NYT: Orthodox Church pews are overflowing with converts in the USA

“The Orthodox Church is the only church that really coaches men hard, and says, ‘This is what you need to do,’” said an attendee of All Saints Orthodox Church in Raleigh, N.C.
Photo: ‘The New York Times’

“In the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America, this has never been seen,” a priest said about the surge of young men drawn to the demanding practice of Christianity.

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, ‘The New York Times’ writes.

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.”

In the United States, Orthodox Christianity is by far the smallest and least-known of the three major branches of Christianity, representing about 1 percent of the population, compared with about 40 percent who are Protestant and 20 percent who are Catholic. Orthodox pews here have historically been occupied by immigrants from Ukraine, Greece and other countries with large Orthodox populations. Their American-born children often drift to other churches.

 “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. 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.”

Photo: ‘The New York Times’

Generation Z is upending the expectations of many scholars and faith leaders, who watched the country steadily secularizing for decades, with each generation less religious than the last. Some recent surveys suggest that young adult men are defying that trend.

The Orthodox Church traces its ecclesiastical lineage to Jesus Christ and the early apostles. As Christianity expanded in its first millennium, a theological and political divide opened between the Eastern church and the Western, or Roman Catholic, church. A schism in the 11th century over issues including papal authority divided the two bodies definitively, with Eastern Orthodoxy flourishing in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia.

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.

“The Orthodox Church stands as the hope of those who wish to be normal, to be healthy, true and beautiful,” said the Rev. David Winn, the priest at All Saints.

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