#152: On the Allure of Eastern Orthodoxy and More
Movement, Trend, or Something Else?
Drifting Toward Constantinople?
In a recent article by Trevin Wax of the Gospel Coalition, he discusses the phenomenon of young men (supposedly) flocking to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Like Wax, I’m somewhat skeptical of this trend. Wax cites Rikki Schlott’s widely discussed article from 2024 that left many with the impression that this was a massive development in American religion.
Depending on how you define “massive development,” Schlott may or may not be right. Wax identifies what may be the biggest weakness in describing the movement of young men to Orthodoxy: the numbers. Sometimes the data simply isn’t available (or clear enough) to support an audacious claim about a surge toward a particular organization, movement, or tradition. Religious commitment, as measured in part by belief, behavior, and belonging, is sometimes notorious for its ambiguity.
At the very least, we can say that there are a lot of anecdotal and high-profile examples of younger men being drawn into what a Baptist like me might simply call a “non-Protestant” tradition. And there are several Eastern Orthodox priests and writers who have described the surprising number of younger people (men especially) who have trickled into their churches.
We should be alert to and informed about any trend that involves people being curious about something with theological problems.
To be clear, I’m not intending to explore the merits and deficiencies of the Eastern Orthodox Church, though I’ll offer a few observations.
To most Protestant evangelicals, Eastern Orthodoxy has always felt just a bit odd. In terms of affiliations, we tend not to find a lot of adherents to this wing of the church in many of the regions where Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Pentecostals, and Methodists reside.
When I teach Christianity in my World Religions course at Jefferson College, I always tell the students up front that we will spend much more time on Protestantism and Roman Catholicism simply because they have a lot more cultural purchase in our part of the world.
Insomuch that some of us do have some personal exposure to Orthodoxy, it feels…well…Catholic.
Like Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians have a highly sacramental vision for faith and worship. They embrace the iconographic stream of Christianity. (Both of these features owe a great deal to their emphasis on the incarnation as both an event and as a theological orientation.)
The Eastern Orthodox Church also has a lot of unique and problematic manifestations throughout the world, perhaps most notably the Russian Orthodox Church. Being a Baptist, I’m going to raise two or three (or ten) caution flags about how state church arrangements impinge upon spiritual fidelity.
But regardless of where the E.O. Church differs from confessional Protestantism, I do think Wax’s article raises a simpler point: we need to ask why people would be drawn to such a church body, especially if they leave a non-E.O. tradition.
Tradition, Depth, Distinctness
Who can know all the reasons (explicit or implicit) that lead people to choose something different from what they’ve known? Nevertheless, I tend to think that the allure of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and even more highly liturgical/sacramental Protestant traditions (Anglicanism, Lutheranism, etc.) could be expressed with three key concepts: tradition, depth, and distinctness.
In a highly fragmented and commercialized age, some people start to prioritize order, stability, and heritage more. People are, in fact, more appreciative of their father’s Oldsmobile than they might have been in an earlier stage of life or spiritual development.
Protestant evangelical churches have increasingly sought to embody the values of innovation, creativity, and the development of unique brands. One significant indicator of these tendencies is not merely the rise of non-denominational Christianity (which is, according to Ryan Burge, the fastest growing segment of Christianity), but the tendency of new denominational churches to leave their affiliation out of their name and promotion. The idea is “We’re doing something new, exciting, and tailored just for you.”
Meanwhile, the aforementioned groups pride themselves on “being true to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” They embrace their traditions. They point out continuity with the past. They double down on prayers, songs, and aesthetic forms that are anything but new.
Some people are drawn to that emphasis on tradition.
At the same time, people feel that these traditions are offering something that increasingly they felt was lacking in their past religious experience: depth.
To be clear, whether these more sacramental traditions actually provide that is in dispute. As a memorialist, for example, I refuse to concede that a sacramental view of the Lord’s Supper is somehow inherently “deeper.” The first question for faithful Christians should be, “Is this biblical?”
Congratulations on your “newfound depth” if it’s discovered at the expense of truth!
However, what I think some of these folks would say is that the entertainment ethos found in many evangelical churches, especially when it comes to worship and student ministry, is a turn off. They want a serious faith with serious teaching and serious worship. They equate that sense of gravity, sobriety, and tradition with depth.
Finally, I think distinctness comes into play here also. I actually don’t mean “distinct” in the biblical sense of being “set apart” or “holy.” I mean that there is something very different for a lifelong Baptist, Pentecostal, or Church of Christ person in encountering Lutheran worship, Anglican worship, Catholic worship, or certainly Eastern Orthodox worship. It’s like visiting a foreign land.
While this foreign territory ends up being off-putting for some people exposed to it, there is a subset of people who are looking for just that: different. They may not even be able to put their finger on what makes that difference so appealing, but they feel it.
I would suggest that many of them eventually come to describe that difference as just what I’ve already mentioned: tradition and depth.
Of course, I can’t help but say that I think there is an American (and worldly) penchant for trying out new things. So ironically, the same worldly impulses that cause people to crave churches that value innovation as much as Bible memorization is the same worldly impulse that compels people to try on Eastern Orthodoxy (or some other tradition) for five or ten years.
Being Wise and Charitable
I minister in a region that is largely Roman Catholic. This has been a very odd experience in the larger scope of my life. I knew one Catholic family the first eighteen years of my life. Now, I can throw a shoe out my window and hit 10 or 12 (not that I would do that, of course).
Living amid religious differences creates some challenges and obligations. It requires church members to think carefully about what kind of polemics are appropriate, and what kinds are ungodly. It requires me to discern how to preach and teach in a distinctly confessional and Baptistic way. It even requires me to learn to be a good neighbor, knowing that some of my neighbors are, in fact, brothers and sisters, even if they are wrong on some key points.
I had some neighbors sell their home many months ago now. When the sign went up in the front yard, my wife and I began praying that we would have an opportunity to minister to whoever moved in next. Lo and behold, a young, Antiochene Orthodox couple with two kids close to my kids’ ages moved in.
I wasn’t expecting that!
Whatever your context and whoever your neighbors are, you have an obligation to discern how to be both wise and charitable when dealing with believers of different traditions and convictions.
We also have an obligation to discern what lessons might be learned from these other movements. This isn’t to say that their claims to tradition, depth, and distinctness are all well-founded. Each of these are contested concepts. We should refuse to concede that ground to whoever happens to be perceived that way at the moment.
I do think we’re going to have to be more serious about some very common scenarios.
For my own movement, why do people tend to leave the “traditional (conventional) Free Will Baptist church” for more of the “contemporary megachurch”?
Why do people tend to leave the “contemporary megachurch” for the small, simple, Anglican church?”
And when (some) people inevitably leave the small, simple, Anglican/Lutheran/Catholic/Orthodox church, where will they go and why?
We need to try to understand people's longings, discerning the biblically legitimate from the culturally or personally preferred. Then we need to challenge them to let church commitments be driven by the right priorities, not the flavor of the week.
In last week’s newsletter I shared a quote from Amanda Held Opelt’s really moving piece, “It’s Okay to Have an Unhappy New Year.” Unlike so many online pieces which are initially interesting, then fade very quickly into cyberspace, her insights have really lingered with me lately.
I’ll share another excerpt from her article. Perhaps it will induce some of you to read and reflect on the entire piece:
I’d lived in the shadow of a cosmic equation, in the formula of If this, then that. Give this, and you’ll receive that; sow this and you’ll reap that. Cause and effect. My seed money was my theological wisdom, good behavior, and right choices. And the return on my investment would, at least, be deep and abiding joy . . .
It's no wonder we feel like we’ve failed spiritually when no facet of our life consistently delivers the psychological outcomes we expect. When we’ve made all the right choices and believed all the right things, we can even feel like God has defrauded us of his favor and abundance.
Many of us have squeezed our lives into a narrow understanding of what it means to be blessed, plagued by impossible expectations of perfect bliss and emotional satisfaction. But this constant pursuit of happiness can be exhausting. Happiness can be a tyrant, demanding all our attention and allegiance. And, when it’s idolized, it can suck the life out of our relationships, our ministries, and our families—none of which were ever designed to deliver complete fulfillment.
In a very similar vein as the one Opelt probes in the piece above, Jonathan Rogers offers some very helpful insight and caution as we reflect on happiness, hope, and more in the new year
In “You aren’t as happy as you’re going to be,” he says,
To hope is to get comfortable with the fact that you aren’t as happy as you are going to be. To hope is to stay on the path that takes you to a more complete, more human future that is ultimately more in line with reality.
Hope isn’t wishful thinking or an emotional escape; it’s a tension that stretches us in an imperfect world toward something better. You may be familiar with C. S. Lewis’s “argument from desire.” Every desire you’ve ever had points to something that fulfills that desire. Your hunger points you toward food. Your thirst points you toward water. So if you experience longings that nothing on earth can fulfill, that longing points toward a fulfillment that is bigger than the earth. Such longing is a feature, not a bug of the human condition. It suggests that you were made for something besides this world.
It's a brief reflection, but substantive and well worth your time.
If we loved children, we would have a few. If we had them, we would want them as children, and would love the wonder with which they behold the world, and would hope that some of it might open our own eyes a little. We would love their games, and would want to play them once in a while, stirring in ourselves those memories of play that no one regrets, and that are almost the only things an old man can look back on with complete satisfaction. We would want children tagging along after us, or if not, then only because we would understand that they had better things to do.
Now that simply is intolerable. For the first time in human history, most people are doing things that could never interest a child enough to make him want to tag along. That says less about the child than about us. If someone should say to us, “How would you like to spend most of your waking hours, five days a week, for the next four years, shut within four walls,” we should go mad, that is if we had an imagination left. It is only by repressing that imagination that many of us can stand our work. Some years ago, American feminists, in their own right no inconsiderable amazons against both childhood and the imagination, invented something called Take Your Daughter to Work Day. “See, Hill, this is the office where Mommy works. Here is where I sit for nine hours and talk to people I don’t love, about things that don’t genuinely interest me, so that I can make enough money to put you in day care.”
Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.
If January 6th was a coup or insurrection attempt, then whether it was a great political success for Donald Trump is totally irrelevant; it’s a non sequitur to say that a coup or insurrection attempt was successful because of vague political value, as the entire point of a coup or insurrection attempt is to take actual material political power. A coup can only be a great success if it actually results in a transfer of power. And that did not occur, on January 6th; as badly as our hysterical liberal media wanted it to be the case, the operational integrity of the United States government was never threatened. You can’t have a coup without the support of the military and Trump plainly did not have the support of the military. It wasn’t the Joint Chiefs of Staff talking about hanging Mike Pence, it was a bunch of idiot yahoos who had staged a directionless riot - most of whom appeared to have no idea that they were supposedly trying to overthrow the federal government. Some large number of them showed up to a big stupid rally, a riot broke out, and they did what rioters do. That certainly is disturbing and it certainly is worth taking seriously, and the first priority when taking a crisis seriously is to call it by its right names.
Freddie DeBoer, “With January 6th and Trump, the Truth Has Always Been Bad Enough.”
Sad. Pathetic. Shameless. Embarrassing.
There are just too many adjectives like those to describe the pro-life movement right now — a movement that seems to have embraced self-marginalization by deciding to be subservient to a political party instead of leading a righteous cause.
The Republican-controlled Senate of the United States is considering an abortion-on-demand-until-birth supporter to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services — a reckless crank and terrible human being who believes in abortion up until the moment of birth and who would control more of the discretionary federal budget than any other single person as well as stand in the presidential line of succession — and the pro-life movement is crapping its collect pants at the thought of even whispering opposition right now because they are afraid they might not get a scrap from the table, let alone a seat at the table and some people just don’t care anymore because Roe is done and high fructose corn syrup is the new enemy.
Erick-Woods Erickson, “Will Pro-Lifers Find Their Testicular Fortitude?”
John Piper, Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God.
Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.
The wildfires in California seem different from ones I’ve seen in the past. Admittedly, I’m just an interloper, so it’s difficult to know exactly what’s going on. However, like the insurance industry in Florida unwilling to insure so many homeowners and businesses these days, I wonder if we are reaching some kind of tipping point for lower- and middle-income folks in California.
And this doesn’t begin to express the kind of sorrow and sympathy we should feel about the level of suffering involved. We dare not look away or mock.