Young, single men are leaving traditional churches. They found a more ‘masculine’ alternative

[Pelican Press 0]

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Young, single men are leaving traditional churches. They found a more ‘masculine’ alternative

Young, single men are flocking to

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after discovering the “masculine” Christian religion through online influencers.

Some converts said they felt disillusioned with the “feminisation” of the Protestant church and were attracted to the “authenticity” of Orthodoxy, which they claim pushes them physically and mentally.

Priests are now planning to open new parishes to accommodate the “tsunami” of young men who have converted since

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They say that most of the new converts found the Orthodox church by watching

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videos or listening to podcasts.

Matthew Ryan,

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, found Orthodoxy after he saw a comment about good and evil on

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after “hitting rock bottom”.

The science teacher, 41, who had moved to Salt Lake City in 2022 to escape New York’s “draconian” Covid rules, began researching the ******.

This eventually led him to a one-hour

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video in which a Protestant visits an Orthodox church and speaks to a priest.

“I watched that, and I was like, OK, this makes a lot of sense,” Mr Ryan said.

“What really drew me to Orthodoxy… was the structure, the guidance, the authenticity and the historicity”, he said.

Mr Ryan, who was baptised into the Orthodox church in September, is among scores of men who have joined the strict church since the pandemic.

Matthew Ryan, a former atheist, was attracted to the Orthodox church by ‘the structure, the guidance, the authenticity and the historicity’

A 2023 survey by the Orthodox Studies Institute of Orthodox clergy in 20 parishes across 15 states found there had been a 80 per cent increase in the number of converts to the Orthodox church in 2022, compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

Of these, 60 per cent were men, compared with 54 per cent in 2019.

Many of them had been drawn to the “masculine” nature of church, which puts emphasis on denial and pushing yourself physically.

Worshippers must stand for long services, which can last upwards of five hours. They must fast, too, sometimes for up to 40 days.

This, some felt, was in stark contrast to other religious denominations where they felt the church had been “feminised”.

Emmanuel Castillo, 32, converted to the Orthodox church in 2019, a journey that started when he began reading the ****** while he was guarding al-Qaeda prisoners in

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The former wrestler belonged to a Protestant church, but felt his services were not too different to his Saturday night in a bar.

They had the “same kind of lighting, same kind of music, same kind of the same feeling, and after reading the gospels and the book of Acts, you know, I knew that’s not how they worshipped 2000 years ago, I kind of knew, hey, I’m, I don’t think I’m in the right church.”

Searching for something he felt “embodied the teachings and practices of the early Christians”, in 2018 he found St Ignatius Orthodox Christian Church near his home in Mesa, Arizona.

Emmanuel Castillo began reading the ****** while he was guarding al-Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay – Brett Hill/

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The father of two, who has since left the military, was baptised the following year.

His

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page is filled with images showing off his muscular physique alongside quotes from ****** verses.

Mr Castillo is open about his faith with his thousands of online followers and receives scores of messages from young men interested in the Orthodox church.

He believes part of the surge in men converting to the Orthodox church is a rejection of the “feminisation” of other denominations.

“It’s unfortunate that feminism has kind of sunk its teeth into all of our organisations to include Christianity,” he said.

He said that at Protestant churches, the majority of the leaders “aren’t good, strong men”, whereas the Orthodox church leaders are more like “father figures”.

He said: “They look like men. They look like fathers, they’re strong, spiritually, mentally, physically… I think young men right now are yearning to follow a good father.”

Jesus Christ, he thinks, is the “perfect example of masculinity”, someone capable “of calling down all of Heaven’s armies to destroy his enemies” but who instead chose to serve others.

“I’m very comfortable with physicality and because of my Orthodox faith, I’m also very comfortable at just, you know, being soft and kind… but being capable also of violence towards, you know, those who would do harm to those I love… I think young men, too, they want that.”

Mr Castillo, right, thinks part of the surge in men converting to the Orthodox church is a rejection of the ‘feminisation’ of other denominations – Brett Hill/

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Father Paul Truebenbach agrees that part of what is drawing young men to the Orthodox church is because they “naturally want to be masculine, in the most positive sense of the word”.

Fr Truebenbach, who was the priest Mr Ryan watched on

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video when he was looking into Orthodoxy, has seen the number of converts in his congregation triple since the pandemic. Most of these are single, young men in their 20s.

“It’s a tougher form of Christianity… I think a lot of men have embraced that and realised this is a form of self-denial with real results that actually brings peace and joy to the heart like nothing else”, said Fr Truebenbach, of Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Salt Lake City.

He said that men in his parish have started taking cold plunges, as well as making their fasts more extreme to push themselves.

Father Timothy Pavlatos, who leads St Katherine Greek Orthodox Church in Chandler, Arizona, agrees that the “challenge” of the Orthodox church appeals to many young men.

“Orthodoxy is challenging in the physical sense too, and it requires a lot… they live in a world where it’s instant gratification and just take what you want, what you feel you want, what you think you need, Orthodoxy is the opposite of that, it’s denying yourself.”

Whereas before the pandemic a maximum of six people would convert annually, this year he currently has 29 catechumens – people studying the Orthodox faith.

Of these, he said, the majority found the church online.

He had to enlist volunteers to help with the “tsunami of people coming in” and they are looking at starting new Orthodox churches nearby.

Mr Castillo with his family in church –

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Dr Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, an assistant professor of religion and anthropology at Northeastern University, whose research looks at recent Orthodox converts in the US, said that she started seeing an increase in people seeking out Orthodoxy from 2016.

She said this increased “dramatically” during the pandemic, to what she refers to in her upcoming book as the “Covid conversion *******”.

Dr Riccardi-Swart said: “We were at home for a lot of 2020 and even some of 2021, people had time to create content and find content online, and we saw in that ******* the rise of young males and males in general, who were Orthodox or interested in becoming Orthodox, creating content for people to find Orthodox.”

She said part of the appeal to young men is there is a phenomenon called “muscular Christianity” and the desire for “a sort of strong-man religion”, which she said is not unique to Orthodoxy.

“You have people finding Orthodoxy and saying, ‘Hey, this is sort of masculine, this is militarised, this is really hard on my body, it’s aesthetically challenging”, she said.

But she added that alongside the language of strictness and militarisation, she has noticed “problematic ideological issues”, such as misogyny, voiced by some converts online.

It is hard to get an accurate picture of how many Orthodox Christians there are in the US because of a lack of data.

The most up-to-date figures are from 2010, when the Pew Research Center found that 0.5 per cent of the US population was Orthodox.

Seraphim Holland, a priest at the St Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKinney, Texas, has also witnessed the surge of converts in recent years.

His congregation has tripled in size since the pandemic, and the main temple cannot accommodate the 200 people who attend the church on Sundays, so there are now two services.

The congregation has tripled in size since the pandemic at St Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKinney, Texas – James Breeden/Breeden Media LLC

Most of the new converts found the church online and around 60 per cent are unmarried men.

Mr Holland said that one aspect that appeals to newcomers is that while other churches are being drawn into rows about cultural issues,

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, the Orthodox church does not shift.

“I think there’s a lot with those sorts of things… society kind of goes to the new thing, and people feel pressured to believe the new thing, to talk about the new thing, to accept the new thing. We don’t feel that pressure”, he said.

He added: “We are not anti-LGBTQ… we are pro-Christian morality.”

There are now two services on Sundays to accommodate the 200 people who attend St Nicholas Orthodox Church – James Breeden/Breeden Media LLC

One of the recent converts at Mr Holland’s parish is Longin, 23, who found his Protestant church started to feel “empty” to him.

The small-engine mechanic, who had been studying theology at the time, became interested in the Orthodox church when he began hearing about the “martyrs” who had been persecuted.

This, combined with the world “shutting down” during the pandemic, prompted him “to look for something that gave me that same drive, which I guess the evangelical church didn’t really have”, he said.

Longin, 23, a recent convert at St Nicholas Orthodox Church who found his Protestant church started to feel ‘empty’ to him – James Breeden/Breeden Media LLC

“You have the worship, you know, the guitars and the drums and stuff, and then you sit down for a sermon, and then that’s kind of it, you know,” he said.

This was in stark contrast to the Orthodox church in McKinney, Texas, where he found worshippers standing for lengthy services.

“I just went to go see and I haven’t really looked back since,” he said.

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