Dispatch Faith: Men Flocking to Orthodoxy: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
The media have it wrong. OK, maybe not just the media. I’m not sure if Orthodox Christians and the broader Christian community have thought through the implications of the reported uptick in young people (primarily men) becoming Orthodox. There are three questions we need to ask to understand what is—and more importantly—is not happening in the life of the Orthodox Church in the U.S.
First, is there actually a growing trend of young men looking to become Orthodox Christians? Second, is it correct to describe Eastern Orthodox Christianity as “masculine,” especially in contrast to “feminine” Western Christian traditions? Third, and most importantly for me as an Orthodox priest, what does the embrace of these popular narratives say about the Orthodox Church and our relationship to the wider American culture? …
The gospel doesn’t need to be a trend.
Whatever else might be true about the reported uptick in men converting to Orthodoxy, we simply don’t have enough data to support the idea that this is a mass movement. …
A manly church for manly men?
When I started as a priest some 30 years ago, most of the people I received into the church were attracted by the beauty of the Divine Liturgy and our theology. While this is still the case today, I am also seeing more young men who are attracted to the stability, rigor, and discipline that characterize Orthodox spirituality. …
In a mirror dimly.
Fidelity to Christ and the tradition of the church matters not only personally and pastorally but also dogmatically and morally. …
The enduring desire for holiness.
For Orthodox spirituality, the ascetical disciplines of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and manual labor build on the grace of the sacraments to slowly reform the desire of the human heart. Like St. Paul, I am called to “discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27). A life of spiritual discipline is not limited to me as a priest but is common to all Orthodox Christians.
Whatever the motivation that brings people to Christ and his church, this is only the starting point of a life of gradual transformation by grace and the exercise of our own freedom. However poorly or well we begin, holiness, and participation in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), remain the goal. And spiritual discipline? This matters because, alongside the desire for holiness, evidence also abounds that the temptations that the fourth-century monk Evagrius describes as the Eight Deadly Thoughts: Gluttony, Lust, Avarice, Sadness, Anger, Accidie (sloth), Vainglory, and Pride, are still with us.
Whatever one makes of the new converts to the Orthodox Church drawing so much attention, the good news is that points to the fact that desire for holiness in a robust sense is very much alive in the hearts of Americans young and old, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant; Christian and non-Christian; religious believers, agnostics, atheists, and nones.
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