Source: Public Orthodoxy
Dr. George Demacopoulos
Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair, Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University
According to the New York Times, young, conservative men are flocking to the Orthodox Church because it provides an all-too-rare space that celebrates masculinity. This “Orthodoxy as Masculinity” narrative is not new. It has been pushed by social media monetizers and tabloid reporters for a few years. And there is some truth to it—there is an aggressive online “Orthobro” culture, consisting of recent male converts. The uptick in male seekers to the Church is, at least in part, explained by the distorted vision of Orthodox teaching and practice that they perpetuate.
The problem with the Times essay isn’t so much that it reported these trends but that it did so without acknowledging that the “Orthodoxy as Masculinity” narrative is consistently rejected by Church leaders and scholars because it is so blatantly misaligned with the Church’s theology and history.
As a scholar of early Christianity, I could ramble on about the early Church’s radically egalitarian vision, its subversion of Greco-Roman gender norms, its celebration of female leaders, or the fact that it encouraged women to reject marriage and child-bearing in the pursuit of sanctity. I might also highlight the fact that asceticism is not about “masculine toughness,” it is about spiritual transformation for both men and women.
But I’m not bothered that the Times story failed to report on basic Christian teaching or history. Nor am I particularly concerned that the story resorted to a kind of scare-the-reader reporting: “Look out, here comes the toxic-male-Orthodox.”
Rather, my concern is that this kind of story only increases the threat that the “Orthodox as Masculinity” narrative poses to the Church, especially to those charged with the catechism of potential converts.
In most parishes, catechism falls squarely on the parish priest who is already overburdened, often under-resourced, and likely untrained as a catechist. Because no Orthodox jurisdiction in the United States has an official catechism, each parish priest is left to craft his own curriculum. This means that the rigor, length, content, and experience of catechism varies widely from parish to parish and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In such a context, it is difficult enough for the priest to instruct those seekers who come to the tradition with an acceptable level of understanding of what Orthodox Christianity is, how it differs from the tradition they might be coming from, and why it is that they are interested in learning more.
It is all the more difficult for the priest or lay catechist to assist seekers when they are coming to the faith because they have been badly misinformed about what Orthodox Christianity is or because they are searching for a religious tradition that they have been told will amplify already-existing cultural or political ideologies. This is precisely what those pushing the Orthodoxy as Masculinity narrative are doing—they are selling a myth and they are doing so because they are seeking to remake the Church in ways that align to a preconceived social and political agenda that do not map onto an ancient faith like Orthodox Christianity.
The other, obvious threat posed by the “Orthodoxy as Masculinity” narrative is that it alienates faithful women who are part of the tradition. Not surprisingly, young women are leaving the Church in record numbers. That is tragic on its own, but even more so because early Christianity was largely a women’s movement—the first movement in the history of the world that proclaimed the inherent dignity of women.
It may well be the case that young adults in the United States view Christianity as an impediment to women’s equality, a view amplified by the “Orthodoxy as Masculinity” narrative. But that is not what Orthodox Christianity proclaims. Imagine what might be possible for the Church, for young women, and for young men if we were able to catechize everyone properly.
Dr. George Demacopoulos