the woman that he had been ordered to marry and left the priesthood and the Church. Sadly, the bishop who had had him ordained and had preached the ‘theology of rebaptism’ to him was not rebuked. However, some years later that bishop also ended up outside the Church and then died. An extreme right-winger, he had first created several more scandals, including consecrating as bishop a pedophile in Russia, outside his canonical territory.
Two years later, in 1978, there took place the rebaptism of the late French Catholic monk Fr Placide (Deseille) in the sea at the foot of the Athonite Monastery of Simonopetra. Fr Placide was very well-known in Roman Catholic France and had great respect as a scholar. Later I met him. However, he had already transferred to the so-called ‘Byzantine rite’, as the Roman Catholic rite had been deformed after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Fr (now St) Sophrony the Athonite, whom I knew very well, was very upset. For him this rebaptism was not only quite unnecessary, but also a provocation. He expressed the Orthodox theology of the sacraments, as practised by our 1,000 bishops.
This is that there are no sacraments outside the (Orthodox) Church, but there are sacramental forms or rites. The grace that is missing from them is made up for, completed, by contact with the Church and Her life. Thus, a rite of baptism with water (triple immersion is not compulsory – for Orthodox emergency baptisms are conducted without this) in the Name of the Holy Trinity outside the Church is acceptable as a valid sacramental form. The grace that is clearly missing from it to make it into a sacrament is communicated by reception into the Church. To repeat the sacramental baptismal rite is a type of fundamentalism, formalist literalism, which is actually typical of Protestantism.
Pathology
Today we are seeing again this same Protestant ‘Will I be saved?’ neurosis among some converts from Protestantism to the Orthodox Church. In this there is always the sectarian desire to condemn others, which is why Protestantism consists of a myriad of warring sects. This ‘OneTrueChurchism’ is a typically Protestant reflex. It is pathological because, like all pathologies, it is based not on Christian love, but on hatred for others, not on theology, but on pathology.
There are those who want to prey on the insecurity of neophytes in order to make such new converts doubt in their own Orthodoxy, using jurisdictions just as Protestants use denominations. But why do they want to prey on their insecurity? Simply because they want neophytes to become dependent on them. Creation of dependency is again typical of sectarianism, which is always associated with cults, that is, on guruism, personality cults, lust for power.
There is also a need among these cult leaders or gurus to recruit others. With very small flocks and so lacking money – given their anti-pastoral fanaticism, that is understandable – they are desperate to fill their near-empty churches. Without ethnic groups to attend their ‘temples’ (as they call churches), their only audience is naïve, young people, including the lonely, incels, closet homosexuals and others with problems. They make easy prey for the spiritual vultures.
Thus, one young Englishman I know is on his third rebaptism now. He lasted three years in a parish of 200 in the canonical Church, then went off to a tiny ROCOR community (nowadays they are always tiny) for about one year. However, that group of ten individuals was not good enough for him, so he went off to another tiny old calendarist group, which rebaptised him. He stayed with them for only about one year but they were not exclusive enough for him!
Six months ago he was rebaptised in a group, numbering six worldwide! The latest news is that he is dissastisfied with them, for they too are not strict enough for him. Here is the map of his way out of the Church, because that is how it will end – and it always does end in that way, outside the Church. This ‘anabaptism’ (Greek for rebaptism) is typical of Protestantism, whose underlying mentality and reflex is clear from the outset. It is not Orthodox, for it is not Love.