You might find the history of this study interesting and amusing.
Quite some time ago we became very good friends with an Eastern Orthodox archpriest who not only believed in reincarnation, but had engaged for years in research into methods of past-life recall.
One afternoon he phoned and told me that several guests were coming from an Orthodox seminary to visit him and he planned to bring up the compatibility of reincarnation with Christianity. The reason for his call was to ask if the monks and I could research the subject of reincarnation in early Christianity to give him material to prove that Christians could believe in reincarnation.
Certainly we would! For the next few days several of us went through our library and finally reported back to our friend that we had a lot of material for him to use.
Then he revealed to us that what brought this on was the discovery of a small boy in our state that remembered being his own uncle! And the priest had been asked by the local television station to comment on this at the end of their broadcast of the story.
Were we ever excited. An Eastern Orthodox priest advocating reincarnation on television! So we delivered the material and awaited the broadcast.
A witness for truth?
The segment on the boy was very well done and very believable. Then suddenly there on the screen we saw our priest friend in full vestments standing at the front of his church. This was it!
No, it wasn’t.
He began a tirade (no other word for it) about how Christians cannot believe in reincarnation and how incompatible the belief is with Christianity.
For us, the bottom dropped out.
But when life hands you lemons, make lemonade, so I just worked all that researched material into a small book I named May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?
