You've ended up in what is clearly a minority religious expression within Christianity in the United States. Which branch of Orthodoxy are you in?
I am Antiochian Orthodox, but I'm not so sure we're a minority. I recently heard that if all the Orthodox churches in America united we would be either the third or the fourth largest Christian body in America. But we have a low profile because it is an immigrant church.
Where did you start out?
My mother was an unbeliever — and still is. My father was a nominal Catholic. We would go in to church at the last minute before the gospel reading, take Communion, and walk right out again. We were taught, as so many Catholics were then, if you were to miss a Sunday and get hit by a truck you go straight to hell. It was an attitude towards religion that probably harked back to early days of Greece and Rome where you placated the gods.
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Dick Staub was host of a eponymous daily radio show on Seattle's KGNW and is the author of Too Christian, Too Pagan and The Culturally Savvy Christian. He currently runs The Kindlings, an effort to rekindle the creative, intellectual, and spiritual legacy of Christians in culture. His interviews appeared weekly on our site from 2002 to 2004.
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