[ditty_news_ticker id="27897"] WHITE SUPREMACY AND ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY: A DANGEROUS CONNECTION REARS ITS HEAD IN CHARLOTTESVILLE - Orthodox Christian Laity
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube

WHITE SUPREMACY AND ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY: A DANGEROUS CONNECTION REARS ITS HEAD IN CHARLOTTESVILLE

7

Matthew Heimbach in Charlottesville last week.

Source: Religion Dispatches

BY 

When I first wrote about the growing popularity of Eastern Orthodox Christianity among those on the far-right for Religion Dispatches in November of last year, I was regularly told that Matthew Heimbach’s excommunication from the Orthodox Church was the end of the problem. They told me that in making connections between the so-called alt-right and Orthodoxy I was overreacting.

But last week, there was Heimbach, at the center of those organizing the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville—and marching, as Inga Leonova writes at Fordham’s Public Orthodoxy, while “waving ‘Orthodoxy or Death’ banners.”

The events of the past week make it shockingly clear that with reference  to the growing threat of white nationalist groups, overreacting may not be the problem. I feel this especially because I spent the week before the events in Charlottesville researching the converts whom Orthodox Christianity and white supremacy share.

My guide into this world was Tim (who asked that I not use his real name). Tim inquired on Facebook  if I had written the article referenced above and I said yes, expecting the same apologia I had received before. Instead, I was introduced to dossier of evidence that suggests that the “nationalist problem” is far from contained and presents a serious, ongoing challenge for American Orthodoxy.

While the Neo-Nazis and Neo-Confederates may be relatively few in number, there is increasing evidence that Orthodoxy has become an integral part of the ideological and recruitment apparatus within some segments of the white supremacist movement. Importantly, these ideas and the converts to them are being tolerated, and frequently exploited, by much more powerful voices. This growing attachment to Eastern Orthodox Christianity  among a segment of white nationalists has serious implications for more mainstream currents in contemporary Orthodox life.

From the minute he first spoke, I couldn’t help but think that Tim sounds like a lot of guys I grew up with, if slightly more earnest. This makes sense as we both come from  the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. In fact, Tim became Orthodox  at the Assumption of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Glendale, Colorado. That’s the church my family has attended since my grandparents arrived in Denver in 1959. And while Tim and I never knew each other, we knew a lot of the same people at“the Cathedral.”

Tim told me that he came of age in the “anti-racist skinhead movement” and spent a few minutes regaling me with his tales of street fights against various infamous Denver-area Neo-Nazis.  It was from this background, which undoubtedly leads to a sensitivity for finding fascists everywhere, that Tim started to notice that something was going on amidst in the world of the Orthodox internet.

While Orthodoxy tends to draw a pretty conservative crowd (especially among its converts), Tim began to see  Facebook posts and websites that crossed the line between very conservative and  dangerous nationalism. So, Tim did what people do in the 21st century when they discover something that angers or frightens them—he started a Facebook group. He made the group secret and carefully selected who he invited to it. It became a sort of Scooby squad looking for white supremacists of various stripes hiding in plain sight within Orthodox parishes across America, using the Orthodox Church to add legitimacy to their message.

When Tim invited me into the group (as an observer for this article—not as a participant), two situations had taken center stage. First, one of the people that the group had been tracking had threatened to sue. Tim and a few other group members sent me some of the posts that had first drawn the group’s attention and a screenshot showing that this man counted Matthew Heimbach among his Facebook friends. He also attends another mainstream canonical  Orthodox Church in America (OCA) in Ohio. This parish had an active prison ministry and Tim feared that that this was a fertile recruiting ground for a white nationalist.

There was also a  small upheaval about a Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) parish in Lenoir, Tennessee. Members in the anti-fascist Orthodox Facebook group believed that known white nationalists, neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis were in the parish. The group members had left negative Facebook and Google reviews and now the priest’s son was trying to contact them.

I reached out to the priest’s son as well. His reply read,

There was a massive misunderstanding about our parish on the internet spread by people who have never been to it. I reached out to these people to correct that issue, not to talk about any conspiracies within Orthodoxy in general. Our parish is not Neo-Nazi or Neo-Confederate.

And despite some very questionable things posted by parishioners, I think he is basically right. The parish isn’t “Neo-Nazi or Neo-Confederate.” But there is much to suggest that the parish is perhaps a bit too tolerant of those who are.

And that extreme tolerance for some dangerous (and by the Church’s own standard heretical) views, may very well be the real problem.

One name that Tim mentioned early on was one that I had heard again and again: Matthew Raphael Johnson. Johnson was also present in Virginia this last weekend.  He has a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and is, for what it is worth, the intellectual powerhouse of Orthodox nationalism in America.

Johnson’s podcast is on the TradYouth website, the cyber arm of  the Traditionalist Workers Party (the political party founded by Matthew Heimbach and his political collaborator and father-in-law Matthew Parrott). For years, Johnson was a priest in a breakaway Orthodox group called the Old Calendarist Greek Orthodox Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia before being defrocked for phyletism (essentially for being a racist).

And yet, even from these far-off margins of the Orthodox world Johnson has managed to have an impact on the mainstream. His books are Slavophilic revisions of Eastern European history and completely marginalized in academic circles. His first book The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism and Orthodoxy, however,  enjoyed enough mainstream acceptance within Orthodoxy that it first came out it was sold at the canonical  Orthodox Church in America (OCA) parish I attended in college.

Johnson’s books and podcast, The Orthodox Nationalist, push the same brand of nationalism that adherents refer to as “traditionalism.” This ideology, which attempts to distance itself from more recognizable white supremacy, blends nationalism  with an anti-globalist agrarianism that in many ways does not sound dissimilar to the rhetoric coming out of the White House.

Yet among the traditionalists, one finds a whole host of other, far more rare, beliefs—many of which find more than a passing precedent in more conservative, but still decidedly mainstream, strains of Eastern Christian thought. There are, for example, monarchists, calling for a restoration of Imperial Russia or even a new Byzantine Empire.

While this may seem extreme, a strain of pro-monarchism runs through a great deal of even modern Orthodox thought, particularly within the Russian tradition where Tsar Nicholas II and his family are venerated as “passion-bearers.”

So how do teenagers in Appalachia end up advocating for a re-imaged medieval Eastern Christian empire? And why have these people been allowed to remain in ordinary Orthodox parishes around the country?

The best answer I can posit: anti-Semitism and homophobia. These are the shared beliefs that allow extremists to lurk in plain sight, co-opting whole parishes to their mission. This is, of course, not to say that all Orthodox Christians are anti-Semitic and/or homophobic. The vast majority are not. But the simple fact is that the institutional Church has been casual in challenging the most egregious public statements made by some of its more visible adherents, clergy and laity alike.

When high-profile, decidedly mainstream Orthodox converts like Rod Dreher promote the idea that modern society has become so corrupt that Christians should separate themselves from society completely and cites gay marriage as his “case-in-point,” what message does it send to other, less-refined discontents? What about when a respected theologians questions about the anti-Semitic nature of the Holy Week prayers becomes an internet firestorm of abuse?

There is no evidence that the institutional Orthodox churches in America, its clergy, and the vast majority of its laity has anything but disdain for these extremists co-opting Eastern Christianity. The episcopal hierarchy of American Orthodoxy has been slow to respond to the events in Charlottesville but there has, a week later, finally come a statement from the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America—a response that while delayed was unusually strongly worded for the Assembly

Before this, only one major jurisdiction released a statement: The Orthodox Church in America. It is worth noting that this statement makes, if not explicit, clear reference to those within the white supremacist movement who have attached themselves to Orthodoxy. The statement reads, in part:

 At the same time, we exhort our clergy and faithful to reject any attempts by individuals or groups to claim for themselves the name of “Orthodox Christian” in order to promote racism, hatred, white supremacy, white nationalism or neo-Nazism.

If nothing else, this single sentence is the most clear and public official acknowledgement made by the official Orthodox hierarchy that there is a problem with nationalists within the church.

If this statement will manifest into any real action remains to be seen. But what cannot be ignored is that  when you are tolerant of some kinds of extreme hatred, it opens the door for other less socially acceptable forms of hatred. It sets the Church up to be a mouthpiece of white supremacy and extreme nationalism.

It is obvious why American Orthodox Christians want to minimize the problem as much as possible. It touches too closes to so many self-inflicted wounds. But if something is not done, there is a real danger that American Orthodoxy will be further implicated within the white nationalist movement. And ignorance, especially willful ignorance, is no defense.

Share.

7 Comments

  1. In his book The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher does NOT advocate “complete separation” between Christians and society — and as a writer, he is very outspoken AGAINST white supremacy. Hanging any of this white nationalist stuff on him is just plain wrong.

  2. I’ve noticed that in the Orthodox Church we have a lot of ex-military parishioners and even Clergy. A lot of Orthodox are white Republicans that have become as far right as many in that Party, and are taking a lot of their views from FoxNews.
    I was surprised to learn how many Parishioners voted for Trump and held his views regarding immigrants and the poor. All this was very discouraging to me, and it did cause me to reduce my engagement with the Church beyond receiving the Sacraments. We have a lot of Americans who converted from Protestantism, but I can see that for them the individualism and the Protestant mindset that from that heresy turns into materialism and to reducing people to objects of production is something that is deeply ingrained in their psyche and it’s simply part of their culture to a point they don’t seem able to get rid of it. All around the lack of growth in the Orthodox Church in the US is not without reasons, and the fact that many Parishes struggle to pay anything reasonable to their Priests is telling of the Country’s culture and how bad of a field it is for the good seeds to germinate in.

  3. I find the possibility of white nationalism infecting our Orthodox Church to be most disturbing. Clearly these converts have no understanding of unconditional love, looking at our own eye, repentance and forgiveness. More specifically, there seems to be no appreciation for HUMILITY.

    For quite some time I have been offended by the intolerance, judgment and ridicule that has appeared on this website. In particular. I find the complete disrespect and cynical criticism directed at the Greek hierarchy to be an anathema unbecoming of Orthodox Christians. I attributed it to simple ignorance. In light of this article, perhaps the root of this behavior is far more sinister.

  4. The infection of Converts is laughable! I’ve been a Convert for 24 years and have been in one Antiochian Parish equally liberal and conservative (liberal clergy) and my current large Parish in Colorado is mostly converts and interracial, multi cultural, mixed political, disability friendly and growing like crazy!
    In my experience it’s the stodgy Parish’s unwilling to change that breed ultra conservatism and spread fear.

  5. This entire article is just empty rhetoric seeming accusing the aforementioned as racist or anti Semitic. All you do is draw false parallels and slippery slope your way into these conclusions. Even so, you cannot effectively rebuke these positions that you are accusing these people of. The Bible makes clear distinctions between ethnic groups even going so far as Elohim approving the enslavement of groups that were less inherently impious. Christ spent the majority of his ministry rebuking the Jews, and the modern Judaism grew out of the Pharisitical Talmudic tradition. John Chrystosm spent numerous sermons rebuking the Jews, the very man who wrote your Liturgy.

    You are an Episcopal in Orthodox clothing. The Bible is about hereditary partriarchy and your very diction lacks any conviction.

  6. Andreas Taylorides on

    Fortunately in Canonical Greek Eastern Orthodox Churches there are no such thing. But far right extremism is slowing gaining ground in Russian, Antiochian, Georgian, Romanian, Bulgarian Orthodox churches because of Caucasian/White English converts who are ultra conservative extremists. This is very unhealthy for canonical Eastern Orthodox Churches and sadly because of these views we see many depart from the faith.

Leave A Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.