Source: Frederica’s World
Eighteen years later, what’s changed?
Originally published November 25, 2025
Inside the OrthoSphere, everyone’s talking about Ruth Graham’s New York Times article about the influx of converts—particularly men—into American Orthodoxy.
Funnily enough, I wrote an article about this very thing eighteen years ago. It was a surprising phenomenon, back then, that the majority of converts were young men. These guys were just showing up at the doors of Orthodox churches, usually after a lot of independent study. (There’s a saying: “Why did he become Orthodox?” “He read too much.”)
Back then the predominance of male inquirers really stood out, because Western Christian churches had long excelled in attracting women. (In a piece I wrote for Christianity Today in 1999, I cite a female-to-male ratio in American churches ranging from 2:1 to 7:1.)
And here’s an aside, which means you can skip this part: I have long wondered at the sad side-effect of the Reformation, that there were suddenly many different versions of Christianity to choose from. Each person was free to hear the current thought-leaders, read the Scriptures, and come to their own conclusions.
That meant churches were in competition with each other to attract members. (I’m not arguing about the content of the Reformation now—just focusing on this inevitable side-effect.)
Horribly, in 20th century America the choose-your-own-theology option blended with the developing consumerist ethos, and churches began thinking they’d better “be relevant” (there were dire warnings about that, in the 1960s) and “seeker-friendly” (likewise dire, 1980s).
Churches yearned to to reach unbelievers by identifying their “felt needs” (hoo boy), that is, what unbelievers thought their needs were. Churches should find out what unbelievers thought they needed, and offer it, to attract them.
It was assumed that people felt sad and lonely, so these churches offered comfort and reassurance. And entertainment. Mega-churches were mega for a reason. Sadly, their offerings largely attracted already-Christians rather than unbelievers, so the earnest motivation of evangelism went mostly unfulfilled.
I hope I don’t have to explain this—this aside has already gone on longer than it should—but women generally have a greater tolerance for this sort of thing than men do. (Yes, I know there are exceptions. Me, for example.) That’s why Americans think “Religion is for women,” even though we know that’s not true of Islam or Orthodox Judaism.
Any human likes being comforted and reassured—this approach is not just “for women.” But men, in general, are quicker to get itchy about it.
That’s why Orthodoxy seemed masculine, when it came to public notice in the late 1980s. Orthodoxy did not go through the softening effects of competition and consumerism that confused American churches. It knew what it was to be battered by persecutors of Christian faith but, if anything, that made Orthodoxy more committed to its ancient self, more emphatically unchanging. Thus it escaped the saponifying process of American consumerism.
When I was trying, eighteen years ago, to figure out what made Orthodoxy so attractive to men, I took a seat-of-the-pants approach: I asked ‘em. I emailed a hundred Orthodox men, most of whom joined the Church as adults, and asked what they thought made the Church particularly attractive.
I got far more responses than I could ever use, even allowing the piece to run to 3700 words. The most consistent answer could be summed up in one word: Challenge. Men just really loved the challenging tone of Orthodoxy. They liked the clarity of what was being asked of them. They liked having a goal.
In most churches of their prior experience, once you were in, you just stayed there as the years went by. You kept hearing inspiring sermons, singing inspiring songs, and reading inspiring books. Eventually you died and went to heaven.
These Orthodox converts loved that something was now being required of them. That sin is a danger, a poison, not merely superficial matter like breaking a law. Sin is infection, not infraction.
And the Cross is not a transaction whereby our sin-debt is paid; the Father forgives our sins without requiring payment, like the father of the Prodigal. (If Scriptures are cascading through your mind as you think “But, but, but—” read my short book, Two Views of the Cross.)
These men loved finding out that the Bible is actually true, when it comes to spiritual reality. Saints and angels, spirits good and bad, they really exist. The battle is real, and begins anew every morning. They love that. It must be the same thing inside that makes men want to sign up for the Marines.
It was common back then to see enthusiastic husbands bringing reluctant or bewildered wives to church. I was one of them, one of the wives who didn’t get it. My husband fell in love with Orthodoxy instantly, but it was too foreign and inscrutable to me.
I asked not long ago on my Facebook page, if you were one of those resistant wives but now love Orthodoxy, how did that come about? And people said, looking back, it was just that they kept going to worship. Their objections faded as some authenticity, some authority, emerged through the process of worship. They encountered the God whom all Orthodox worship points to, and now they love it as much as their husbands do.
I think what I missed at first, and was bewildered by its absence, was the attention to me and my needs that I had received in Protestant life. Looking back, boy, what a relief to be freed from that.
Eighteen years ago, things were different; if men were going to church voluntarily, it made the news. But today men are actually more likely to attend church than women, which the Barna Group calls “a major gender shift.” There are more men in churches everywhere, not only Orthodox churches. Perhaps this constitutes one of our Church’s few and treasured memories of being a trend-setter.
And things changed in Orthodox churches as well. While it used to be mostly men on the doorstep, now it’s now a grand mix: single men, single women, wives bringing hesitant husbands, husbands bringing skeptical wives, happy couples bringing each other, parents with a baby, parents with a couple of kids, parents with lots of kids, and (sometimes) perplexed parents dropping off teens who have been reading a lot of odd books lately.
What’s important to notice is that it isn’t, and never was, “Orthodoxy is masculine.” It only felt masculine, in comparison with the general run of American churches.
Because Orthodoxy wasn’t submerged in consumerism, that resistance felt masculine. But Orthodox spirituality is the same for men and women, and doesn’t artificially divide humanity in half. We all follow the same path.
But that’s not exactly right, because each of us is actually on a specific path, prepared for us by God, a path no one else is called to walk. With the help of our pastors or spiritual mothers and fathers, we discern the will of God for our lives and discern the way ahead.
(It’s beautiful that Orthodoxy is still small enough that that sort of personal guidance is possible. But more on that below.)
We are treasured by God in such an inexpressibly personal way, infinitely loved by the Person who knows us so much better than we know ourselves. Though we know ourselves in part, when you look down that well of self it just gets darker and darker. But if you got to the bottom you would see a glimmer of light: God’s love coming back to you. God who completely understands you, infinitely more than you can understand yourself. He has created a particular path for you, so you can be liberated from the pain and danger of of poisonous sin.
It’s like Orthodoxy is a great big fitness club, and there are all kinds of exercise machines there. There are some machines that almost everybody uses, and some only a few people use. We rely on trusty older friends in Christ to help us discern what we should be working on, and how. (They, too, are being guided by more-experienced friends.)
Each of us is so much more complex than we are even capable of knowing, and we suspect we are darker inside than we could bear to know. But under the darkness, God’s love was there all the time. God knows even the darkness inside us that we couldn’t face. And yet he loves us.
But that’s not the end of the story: he also sets us free. Christ went into Hades to lead us out.
My son Fr. Stephen Mathewes wrote on his Facebook page:
«A further reflection on the Orthodox-trending topic of “Orthobros” and perceived threats to the Faith…
I love that the Orthodox Church is masculine—although, I would say that it is not so much masculine as it is paternal. Like a good father, the Orthodox Church sets an example for me, instructs me, challenges me, corrects me, even chastises me. It gives me disciplines to work on and learn from. It will not let me make excuses for myself, but to stand again and keep going. It reveals to me an inner strength that I didn’t know I had (specifically, Christ energizing me). It prepares me to be in this difficult and treacherous world. It shapes me, and grows me into the person I need to be.
And at the very same time, I love that the Orthodox Church is feminine—or, more rightly, maternal. Like a good mother, the Orthodox Church feeds me (the Eucharist), washes me (baptism and absolution), clothes me (baptismal garments and priestly vestments), provides me with a home (church) and a family (fellow members). It holds me in my pain, tends to my wounds, reassures me when I am frightened, comforts me. It doesn’t tell me to stuff my feelings down, but gives them a voice in the prayers and hymns. It allows me to weep with sorrow and joy.
And with both the paternal and maternal voice, the Church tells me how much I am loved.
We need the Church to be both. And, thanks be to God, it is both.»
Did I tell you he’s my son? Would you like to see some baby pictures?
But here’s a note of concern. What’s different now is the sheer quantity of new arrivals. We seem to be at the tipping point between “It’s a great problem to have!” and “It’s a problem.”
My retired husband (Fr. Gregory Mathewes-Green) and I attend the church where our son (Fr. Stephen Mathewes, as above) is pastor, Christ the Savior Orthodox Church in Bluff City, Tennessee (“A Pan-Orthodox Community Witnessing To Southern Appalachia”).
Before covid, we’d have 60 or 70 worshipers on a Sunday. Now attendance is usually over 200. This past Sunday we had 248—the same number as at Pascha, just this past April. But it’s typical to have over-the-top attendance on Pascha, and this was just an ordinary Sunday.
So this “great problem to have” is shaping up to be an actual problem. There just aren’t enough Orthodox clergy to go around. Fr. Stephen had a packed day on Saturday, and another packed day on Sunday, and couldn’t fit in the traditional Post-Liturgical Nap. I watched him fall asleep at the dinner table.
It seems the people of All Saints Orthodox Church, Raleigh NC, are not uniformly happy with Ruth Graham’s New York Times article. Deacon David Keim posted a response which is getting fervent appreciation from fellow members of the church.
So Graham leads with the scary appearance of “Orthobros,” converts mentally warped by “hard-edged influencers” on the Internet. Far down toward the bottom of the piece she admits that parish priests claim to address this problem:
In interviews, parish priests said they see it as part of their jobs to acculturate “Orthobros” with extreme views to parish life, which they insisted was far removed from the violent rhetoric online.
But critics say that top church leaders rarely condemn even the most noxious rhetoric from high-profile Orthodox Christians.
Are there high-profile Orthodox Christians emitting “noxious rhetoric”? I can’t think of one.
And who are those “critics”? Shouldn’t you cite your sources, so we can decide if they are capable of speaking knowledgeably?
Overall, it struck me as ironic that an atheist could grasp the inner life of All Saints Church so much more accurately that the “high-profile” [heh]religion journalist did. I’m talking about Jared Smith on his channel, Atheist Church Audit; he visits churches and records often-scathing reviews.
In this video about his visit to All Saints, I’ve cued it to the point where he says he was talking with the greeter in the narthex when the priest came through with his “holy entourage,” censing the room with his “I don’t know the term—jingle-bells incense.”
As he came into the foyer she paused, stopped speaking with me, turned to him, and bowed.
And something about that feels profound.
That even though I was a visitor, and even though she wanted to make me feel welcome, that came second to paying homage to God.
View the whole video—it’s really worth seeing. He gets it. She doesn’t. I wonder if she knows that.
In his Substack post on the NYT story above, Rod Dreher kindly calls me the “most influential Orthodox convert in the country.” I have wondered about that over the years, the role God gave me. With all this talk about Orthodoxy offering a challenging, “masculine” profile, why me? I’m short and plump and (by now) white-haired. Whatever is the opposite of “athletic,” that’s me. If God planned to address the Marine-gene in men, it seems like he could have chosen someone more appropriate.
What I think it is, is that God put me here so people could think, “Well, if she can do it, I can definitely do it.” Maybe my general insignificance was encouraging to others. Maybe that was the plan.
Someone said to me recently, “You have definitely earned the right to be called the Matriarch of American Orthodoxy!” That made me laugh. I don’t have any desire to rule like a matriarch. But if people will be kind to me, and take care of me if I get feeble-minded, that’s all I ask.
Here’s a lovely video about Annunciation Orthodox Church in Bergen, Norway. They are seeking to build a church that will express the truths of Holy Orthodoxy in the beauty of traditional Norwegian artistry. If you’d like to contribute, wait for the QR code at the end.
It’s hard to take in the sheer quantity of books being published about Orthodoxy now. When we were chrismated, in 1993, there was Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s The Orthodox Church and not much else (and no Internet).
Now we’re able to see an Orthodox church-in-process in Norway, and today a translator asks me to link to his book, The Lives of the Athonite Athletes of Reverence from the 19th Century: Translated from the Russian original.
Yesterday I received a copy of The Diary, the journal kept by a Finnish Orthodox nun from her teen years through 45 years of monasticism. I get so many requests to blurb or review books, videos, and such that I have to guard my time—though I prefer to say yes, because people were kind to me when I was first becoming a writer, and I want to help others along the way.
But after I saw the cover of this book, I didn’t need much persuading. It was that little smile.
Thank you for persevering through this long post. Thank you for your prayers. I have to get up and struggle against sin every day, too.