patrick.net

This week, the UK Telegraph ran another great story headlined, “Young, single men are leaving traditional churches. They found a more ‘masculine’ alternative.”

The article tried to craft a non-story about a movement between Christian churches rather than organic growth. Superficially it described a shift —in that critical young male demographic— between “traditional” U.S. churches and Orthodox ones. But there was a lot more to it.

The first unstated news was the dramatic growth of the Orthodox Church in America. The Orthodox Church split from Roman Catholicism way back in 1504. It has no Pope. But unlike the Pope-rejecting Protestant church, Orthodoxy maintained a liturgical character. It also hews toward early Christian practices like regular fasting and body discipline and is also arguably more mystical than mainline Protestantism.

As the article correctly stated, the Orthodox Church is decidedly more masculine than “traditional” mainline US denominations.

One reason why is because the Orthodox tradition is the most dominant tradition in Eastern Europe and the most dominant Christian tradition remaining in the Middle East. Curiously, and most narrative-smashing, Russia has the largest Orthodox body in the world. Meaning, Orthodoxy has largely escaped the ravages of wokeism.

The article’s second misleading element was that, when you boiled it down, all the personal anecdotes actually described converts of young men to Orthodoxy from atheism rather than from other traditions. In other words, growth. So it really was a story of a growing church, in particular rapid growth in the American Orthodox church, and altogether a rising spiritual movement with a decidely manly character.

For example, the story described Matthew Ryan, a 41-year-old science teacher and “former atheist,” who said he “hit rock bottom” during the pandemic in New York City, was converted to Orthodoxy after watching a YouTube video on good and evil. “What really drew me to Orthodoxy… was the structure, the guidance, the authenticity and the historicity”, he explained.

The article continued dropping some appropriate criticisms (from a young man’s point of view) about the feminization of the Protestant tradition in the US, and about the growing role of online influencers in making new Christian converts.

I don’t think it is coincidental that we are seeing growing online conversions following shrinking government censorship.

In other words, Hollywood’s baleful monopoly on spiritual influence is waning, cracking, and crumbling. Could something beautiful be emerging from the husk?