We have the best of both worlds - our feet on the ground and our head in the heavens."Peter France, former presenter of the BBC's religious current affairs programme, Everyman, is another convert. He has recently published an account of his voyage from agnosticism through hesitant belief to the certainties of the Orthodox church. It has become introverted, on man and his world." He insists, however, that this is "not world-denying - it's profoundly world-affirming. "In the Orthodox church, there is a sense that people are standing before the presence of God.
Even in a church as ancient as the Catholic Church, something very precious has been lost. Now, she has decided to come to us." As the 20th century gives way to the 21st, the number of converts is growing.Deacon Joseph Skinner, himself a former Catholic, talks of the importance of ceremony. Father Michael Fortounatto, one of the Russian priests in London, describes a not untypical phone call last week from a woman who was keen to be admitted to the Orthodox Church "She grew up an Anglican She's been through India, and meditation. No modern fads: just the church, the music, and God.The art is part of that deliberate lack of modernity. At the Royal Academy in London, an exhibition opens today which pays homage to the the simplicity and complexity of Russia's religious art. In the West, the link between religion and art has been almost severed.
We expect to see a Madonna and Child in an art gallery, not in a church. At an Orthodox service, by contrast, small icons are dotted around the church, and the large central iconostasis forms a focal point.The art has a severe beauty which stands in stark contrast to the lushness of Western art. None the less, the austerity is never removed from earthy reality. In Andrei Tarkovsky's classic film Andrei Rublev, about the greatest icon-painter of all, the two themes are powerfully merged: the painful realities of the artist's life give way in the final minutes to the hitherto unseen glories of Rublev's art itself.For many, the Orthodox church is the end of a long spiritual search. In some respects, that is precisely what has ensured the Orthodox church strength today - not just in the countries where it is rooted, but also in Britain at the end of the 20th century. Bernadette Sharpe, a nurse, found the music "much more spiritual" than anything she had heard before. Freke de Graaf, an acupuncturist, was attracted by the "joy" of the church "It's really alive It's not just a Sunday church.
