Religion has been losing ground in American society for years, and there are many reasons for the decline. But one modern trend is driving believers away from their church homes – and right into the ancient arms of Eastern Orthodoxy.
As churches “get with the times” and change their long-held, scriptural beliefs in favor of fitting in with what secular society says is right, more Christians are becoming disenfranchised with their ever-more progressive religion. Eastern Orthodox Christianity, however, is happy to welcome them home.
Religion and Politics – The March of “Progress”
Christian values were long considered to be conservative in America – and those values have always been a point of contention (dare we say, contempt?) for the more secular left, especially so-called progressives. From a scriptural point of view, men are men, women are women, and marriage is between one man and one woman. Furthermore, 1 Timothy chapter three and Titus chapter one lay out the requirements to be a church leader or elder – think priest, pastor, or deacon – and, surprise, those requirements don’t fit into the progressive worldview.
Today, numerous churches have abandoned these principles. Many Anglican, Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, among others, now allow women to be ordained as full members of the clergy. The United Methodist Church, for example, began ordaining women in 1956, and today, there are close to 12,000 clergywomen.
Many now also allow gay marriage and openly gay clergy despite clear biblical prohibitions against it. In 1972, the United Church of Christ was the first to ordain openly gay pastors. It was also the first to call for full inclusion of transgender clergy – and it certainly wasn't the last. Even the Vatican has allowed priests to bless same-sex unions. Many of these churches have also jumped on the bandwagon to apologize for their “racist roots.”
This incremental bowing to “progress,” as inevitable as it may have been, has gone so far that even belief in God is now optional. For more than eight decades, the United Church of Canada, our northern neighbors’ largest Protestant denomination, has allowed openly gay men and women to lead ministries. In 2013, however, it was revealed that Gretta Vosper, the woman who has led Toronto’s West Hill United Church since 1997, is an atheist.
“I do not believe in a theistic, supernatural being called God,” Vosper told The Guardian in 2016, as the church was reviewing her beliefs to see if she was fit to lead. “I don’t believe in what I think 99.9% of the world thinks when you use that word.” She considers God just a metaphor for goodness and a life lived with compassion and justice. After the review, Vosper was initially deemed unfit and almost defrocked – but then, in 2018, she and the church reached an agreement that allowed her to remain a minister even without belief in or sermons about God. “This doesn’t alter in any way the belief of The United Church of Canada in God,” the church announced afterward, confusing many.
The Modern Exodus and a Boom for Orthodoxy
Back in March, Pew Research revealed that eight out of every ten Americans they polled said religion is losing influence in public life. As the report points out, 80% is the highest it has ever been in their surveys.
There are numerous reasons for this decline. Many Americans don’t attend church or consider themselves to be very religious because their parents – regardless of their own personal beliefs – didn’t prioritize faith and church attendance. When children aren’t taken to church or shown much consideration for God by their parents, they’re far less likely to prioritize belief in their own lives. And this apathy for religion grows with each generation.
Then there’s politics and progressive ideology. Much of the modern exodus is due to churches not changing their policies – or, at least, not doing so fast enough to suit increasingly socially liberal Americans who see scripture as misogynistic, homophobic, racist, or just outdated and bigoted in general. But many others are leaving their churches – if not Christianity entirely – because they feel their faith eroded by these changes.
Has God changed his mind? Was the church wrong to begin with? If the answer to either of these questions is “yes,” then how reliable are Christianity and the Bible? If it’s the modern progressive churches that have it wrong, what good are they to a true believer? For many, there seem to be no good answers – and so, church membership declines.
But that’s not the end of the story. While progressive religion drives Americans away – especially young men – a recent survey of Orthodox churches around the nation published by the Orthodox Studies Institute shows a 78% increase in converts compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019. While men and women have historically converted in more or less equal numbers, the report shows that far more men have joined since 2020.
“The last four to five years have been a massive uptick,” Father Josiah Trenham of Saint Andrew’s Orthodox Church in Riverside, CA, told the New York Post. “It’s showing no sign of tapering off. If anything, it’s increasing still … It’s happening massively in untold numbers all over the country.”
Why is this happening? “The feminization of non-Orthodox forms of Christianity in America has been in high gear for decades,” Father Trenham explained. “Men are much less comfortable [in those settings], and they have voted with their feet, which is why they’re minorities in these forms of worship. Our worship forms are very traditional and very masculine.”
It’s this very reliance on tradition – largely unchanged over the centuries – that draws many believers to Orthodoxy. One convert interviewed by the Post, Bailey Mullins, explained that he had noticed many denominations getting “co-opted by politics.” “I wanted to be somewhere that was stable and that wasn’t going to change,” he said. “It felt very ancient, and that was not something I’d experienced elsewhere.”
“Everything’s changing. Protestant churches are changing. The Catholic Church is changing. The culture is changing. The government is changing,” lamented Mullins. “People want something that is historic and not going to change. They want something that’s stable and sound and is not built on sand.”
Stable and sound – while those words may have once described most churches across Christendom, they’re nowhere to be found in progressive religion today.
