Anita Creamer: His path to a new faith

Father Timothy Robinson performs an anointing ceremony for healing at the request of Matt Holm, who had been in an auto accident.

A former Baptist with Scottish roots finds fulfillment as a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church

By Anita Creamer - acreamer@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, August 29, 2008Story appeared in LIVING HERE section, Page K1

Sometimes, the parishioners at Sacramento's Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church still ask the question. They listen to their associate priest, Father Timothy Robinson, as he reads the liturgy in fluent Greek, surrounded by flickering candles and icons blazing with gold leaf in this church steeped equally in ancient rituals and immigrant family traditions.

And they ask him where in Greece, exactly, his people originated.

"I say, 'They're from the far northern part of Greece, around Edinburgh,' " says Robinson, 53.

It helps when pastors and their flocks have a sense of humor, not to mention a grasp of recent trends in their church.

Robinson, this sandy-haired convert from the Southern Baptist faith, has served at Annunciation for only two years. But for the better part of two decades, the associate priest position at the church across from McKinley Park has been filled by a convert, as opposed to someone raised in the faith and brought up in a Greek family.

The Greeks are a hospitable people. Besides, in the late 1980s, a generation of young evangelical preachers searching for more traditional religious experiences began turning to the Eastern Orthodox Church, drawn by the fact that its rituals date back to earliest Christianity.

And so the face of the Orthodox church in America is changing. Non-Greek students make up more than half the population at Greek Orthodox seminaries, according to Annunciation's presiding priest, Father James Retelas.

While Annunciation parish itself remains heavily Greek – populated with the third- and fourth-generation descendants of the immigrants who founded it in 1920 – more and more converts fill its pews.

It's a matter of continuing adjustment for longtime members and converts alike. And for Robinson, too.

For example, says Retelas: "He loves to preach. He preaches longer than we're used to because of his Baptist background. He'll go 20 minutes, but in our tradition, going past 10 is historically unacceptable.

"It's not a clash, really, but it's kind of a shift in culture."

That cultural shift has allowed Robinson and his wife, Marsha, who live in Folsom, to find a spiritual home at last.

He likes to say he was born to be a pastor. His parents, Howard and Juanita, now both deceased, were deeply religious. When they remained childless after several years of marriage, according to family lore, they asked God to intervene.

"They told God that if they could have a child, they'd give him back to God," says Robinson. "And nine months later, I came along."

By age 4, an only child, he was telling people he wanted to be a minister one day.

Otherwise, he had a fairly ordinary Bay Area childhood. His father was an Air Force veteran and school custodian, his mother a housekeeper. Robinson graduated from California State University, Hayward, and Western Baptist Seminary in Portland, Ore.

By then, he was married to Marsha, this vivacious young woman he'd met in church during their teen years. By then, he was questioning his commitment to Protestantism, which adheres to the New Testament of the early church but not its liturgy or sacraments.

"When you've grown up in the movement and you find yourself on the outs with it, where will you go?" he asks.

For the better part of a decade, he had no answer. So he worked for Xerox Corp. in Oakland, and his parents, retired and living in Arizona, worried for his salvation.

"They were very concerned about us," he says. "We'd visit them, and I'd go to church with them. They stuck very much with the Baptist fundamentalism they were raised with. I just hated it. I thought it was the veneration of an angry God."

When he finally asked God for a way out of his spiritual wilderness, he says, God answered in the form of a Xerox customer who worshipped at Oakland's St. Vartan Armenian Apostolic Church. Soon, Robinson was an altar server there. And he decided to return to the ministry.

Churches of the Eastern Orthodoxy, the world's second largest Christian religion, are organized by nationality – Armenian Apostolic, for example, and Russian Orthodox. And, of course, Greek Orthodox.

Because the priesthood in the Armenian church tends not to be ethnically diverse, Timothy Robinson attended Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Boston starting in 1996. A decade later, after serving at churches in Irvine and Temecula, he came to Sacramento.

"We really love Sacramento," says Marsha Robinson. "The people here have been most welcoming to us and have really reached out.

"I'm not Greek. My husband's not Greek. And this community is very Greek still. Many of them still go home to Greece in the summer. It's a wonderful family community."

As the associate priest's wife, she shares many duties with her husband, attending baptisms and blessings along with him. Unlike him, she doesn't speak the language.

"Not at all," she says. "I know all of the food words, so that's good. Some of the older women here are still more Greek-speaking than English-speaking. I try real hard, and they try real hard."

And somehow, on both sides, an understanding. An acceptance. A willingness to welcome the new and embrace the changing church.

"Father Timothy is a marvelous co-worker," says Retelas, "and he's really great with seniors. His forte is hospital visits."

Maybe so, but consider this glimpse of the man from Despina Kreatsoulas, 38, a longtime parishioner and Sunday school teacher.

"He makes a huge effort to interact with our youth," she says. "He likes to have fun with them.
"I was teaching Greek dance to the kids, and they wanted to practice in their bare feet. Father came in and took off his shoes and danced with them. They thought that was the coolest thing."

He adopted the church, and he adopted its culture. Because his people, after all, are from the far northern part of Greece. In Scotland.
Robinson was raised a Southern Baptist and attended a Baptist seminary before he found himself called to the Eastern Orthodox priesthood.
Pictures, holy water and books crowd Robinson's church office. Brought up in a fundamentalist Baptist tradition, Robinson discovered that he preferred the liturgies and sacraments of the early Christian church.
Father Timothy Robinson lights candles before a supplication service at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Sacramento. He served in Orthodox churches in Irvine and Temecula before coming to Sacramento two years ago.

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