Group invites priest to speak

The JMU Orthodox Christian Fellowship invited a priest to speak on some of the reasons he converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church, and how to help the religion work with the modern world.

Father Peter Gillquist, a director of development for the University of Memphis, was brought up in a religious home in Minnesota, and was raised Lutheran. As a teenager he was at a point where he said, "I didn't hate the church, and I didn't love the church." Like many other graduating seniors, he attended college and became a member of a fraternity. After living what seemed like the life he wanted to live, he began to feel a sense of emptiness, according to Gillquist.

He referred to Revelations 2 and 3, which speak of five of the seven churches coming short of their spiritual inventory. Jesus wanted for the churches to be hot or cold, not lukewarm, which is where Gillquist found himself during his college years.

After inviting Jesus into his life, Gillquist dedicated his life to an on-campus organization, Campus Crusade for Christ International. During the 1960s, he and other leaders of Crusade who found themselves to be apostles of God who were trying to change the world, but they were not succeeding as they had hoped.

Along with others from Crusade he decided to break the different sectors of the Eastern Orthodox Church into worship, history and doctrine. The leaders decided they would meet four times a year to discuss what they had learned about the different areas of the church they had studied.

"The service is not just preaching; it is partaking into communion," Gillquist said. "The church is not just congregational — there are bishops and deacons." The Eastern Orthodox Church had been liturgical and sacramental from the start, he said.

"I fell in love with Christ all over again," Gillquist said. "I thought divine and human nature combined in Mary's womb; however, [Jesus] was always the father, the son and the Holy Spirit."

Gillquist also spoke of the split between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church, which was determined by two factors.

The first factor was the Romans seeing the Pope as the head over the church, and the second was the Romans changing the Nicene Creed, which is a prayer that tells what the church believes in.

Upon Gillquist splitting from the Roman Church, and becoming Eastern Orthodox, he said, "The [worship] services blew me away."

He could not believe that the Eastern Orthodox Church chanted the gospels or used incense because this was different from how he usually went to church.

Gillquist said many modern Americans find it hard to share religion with Middle Easterns; however, he believes that when sharing the same faith, it is not hard.

Members of the Eastern Orthodox Church have a difficult time worshiping in Rockingham County.

"It's hard not having a nearby Eastern Orthodox Church to go to every Sunday, when the closest one is in Charlottesville," sophomore Deena Khalil said. Khalil is a first-year member of the Orthodox Christian Fellowship.

Students who were not from the Eastern Orthodox religion also attended.

"As an Episcopalian, it is really interesting to hear the history of the Orthodox Church and learn the similarities and differences," freshman Ashley Raybourn said.

For more information on the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, worshiping with the Eastern Orthodox Church or the history of this Middle Eastern religion, contact Dean Gakos at gakosdj.