George Demacopoulos
A Blog of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University
According to the New York Times, young, conservative men are flocking to the Orthodox Church because it provides an all-too-rare space that celebrates masculinity. This “Orthodoxy as Masculinity” narrative is not new. It has been pushed by social media monetizers and tabloid reporters for a few years. And there is some truth to it—there is an aggressive online “Orthobro” culture, consisting of recent male converts. The uptick in male seekers to the Church is, at least in part, explained by the distorted vision of Orthodox teaching and practice that they perpetuate.
The problem with the Times essay isn’t so much that it reported these trends but that it did so without acknowledging that the “Orthodoxy as Masculinity” narrative is consistently rejected by Church leaders and scholars because it is so blatantly misaligned with the Church’s theology and history.
As a scholar of early Christianity, I could ramble on about the early Church’s radically egalitarian vision, its subversion of Greco-Roman gender norms, its celebration of female leaders, or the fact that it encouraged women to reject marriage and child-bearing in the pursuit of sanctity. I might also highlight the fact that asceticism is not about “masculine toughness,” it is about spiritual transformation for both men and women.