Amidst the reports and claims of religious revival in recent months [see last month’s RW], the role of young men, especially those returning or converting to Eastern Orthodox churches, stands out. Soon after the pandemic, there were anecdotes and some survey results showing that Eastern Orthodox parishes had more resilience in attendance than other churches, especially in retaining and reaching out to the demographic of young men. In a BBC News report (May 24), Lucy Ash notes that while the true increase in the number of converts is hard to gauge, data from the Pew Research Center suggest that Orthodox Christians are now 64 percent male, up from 46 percent in 2007. A smaller study of 773 converts by the Orthodox Church in America appears to confirm this trend, with many respondents saying the pandemic pushed them to seek a new faith. The masculine nature of Orthodoxy has been the main point of attraction for dissatisfied younger men. The loss of traditional gender roles is often cited by attendees. Ash describes one convert, a software engineer, recounting that he felt empty inside and believing society has been “very harsh” on men, constantly telling them they are in the wrong. He complained about men being criticized for wanting to be the breadwinner and support a stay-at-home wife. “Almost all the converts I meet have opted to home-school their offspring,” Ash adds, “partly because they believe women should prioritize their families rather than their careers.”
One priest in the traditionalist Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), another Orthodox body that is drawing many converts, said that Orthodoxy is “not masculine, it is just normal,” while “in the West everything has become very feminized.” Ash quotes Greek Orthodox critic Elissa Bjeletich Davis, who says the new converts are of the “anti-woke” camp and see their new faith “as a military, rigid, disciplinary, masculine, authoritarian religion.” Conservative writer Rod Dreher (himself an Orthodox convert), admitting that he has heard a few reports about some enthusiastic young male converts espousing frankly misogynistic beliefs, thinks that “some priests have to educate a few converts out of un-Christian racial views that they picked up on some online Orthodox forums.” Writing in his Substack newsletter Rod Dreher’s Diary (May 27), he adds that the “new wave of converts scares some of the old-line East Coast Orthodox, who want the church to liberalize…This dynamic reminds me of the way the Traditional Latin Mass movement in the Catholic Church is regarded with fear and suspicion by many Catholic bishops and institutionalists. Nevertheless, it’s where the growth and fervor is in Catholicism—and it’s coming from the laity. That’s what’s going on with this revival in American Orthodoxy too.” He concludes that “Orthodoxy makes demands on you—especially demands to overcome and channel your passions…It is also much more physical than most American religion. You feel that you inhabit a body, and the body is to be mortified and sanctified. Men respond to the physicality of Orthodoxy.”
(BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30q5l8d4lro)
