The Orthodox Church is centered on the reign of Jesus Christ as Lord, and is firmly rooted in the early beginnings of Christianity. It has believed, taught, preserved, defended and died for the faith of the Apostles since the Day of Pentecost over 2,000 years ago. The first Christian communities were established in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. It was in these eastern regions of the old Roman Empire that the Christian faith matured in its struggle against paganism and heresy. There, the great Apostles and Fathers of the Church lived and taught. It was in the cities of the East that the fundamentals of our faith were proclaimed at the Ecumenical Councils. Today, the Orthodox Church has spread across the globe and continues to worship the Holy Trinity, to preach the Gospel to our community, and to transfigure the lives of her children into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

The Orthodox Church is firmly rooted in the confession that Jesus Christ is the King and Messiah. The Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church begins with the following proclamation: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!” In recognizing and calling this kingdom blessed, we acknowledge the reality of the King and of His reign.

Orthodoxy is not only concerned with right belief, but with true worship. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware said, “Christianity is more than a theory about the universe, more than teachings written down on paper; it is a path along which we journey–in the deepest and richest sense, the way of life.” Simply put, true worship involves all of life. 

The Orthodox Church carefully guards the truth against all error and schism, both to protect its flock and to glorify Christ. She does this by carefully guarding the holy tradition that has been passed from one generation to the next. For tradition is how something is passed through time, like the Holy Scriptures that now come to us in the form of a bounded book. 

However, Orthodoxy is not simply concerned with preserving ancient traditions. Tradition is a means for the Holy Spirit to meet and transform people. As Kallistos Ware wisely said, “to many in the twentieth-century West, the Orthodox Church seems chiefly remarkable for its air of antiquity and conservatism; the message of the Orthodox to their Western brethren seems to be, “We are your past.” For the Orthodox themselves, however, loyalty to Tradition means not primarily the acceptance of formulae or customs from past generations, but rather the ever-new, personal, and direct experience of the Holy Spirit in the present, here and now.” 

Orthodoxy is chiefly concerned with the glory of God and the transfiguration of image bearing human beings into that glory. All this is possible through the conquering grace of Jesus Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit.