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Young US men are joining Russian churches promising 'absurd levels of manliness'

Lucy Ash, BBC News

In a YouTube video, a priest is championing a form of virile,
unapologetic masculinity.

Skinny jeans, crossing your legs, using an iron, shaping your
eyebrows, and even eating soup are among the things he derides as too
feminine.

There are other videos of Father Moses McPherson - a powerfully built
father of five - weightlifting to the sound of heavy metal.

He was raised a Protestant and once worked as a roofer, but now serves
as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) in Georgetown, Texas, an offshoot of the mother church in Moscow.

ROCOR, a global network with headquarters in New York, has recently
been expanding across parts of the US - mainly as a result of people
converting from other faiths.

In the last six months, Father Moses has prepared 75 new followers for
baptism in his church of the Mother of God, just north of Austin.

"When my wife and I converted 20 years ago we used to call Orthodoxy
the best-kept secret, because people just didn't know what it was," he
says.

"But in the past year-and-a-half our congregation has tripled in
size."

During the Sunday liturgy at Father Moses's church, I am struck by the
number of men in their twenties and thirties praying and crossing
themselves at the back of the nave, and how this religion - with
traditions dating back to the 4th century AD - seems to attract young
men uneasy with life in modern America.

Software engineer Theodore tells me he had a dream job and a wife he
adored, but he felt empty inside, as if there was a hole in his heart.
He believes society has been "very harsh" on men and is constantly
telling them they are in the wrong. He complains that men are
criticised for wanting to be the breadwinner and support a
stay-at-home wife.

"We are told that's a very toxic relationship nowadays," Theodore
says. "That's not how it should be."

Almost all the converts I meet have opted to home-school their
offspring, partly because they believe women should prioritise their
families rather than their careers.

Father John Whiteford, an archpriest in the ROCOR from Spring, north
of Houston, says home-schooling ensures a religious education and is
"a way of protecting your children", while avoiding any talk about "transgenderism, or the 57 genders of the month or whatever".

Compared to the millions of worshippers in America's evangelical
megachurches, the numbers of Christian Orthodox are tiny - only about
one percent of the population. That includes Eastern Orthodoxy, as
practised across Russia, Ukraine, eastern Europe and Greece, and the
Oriental Orthodox from the Middle East and Africa.

Founded by priests and clergy fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1917,
ROCOR is seen by many as the most conservative Orthodox jurisdiction
in the US. Yet this small religious community is a vocal one, and
what's unfolding within it mirrors broader political shifts,
especially following President Donald Trump's dramatic pivot toward
Moscow.

The true increase in the number of converts is hard to quantify, but
data from the Pew Research Centre suggests Orthodox Christians are 64%
male, up from 46% in 2007.

A smaller study of 773 converts appears to back the trend. Most recent newcomers are men, and many say the pandemic pushed them to seek a new
faith. That survey is from the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), which
was established by Russian monks in Alaska in the late 18th Century
and now has more than 700 parishes, missions, communities,
monasteries, and institutions in the US, Canada and Mexico which
identify as Russian Orthodox.

Professor Scott Kenworthy, who studies the history and thought of
Eastern Orthodox Christianity - particularly in modern Russia - says
his OCA parish in Cincinnati "is absolutely bursting at the seams".

He's attended the same church for 24 years and says congregation
numbers remained steady until the Covid lockdown. Since then, there
has been constant flow of new inquirers and people preparing to be
baptised, known as catechumens.

"This is not just a phenomenon of my own parish, or a few places in
Texas," Prof Kenworthy says, "it is definitely something broader."

The digital space is key in this wave of new converts. Father Moses
has a big following online - when he shares a picture of a positive
pregnancy test on his Instagram feed he gets 6,000 likes for
announcing the arrival of his sixth child.

But there are dozens of other podcasts and videos presented by
Orthodox clergy and an army of followers - mainly male.

Father Moses tells his congregation there are two ways of serving God
- being a monk or a nun, or getting married. Those who take the second
path should avoid contraception and have as many children as possible.

"Show me one saint in the history of the Church who ever blessed any
kind of birth control," Father Moses says. As for masturbation - or
what the church calls self-abuse - the priest condemns it as "pathetic
and unmanly".

Father Moses says Orthodoxy is "not masculine, it is just normal",
while "in the West everything has become very feminised". Some
Protestant churches, he believes, mainly cater for women.

"I don't want to go to services that feel like a Taylor Swift
concert," Father Moses says. "If you look at the language of the
'worship music', it's all emotion - that's not men."

Elissa Bjeletich Davis, a former Protestant who now belongs to the
Greek Orthodox Church in Austin, is a Sunday school teacher and has
her own podcast. She says many converts belong to "the anti-woke
crowd" and sometimes have strange ideas about their new faith -
especially those in the Russian Church.

"They see it as a military, rigid, disciplinary, masculine,
authoritarian religion," Elissa says. "It's kind of funny. It's almost
as if the old American Puritans and their craziness is resurfacing."

Former atheist Buck began exploring Russian Orthodoxy during the Covid
pandemic

Buck Johnson has worked as a firefighter for 25 years and hosts the
Counterflow podcast.

He says he was initially scared to enter his local Russian Orthodox
Church as he "looks different, covered in tattoos", but tells me he
was welcomed with open arms. He was also impressed the church stayed
open throughout the Covid lockdown.

Sitting on a couch in front of two huge TV screens at his home in
Lockhart, he says his newfound faith is changing his view of the
world.

"Negative American views on Russia are what worry me," Buck says. He
tells me the mainstream, "legacy" media presents a distorted picture
of the invasion of Ukraine.

"I think there's a holdover from the boomer generation here in America
that lived through the Cold War," Buck says, "and I don't quite grasp
why - but they say Russia's bad."

The head of the Russian Church in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill, has
doggedly backed the invasion of Ukraine, calling it a Holy War, and
expressing little compassion for its victims. When I ask Archpriest
Father John Whiteford about Russia's top cleric, who many see as a
warmonger, he assures me the Patriarch's words have been distorted.

Footage and photographs of Putin quoting Bible verses, holding candles
during services in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and
stripping down to his swim trunks to plunge into icy water at
Epiphany, seem to have struck a chord. Some - in America and other
countries - see Russia as the last bastion of true Christianity.

Nearly a decade ago, another Orthodox convert turned priest from
Texas, Father Joseph Gleason, moved from America to Borisoglebskiy, a
village four hours' drive north of Moscow, with his wife and eight
children.

"Russia does not have homosexual marriage, it does not have civil
unions, it is a place where you can home-school your kids and - of
course - I love the thousand-year history of Orthodox Christianity
here," he told a Russian video host.

This wispy-bearded Texan is in the vanguard of a movement urging
conservatives to relocate to Russia. Last August, Putin introduced
fast-track shared values visa for those fleeing Western liberalism.

Back in Texas, Buck tells me he and his fellow converts are turning
their backs on instant gratification and American consumerism.

"We're thinking of things long term," Buck says, "like traditions,
love for your family, love for you community, love for neighbours.

"I think that orthodoxy fits us well - and especially in Texas."

Source:
<https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30q5l8d4lro>

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On Wed, 28 May 2025 13:16:16 +0200, Steve Hayes
<hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:

Young US men are joining Russian churches promising 'absurd levels of >manliness'

Lucy Ash, BBC News

A bishop responds: Bishop Irinei of Western Europe responds to the BBC
artic le about young men joining the Orthodox Church to bolster their masculinity.


‘Seeking After Worldly Visions of “Masculinity” is Not an Orthodox Pursuit’: A Word From Bishop Irenei.

25 May, 2025 | Communications from the Diocesan Bishop

https://orthodox-europe.org/content/remarks-25th-may-2025/

The following brief talk was given by His Grace Bishop Irenei of
London and Western Europe after the Divine Liturgy of 25th May 2025 in
the Diocesan Cathedral, London.

Christ is risen!

I wish to say a small word here after this Divine Service, in the name
of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

It’s not often, in fact, it’s extremely rare that I ever comment from
this place on things going on in the media or in the political world,
because for the most part these have no bearing upon our life in
Christ. But I do want to say something today that’s in response
directly to something in the press. As of this morning, there’s an
article that has been published in the mass media. It’s on the radio
and so on, about the Russian Church, particularly in America, but more
broadly about the Church Abroad, and it talks about the Church in
terms of people seeking ‘masculinity’ and a ‘conservative environment’ and a political environment that’s different from the ‘liberal’ world around them. And I feel it’s necessary to say something in light of
this to all of you who are here.

It doesn’t overly concern me when the media misrepresents the Orthodox
Faith. In fact, I cannot even really blame them most of the time,
because of course, it’s not their job, and we don’t expect an
understanding of spiritual things from a non-spiritual environment.
When they try honestly and openly and make mistakes, we simply ignore
it. It’s different, of course, if there is malicious intent or a
deliberate desire to misrepresent the teachings of the church. This
sometimes happens, though it doesn’t seem to be the case, really, in
this particular instance.

I’m not overly concerned about what the media thinks of us. However, I
am very concerned about what you think of us. That is to say, about
what each Orthodox person understands about the Church. We live in a
culture where too many people, including people in our own Church,
turn to the media, whether it be traditional or social media, or other
things, and think that they will find there some accurate echo of the Church’s teaching. This almost never happens. Almost always, what is presented in the media - especially in social, but even in traditional
media - is a distortion, a mischaracterisation, intentional or
otherwise, and not a safe place to gain an understanding of the
Church’s teaching.

So there have been a few reports of late, including this most recent
one currently making the rounds, about a number of young people
converting to Orthodoxy, particularly young men, converting because
they find in the Orthodox Church, according to these reports, an
environment that preaches ‘masculinity’ and real ‘manhood’. And I want to say that if you’re here because you think that that’s what we are
here to do, then you are a fool. This is stupidity. ‘Masculinity’, so
far as I am aware, is not an Orthodox term. It is not a term that has
any traditional place in Christianity. It is a term embraced by the
secular world because this world has rejected normal concepts of
humanity, in which of course there is male and there is female, there
is child, there is adult. These are simply human beings. But because
the world has lost sight of the basics of what it means to be human,
it is forced to respond to the lack of clarity it has pushed on itself
by fostering these concepts of ‘femininity’, ‘masculinity’, and so on.

None of this has anything to do with the teaching of Jesus Christ.
This Church proclaims a simple reality that in Jesus Christ our
Saviour, all of us discover what it means to be a human being, what it
means to become a human person. And this is to live according to the
Gospel after the image of Christ. If you have lost sight of what it
means to be a man in this strange world, or if you have lost sight of
what it means to be a woman in this strange world, this is hardly
surprising. This world is more confused about these simple concepts
than about almost anything else. So if you are here because you are
confused and you wish to find sanity and normality in the teaching of
Christ: God bless you, and may we by God’s mercy be of some help.

But if you are here because you think this is a place where you can
reinforce some cultural masculinity, if you’re here because you think
this is the place to rebel against what you see going on politically
around you or socially around you, please keep on going - go somewhere
else. We are not here for this reason. We preach one thing and one
thing only: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord. We preach it without
fear, and we preach it without agenda. Our only goal is that every
single human being might become a living image of Christ Himself. That
men might become Christ-like men; that women might become Christ-like
women; that children might be true children of God; that the aged
might find the real respect due to those who long live and struggle
for Christ; that this world might come to understand what it means to
be redeemed.

All of these other characterisations of Christian life and
characterisations of Church life, the thing they all have in common is
that they seem never to be religious at all. Their only interest is in
social and political questions. ‘What are your views on masculinity,
on sexuality, on politics, on government, on war?’ Do not come here,
if those are the questions that drive your life. Come here for one
reason: because you are aware, somewhere deep inside of you, that
something is wrong. Something is wrong with you, with me, with the
world in which we live, and this something is called sin, and this is
the place where it can be healed.

If you come to this place because you think it’s the spot to find a
political ideology that matches yours; if you come here because you
think we are going to preach some politics, some worldly mindset, as
if it allies with the teachings of the Church, please - don’t stay. It
is foolishness, it is stupidity, to think that there is any government anywhere, be it in Russia, be it in America, be it in Europe, be it
anywhere, whose teachings can be aligned with those of the Orthodox
Church. This is nonsense. And if you’re seeking that, keep looking.
You’ll never find it, and you certainly won’t find it here.

If you’re seeking a place to come where you can compare a ‘right’
leaning ideology against the ‘left’ leaning ideology, go somewhere
else. This is not the place to lean right or left, but the point up
towards the Kingdom of God. ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, these are totally worldly things. I tire of hearing them. I tire of being asked whether
the Church sides with one or the other. We reject the entire model. We
seek one Kingdom, and that is Christ’s kingdom. We have one vision for
the future of mankind, and that is the vision that Christ lays out in
the Gospel. Nothing else.

We are committed and we will be strong to always maintain the truth
and nothing else. We are not here to be politicians. We are not here
to be social commentators. We are not here to foster any worldly
agenda. We are here, and I pray from the bottom of my heart that each
one of you is here, for only one reason: to listen to the Gospel of
Jesus Christ, and to do it.

And let me just conclude by saying this. If you have come here for any
of those wrong reasons, God bless you. Stay, if what you want is to
become something different. If what you want is to be changed into
something different, higher, better than this. That is the whole
reason the Church exists - for repentance, a change of life. But if
any of us is here so that we can be reinforced in our cultural
understandings, so that we can somehow have strengthened our own
politics or our own social norms, if that’s what you want, go do that
at home. Go do that by yourself, and come back to us when you’re ready
to repent.

This is the Church. Christ’s church. If you want to know what we
believe, don’t look at the Internet. Don’t read media reports. Listen
to your own voice when you open your mouth during the Liturgy, and we
sing «?????..», ‘I believe…’ (the Creed). That is what we believe. If you want to see what humanity looks like, look at the humanity in the
Church: a humanity grounded in forgiveness and love and mutual
support, and following Christ God. May this be our only mission and
our only goal. And if we have failed in proclaiming this to the world,
if the world has cause to think of us otherwise, because of our
shortcomings, let us do better. And where others are misrepresenting
us, just ignore them, don’t react, don’t respond; but above all, don’t
be swayed by this kind of nonsense. We know what is the truth. We know
what is our calling, and that is what we will do with our life. God
bless you, Amen.

Source:
<https://orthodox-europe.org/content/remarks-25th-may-2025/>






--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

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The OCA was the result of RC Eastern Rite Wilkes-Barr PA bishop Alexis Toth rebelling against imperiously obnoxious NYC RC Bp John Ireland and aligning
his Central European coal miner flock with Moscow in 1892.

"Sebero Aleutska Metropolia" signage is on the "soviet" cathedral in
Manhattan formed to minister to TurcoTatars found in near-polar regions of Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia.

Loftus & Arons Unholy Trinity exposes that ROCOR was a sham front set up by soviet triple agent Prince Turkul to make Russian Tsarist exiles look foolish by engaging in self destructive adventures.

The "masculine" church is driving away women who refuse to marry fellow Orthodox.


--
Vasos Panagiotopoulos panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---

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