So What's Driving the Young Men to Orthodoxy?

By Father Photie

This is the question addressed by the New York Times journalist Ruth Graham in a recently published article ("Orthodox Pews Are Overflowing with Converts"). “Across the country,” she writes, “the ancient tradition of Orthodox Christianity is attracting energetic new adherents, especially among conservative young men. They are drawn to what they describe as a more demanding, even difficult, practice of Christianity.”

What Graham is reporting on in the New York Times is being experienced today all over our country. This semester, for example, an online course I am teaching at the Pastoral School of Chicago, “Byzantine History,” has 20 men fully engaged in learning about the foundations of the Orthodox Church which began in Jerusalem at Pentecost some 2000 years ago. Last year at this time, this same class had 5 students.

So what is driving young men to Orthodoxy? In her article, Graham quotes Josh Elkins, a 20 year old student at North Carolina State University, who answers this question this way: “Orthodoxy appeals to the masculine soul. The Orthodox Church is the only church that really coaches men hard, and says, ‘This is what you need to do.”

Reaching young men, however, is no new thing for the Church. After all, the patron Saints of our mission, the Orthodox Chapel of the 7 Holy Youths of Ephesus, were precisely that: young men! Not only were they young men, however, they were outstanding young men in the society of that day: decorated military officers, sons of the administrators of Ephesus, one of the leading cities in the Empire. These 7 young men were the flower of their generation, the boast of Ephesus and the promise of the Empire's future.

Not only, however, did they not flee from the demands of Christ and His Church, they embraced them! Because of this, they did not flinch even as the Emperor Decius spat out the command to bury them alive in the cave atop Mount Ochlan. One year later, Decius and his son were dead. 200 years later, the 7 Holy Youths of Ephesus, on the eve of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, were literally raised to life!

But it’s not just the men who experience and welcome the vigor of the Orthodox faith, but even more so perhaps the women. Matushka Photini at our mission, for example, comments on how inspiring it is to see women of all ages standing for hours in the Vigils, Divine Liturgies and services of the Church (there are no pews in the traditional Orthodox Church!). A recent convert to Orthodoxy, 26 year old Seraphim Dunn, told me just this past Sunday after liturgy how when he first came to the Church two years ago he wondered if he would be able even to survive standing so long. After a month, however, he said he was completely used to it.

Perhaps more than anything else, however, it is the ring of truth and stability in an ever-changing and shifting world, that is driving not just young men, but people of all ages and descriptions into the Church. I know for my part, having lived as a protestant most of my life, and even served as a Presbyterian Minister, it was exhilarating for me to find at last a Church that wasn’t trying to adapt to the ever-changing culture around it, but was allowing all those in the culture who wish, to step off of the merry-go-round and onto the solid foundation of the rock of Jesus Christ in His Church!