Young American men joining the “masculine” Russian churches

“Many people ask me,” Father Moses, how can I increase my masculinity to absurd levels? “

In YouTube videoA priest supports a form of virile, non -napological masculinity.

Skinny jeans, intersecting the legs, using iron, eyebrow shaping, and even eating soup are among the things that he makes fun of as too feminine.

There are other videos of Father Moses MacPherson – a powerful father of five – lifting weights to the sound of heavy metal.

He has been a raised Protestant and has once worked as a roof, but now serves as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (Rocor) in Georgetown, Texas, an offspring of a mother’s church in Moscow.

Rocor, a global network with headquarters in New York, has recently expanded to parts of the United States – mainly as a result of people who are converted by other religions.

In the last six months, Father Moses has prepared 75 new followers for baptism in his church of the Mother of God, right north of Austin.

“When my wife and I turned 20 years ago, we called orthodoxia the best kept secret because people just didn’t know what it was,” he says.

“But over the past year and a half, our congregation has tripled in size.”

During the Sunday Liturgy, the Church of Father Moses strikes me the number of people twenty -thirty years who pray and pass into the back of the ship and how this religion – with traditions dating from the 4th century, seems to attract young men restless from life in modern America.

Software engineer Theodore tells me that he had a dream job and a woman he adored but felt empty inside, as if there was a hole in his heart. He believes that society was “very harsh” to men and constantly tells them that they are wrong. He complains that men have been criticized for wanting to be home -carrier and support a spouse at home.

“They tell us that this is a very toxic connection nowadays,” says Theodore. “It should not be.”

Almost all converters I meet have chosen their offspring for home school, partly because they think women should prioritize their families, not their careers.

Father John Whiteford, an archbishop in the Rokora of Spring, north of Houston, says that home school guarantees religious education and is a “way of protecting your children” while avoiding some talk of “transgendrism or 57 gender of the month or whatever”.

Compared to millions of worshipers in the American Gospel megacher, the number of Christian Orthodox is small – only about one percent of the population. This includes Eastern Orthodoxy, as practiced in Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe and Greece, and the Oriental Orthodox from the Middle East and Africa.

Founded by priests and clergy fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1917, Rocor is seen by many as the most conservative Orthodox jurisdiction in the United States. Yet, this small religious community is vocal and what is developing in it reflects more width political changes, especially after President Donald Trump’s dramatic rotation to Moscow.

The true increase in the number of converted is difficult to determine but Data from the Pew Research Center suggests that orthodox Christians are 64%, compared to 46% in 2007.

A Less Of the 773 transformations, it seems to support the trend. Men are the most new ones, and many say that the pandemic pushes them to seek new faith. This study is from Orthodox Church in America (OCA), which was created by Russian monks in Alaska in the late 18th century and now there are more than 700 parishes, missions, communities, monasteries and institutions in the US, Canada and Mexico, which identify themselves as Russian Orthodox.

Professor Scott Kenworthy, who studies history and thought of Eastern Orthodox Christianity – especially in modern Russia – says that his OCA parish in Cincinnati “has absolutely exploded at the seams.”

He has been visiting the same church for 24 years and says the number of congregations remains stable until Covid blocks. Since then, there has been a steady stream of new inquiries and people who are preparing to be baptized, known as catechy.

“This is not just a phenomenon of my own parish or in several places in Texas,” says Prof. Kenwarty, “It’s definitely something wider.”

Digital space is crucial in this wave of new transformations. Father Moses has a great study online – when he shares a A picture of a positive pregnancy test In his Instagram issue, he receives 6,000 likes to announce the arrival of his sixth child.

But there are dozens of other podcasts and videos presented by the Orthodox clergy and an army of followers – mainly men.

Father Moses tells his congregation that there are two ways to serve God – to be a monk or nun or to marry. Those who take the second time should avoid contraception and have as many children as possible.

“Show me a saint in the history of the church who has once blessed all kinds of birth control,” says Father Moses. As for masturbation – or what the church calls suicide – the priest condemns him as “pathetic and unclean.”

Father Moses says that orthodoxia is “not masculine, it’s just normal”, while “In the West, everything has become very feminized.” Some Protestant churches, according to him, mainly take care of women.

“I don’t want to go to services that feel like a concert by Taylor Swift,” says Father Moses. “If you look at the language of” music of worship, “all this is emotion – these are not men.”

Elisa Ruelic Davis, a former Protestant who now belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church in Austin, is a Sunday school teacher and has her own podcastS She says that many newly baptized belong to the “crowd against impetus” and sometimes have strange ideas for their new faith – especially those in the Russian Church.

“They regard it as a military, firm, disciplinary, masculine, authoritarian religion,” says Elisa. “This is something funny. Almost as if the old American Puritans and their madness appear.”

Buck Johnson has worked as a firefighter for 25 years and hosted Podcast CounterflowS

He says he was initially frightened to enter his local Russian Orthodox Church, as “it looks different, covered with tattoos,” but tells me that he was greeted with open arms. He was also impressed that the church remained open throughout the Covid lock.

Sitting on a sofa in front of two huge television screens at his home in Lockhart, he says his new faith is changing his mind about the world.

“Negative American views on Russia are what bothers me,” Buck says. He tells me the main stream, “Legacy” the media present a distorted picture of the invasion of Ukraine.

“I think here in America there is a detention with the Bumer generation that lived during the Cold War,” says Buck, “and I don’t understand why – but they say the bad of Russia.”

The head of the Russian Church in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill, has supported the invasion of Ukraine, calling it a holy war and expresses a little compassion for its victims. When I ask Father Archrich John Whiteford as the best priest of Russia, which many see as heating, he assures me that the words of the patriarch were distorted.

Putin’s footage and photographs quoting biblical poems holding candles during services at the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior and stripping his swim trunks to immerse himself in ice water in Epiphany, they seem to have hit the chord. Some – in America and other countries – see Russia as the last bastion of true Christianity.

Nearly a decade ago, another orthodox converter became a priest from Texas, Father Joseph Glizon, moved from America to Borisoglybski, a village of four hours north of Moscow, with his wife and eight children.

“Russia has no homosexual marriage, it has no civil unions. This is a place where you can home your children and – of course – I love the thousands of years of history of Orthodox Christianity here,” he told a Russian host.

This vague soft-texa is in a vanguard of movement calling for conservatives to move to Russia. Last August Putin introduced a quick road Shared Visa values For those who run away from Western liberalism.

Back in Texas, Buck tells me that he and his colleagues turn their backs on instant satisfaction and American consumerism.

“We think about things in the long run,” says Buck, “as traditions, love for your family, love for you community, love for your neighbors.

“I think this Orthodoxy fits us well – and especially in Texas.”