Men & The Rise Of Orthodoxy In America
Plus: Fuentes As Reaction To Left; Sovietization; Clueless Bishops; Tucker's Haunted Pond
Here’s a really excellent, thorough, and fair New York Times story about the astonishing number of young Americans — especially men — coming into the Orthodox Church. Ruth Graham is the author, and hats off to her. I’ve used on of my gift articles to unlock it for you. Excerpts:
Something is changing in an otherwise quiet corner of Christianity in the United States, one that prides itself on how little it has changed over time. Priests are swapping stories about record attendance numbers. Older members are adjusting — or not — to the influx of new attendees. Parishes are strategizing about how to accommodate more prospective converts than existing clergy can reasonably handle on their own.
Across the country, the ancient tradition of Orthodox Christianity is attracting energetic new adherents, especially among conservative young men. They are drawn to what they describe as a more demanding, even difficult, practice of Christianity. Echoing some of the rhetoric of the so-called manosphere, new waves of young converts say Orthodoxy offers them hard truths and affirms their masculinity.
“In the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America, this has never been seen,” the Very Rev. Andrew Damick, an Antiochian Orthodox priest and author in Eastern Pennsylvania, said of the large groups of young people showing up at many parishes. “This is new ground for everyone.”
Graham points out that Orthodoxy in America is very small — only about one percent of the total population. But that is changing, and changing fast. Graham talks about the particular appeal of Orthodoxy to young men — called, usually unkindly, “Orthobros”:
Orthodoxy “appeals to the masculine soul,” said Josh Elkins, a student at North Carolina State University who was chatting with other young men.
“The Orthodox Church is the only church that really coaches men hard, and says, ‘This is what you need to do,’” said Mr. Elkins, 20, who casually quoted a second-century martyr and rattled off terms like “monarchical episcopate” in conversation. He beamed as he talked about the weekly worship service known as the Divine Liturgy, an hourslong affair at which attendees typically stand the entire time, rather than sitting in the pews or kneeling.
The Divine Liturgy is just one aspect of Orthodox faith and practice that is unfamiliar to many Americans, including other Christians. Orthodox services include chanting, incense and genuflecting deeply before painted icons. Much of the liturgy takes place out of the sight of the congregation. The church also maintains a strict and complicated schedule of fasting.
“It’s so much harder than I thought it was going to be,” said Matthew Herman Hudson, 29, who converted in his early 20s and works in the bookstore in Raleigh. “But it speaks to me in a way that nothing else ever did.”
This is all true to my experience as well. I appreciated how Graham took note of the “Orthobro” problem — young men who show up with a bunch of hard-edged political opinions and attitudes that they’ve encountered online. TradCaths have them too, as do the hardcore Calvinists. These guys are not wrong to desire a form of Christianity that speaks to their own masculinity, as opposed to the more therapeutic ethos in other forms of Christianity. The challenge for the clergy and older Orthodox parishioners is to help these guys discipline themselves, and to channel that masculine aggression towards something upbuilding, not just fall into pushy rigidity, pointless theological fights, and even anti-semitism. More:
In interviews, parish priests said they see it as part of their jobs to acculturate “Orthobros” with extreme views to parish life, which they insisted was far removed from the violent rhetoric online.
It really and truly is. Orthodox priests and lay leaders back home report to me that they tell the young men who have come to church because of something they heard on Orthobro podcasts that we’re glad you found your way to our parish, but you need to stop listening to that stuff, because it’s not always authentic Orthodoxy, and it will rot your soul.
There is so much good and healthy stuff for men in Orthodoxy, though. Frederica Mathewes-Green, the writer and most influential Orthodox convert in the country (she and her husband Father Gregory ’doxed in the early 1990s), once told me that she’s observed that husbands are initially drawn to Orthodoxy, and wives tend to come reluctantly, but then really get into it. I saw that happen myself — even in my own family. I was the one most willing to try Orthodoxy as my then-wife and I hit bottom with Catholic burnout amid the scandal, but after going to St. Seraphim cathedral in Dallas for a few weeks, she was even more enthusiastic than I was.
More:
Some converts report approvingly that Orthodoxy has a more masculine feel than other traditions. Priests, who must be male and can marry, often have large beards and big families. Orthodoxy asks practitioners to make sacrifices like fasting, rather than offering them emotional contemporary music and therapeutic sermons, which critics describe as the typical evangelical megachurch experience.
“There’s no war for us to die in — well, there are wars for us to die in, just not ones that are honorable,” Laric Copes Jr., 28, who attends All Saints, said. For former Protestants like himself, Orthodoxy serves as “a kind of frontier of exploration,” he said.
“Young men need purpose, whatever that is,” said Jerod Stine, 26. “Young men are struggling to find jobs, they’re struggling to get into schools, and they’re really being told by society, ‘We don’t really need you.’”
When I first became Orthodox, I loved that it was a form of Christianity that involved the body, both in Sunday worship and outside. Learning how to fast according to the Church’s tradition was hard — but it’s all about conforming the entire self to Christ. There is something gratifying for men about the challenge to conquer oneself. Back in 2019, when I visited Moscow, I attended an Orthodox parish where the priest started a woodworking shop for the men of the parish, to make furniture for the church and for the needy, and to exercise their masculine desire to do something creative with their bodies.
And then there’s this:
Some argue that the common denominator in churches attracting young people is not their style of worship but their treatment of the supernatural. Father Damick, the priest in Pennsylvania, pointed out that charismatic Christianity, whose theology includes an openness to faith healing and “spiritual warfare,” has also resisted trends of religious decline.
“You’re much more likely to see growth in churches that are not just conservative morally, but that take the unseen world seriously,” said Father Damick, who is also chief content officer of Ancient Faith Ministries, a pan-Orthodox publisher and media group.
Ain’t that the truth! Father Andrew is co-host of a popular podcast called “The Lord of Spirits,” which focuses on the unseen world. When I dropped a note to Ruth Graham to thank her for her rich, fair treatment of American Orthodoxy — gang, it’s important when a journalist does something right, that you thank them and encourage them! — she told me that reading Living In Wonder while she worked on the story was a big help. So glad to hear it.
Anyway, take advantage of this free NYT article and read the whole thing. I’m so happy to be able to lead with good news, for once.
The rest of today’s newsletter continues below the paywall. In the first item, I have a chilling letter from a parish pastor about radicalism among young men in his congregation, and what it reveals about the sheer anger of young men today. This is not a force that came from nowhere — the “asymmetrical multiculturalism” that the Left has practiced for half a century spawned it — and one that will wreck us, politically and otherwise, if we don’t help these guys learn how to master it and channel it for the good (versus the churches and movements that are exploiting it maliciously) — and if we don’t figure out how to get those who really are hurting them off their backs.
There’s also an item about Tucker Carlson’s haunted woods. I’m serious. Robert Eggers’ great and terrifying New England horror film The Witch shows up.
