The Draw of Eastern Orthodoxy

Your comments on re-enchantment

My Thanksgiving open thread on re-enchantment has over 100 comments on it. So obviously this topic hit a nerve. Interestingly, most of the debate was about the appeal of Eastern Orthodoxy. There seem to be two major camps: one denies that there’s a flow into Orthodoxy, or views the numbers as too small to matter. The other agrees that there’s been an uptick in conversions, and shared their perspectives on it.

Matthew Schultz, and others, argued that much of the Orthodoxy we see online is just that - online:

I think the recent energy around Orthodoxy is generally online and subject to the kinds of people who get their community through screens and YouTube, rather than through face-to-face, interpersonal relationships. For many converts, it's fundamentally about politics rather than religion. Terminally online movements can have influence, but given the incentive structures (especially on YouTube), it's generally destructive to the institutions infected by them.

Bnonn Tennant had a related critique:

I think the appeal of Orthodoxy is superficial, meaning that it attracts people who make decisions more intuitively, rather than people who make them analytically through deep study. I also think it's unstable, in that it involves a wholesale rejection of one's existing worldview and religious culture, for an entirely new one. These kinds of decisions tend not to go well in the long run.

Seawolf argues that the draw of re-enchantment is related to the contemporary failures of rationalist society:

I think a lot of the drive towards re-enchantment is that rationalism is seizing-up like a machine that's lost it's lubricants. More specifically; scientism and the whole COVID fiasco, "fact-checkers" who make little things into big things and vice-versa (and a lawsuit culture that does the same thing), the prompt and utter defenestration of Godwin's Law when the Russo-Ukraine war kicked off, and others examples. The practical result is arbitrary and managerial authoritarianism from the elites, and disengagement from the masses. Think of reports about how Gen Z is the most checked-out and apathetic generation. They have reason to be that way.

As we know, the religious impulse remains. Rationalism and it's relatives such as scientism are currently in the stocks of the intellectual public square, and so people are giving mysticism and re-enchantment serious considerations that they wouldn't have given five years ago. But the realities of formation remain.

Ross Byrd pointed to the influence of prominent online Orthodox figures like icon painter Jonathan Pageau, who has been heavily promoted by Jordan Peterson. Byrd points to Pageau’s vision of re-enchantment as part of his appeal.

For what it's worth, Jonathan Pageau is a leading thinker in this realm (re-enchantment/Orthodoxy). See his work at "The Symbolic World." As a sort of disciple of Lewis, I find Pageau's ideas to the be in sync with Lewis on all kinds of levels (also with Lewis's forbearer George Macdonald). In particular, he seems to go directly into the cultural/spiritual gaps that many of our well-known Protestant/Reformed thinkers generally haven't even considered. The Reformed types (a la Keller) have given good answers, but in an un-enchanted or even disenchanted context, and the increasing irrelevance of such answers in our moment is starting to show. I've often wondered, "Who is the thinker in our moment who comes closest to doing what Lewis did in his?" Pageau is a name at the top of that list for me.

He also points out that many of the best known Eastern Orthodox figures in the wider world are converts, like Pageau.

Riddley also makes a link to CS Lewis:

On the subject of re-enchantment I would urge people to read The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis (if you haven't already), particular where he writes about how a woodland which has been mentally reduced to just a supply of timber is no longer the real woodland, and that ancient peoples might have been truer in their perception of it by populating it with dryads and what have you. I am wary of much modern environmentalism but I think there is a real need to stop seeing the natural world as just a "standing reserve" of resources and to try to connect with it in a non-pagan (and also non-idiotic) way. Paul Kingsnorth is the name that springs to mind on that front.

The fiction writer Kingsnorth is another prominent covert to Orthodoxy.

Doug Newman raises similar points with regards to the work of G.K. Chesterton:

Chesterton wrote against a scientific modernism in his Orthodoxy (title having nothing to do with EO). I think that is the true enchantment mankind seeks because it’s the enchantment of the creature astounded by what the creator has made and sustains. The lie of SCIENCE (tm) as Chesterton points out is the idea that in understanding more of the natural world we understand it (and life) as a machine…Chesterton insisted common things like water falling was magic, and it is. It’s the personal wish of an all powerful creator. So yes we moderns and post-moderns are crying for a return to what is a factual enchantment in our position as creatures.

Dean VanEvery points to the aesthetics of Eastern Orthodoxy as a draw:

I'm sure there are converts to Orthodoxy with real intellectual commitments, but to me it seems like the aesthetic aspect of liturgy is significant as well. It seems like liturgy and incense are this generation's lasers and smoke machines. Same principles, different expression. It feels more like worship. The doctrine is never mentioned in these conversations and reports. It is all about how it makes the convert feel. Shia LaBeouf makes this same point when he talks about why he was attracted to the Latin Mass. It feels more ancient. It feels more rooted. And it does so because it has deep historical roots, but historical roots don't mean much apart from correct doctrine. That is not to say that converts don't really believe the doctrine, they just present it as tertiary.

Sprouting Thomas said:

A lot of this seems generally true to me, though I think we're not necessarily talking about a mainstream mass movement so much as more conversions of disproportionately influential intellectuals (of a more dissident flair than the sort that converts to the RCC). Much as the PCA is disproportionately influential within evangelical culture relative to its small numbers, and while it has gained some members, it remains small.

Most Americans aren't going to convert to a church that's so alien as the EO. Normies, even conservative normies, generally don't like old things unless they were raised with them. But conservative intellectuals love old things. We enjoy the sound of the KJV even if we weren't raised with it. And if nothing else, EO comes across as very old.

Nathan Woods distinguishes the dissident draw from the re-enchantment draw:

Coming from a secular upbringing, I converted to E. Orthodoxy in 2020. While it's true that many male converts are coming in with a "dissident" background it may not be as large a subsection as you'd think. The reenchantment crowd tends to skew more apolitical.

But yes, Orthodoxy seems poised to produce some talented young people in the coming decades. I'm the poetry editor for Jonathan Pageau's new magazine project and work with a team of impressive men, all in their 20s and 30s.

Brian Eastin described his conversion from evangelicalism to Orthodoxy:

I'm in the process of leaving an SBC church for EO. What initially drew me was the depth of spiritual resources that were actively practiced beginning with fasting, but also more communal prayer and worship. Now I've realized that the sacraments are another such resource that is closed to more enlightenment minded denominations.

I go to an Antiochian Orthodox mission church and most parishioners converted from Protestant churches or nothing at all. I agree that the more ethnic EO churches are losing young people much like other Christian groups, while the growth in EO seems to be in less ethnocentric parishes like mine.

Enchantment wasn't what drew me, but now that it has enveloped me I realize how incomplete my faith was, not to mention the larger culture. EO churches may not bloom into the next megachurch movement, but for those wishing to find a Christian home that has not been subsumed by our decadent culture it will remain an appealing option.

And a reader who is a convert to Orthodoxy from Catholicism emailed me these observations:

The permission structure, so to speak, from Catholicism to Orthodoxy is pretty smooth: Catholicism holds the Orthodox to be basically wayward brethren who are right about everything except the Pope (this is my shorthand, accurate enough for lay purpose), with totally valid Sacraments. Hugely important: I never would have even considered making the leap without the assurance that I would still have a fully valid Eucharist, etc. This mechanism does not work in reverse: Orthodox teaching is crystal clear that Catholics are definitively outside the fold. It’s a one-way street.

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You are totally correct that Orthodoxy embraces the transcendent and the numinous in ways that almost no other Christian denomination in the West does. This matters a great deal, vastly more than is commonly understood, and it carries with it a profundity and meaning that was invisible to me (and unexpected) when I converted.

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Orthodoxy offers them dignity as men. To your point about men being especially attracted to Orthodoxy — absolutely true in my family, where none of the women have any burning interest in it — the faith offers a rigor that appeals to a certain type of man who might also be inclined toward engineering, or just reading about obscure ancient wars. More important, I suspect, is the perception that you can still find a particular sort of “traditional” wife within Orthodoxy. The number of young men I see who end up marrying an Arab or Russian woman from just my own parish is, well, robust. I honestly couldn’t say whether or not this is at all accurate, but the perception is real enough, and this matters a great deal to men whose material prospects might be middling at best, but nevertheless wish for (what they see as) a traditional family life. There aren’t many routes to that life now: you can either be upper-income, or you can join a faith community that offers strong cultural and practical support for it.

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Orthodoxy is elite. Take it from me, I’ve had plenty of Catholic-intellectual types, men of real achievement who are attending Mass with Supreme Court justices, grant me (totally unearned) respect for my Orthodoxy. I suspect Orthodox Christianity is developing a substantive niche in the elite-intellectual sphere that will eventually move into the civic space presently occupied by Ross-Douthat Catholics — and I think the present Papacy will accelerate that. Social status matters and is attractive.

Polycarp noted that some people drawn to eastern Christian religious traditions are attending Melkite Catholic parishes. I too have noticed this. Melkites are Eastern Rite but recognize the authority of the Pope.

I was also raised Pentecostal, and I eventually was drawn to the richness of the Catholic Church and the Intellectual tradition of scholastic saints and what I felt was almost an expansion or completion of my nominal following of my Christian faith. During the pandemic though, we found ourselves attending a Greek Catholic Melkite parish, our orthodox heritage being from the Antiochian Orthodox Church. The family and I were drawn deeply to the Liturgy, style of worship, tradition, and practices brought about in how they practice the domestic church. We are very Orthodox in everything except acknowledging the Bishop of Rome's role in the Catholic Church and maybe not as "against" specific doctrines that more Orthodox laity would feel more against. What you mentioned in your previous two articles that is drawing men and even women we see as well even in the Eastern Catholic parishes.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. If you are interested in more, click over to read the entire discussion.

Cover image credit: Alex Korchik, CC BY-SA 4.0