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Why Orthodox Men Love Church
Journey to Orthodoxy ^ | October 28, 2010 | Frederica Matthewes-Green

Posted on 06/13/2015 5:42:16 AM PDT by Kolokotronis

In a time when churches of every description are faced with Vanishing Male Syndrome, men are showing up at Eastern Orthodox churches in numbers that, if not numerically impressive, are proportionately intriguing. This may be the only church which attracts and holds men in numbers equal to women. As Leon Podles wrote in his 1999 book, “The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity,”

“The Orthodox are the only Christians who write basso profundo church music, or need to.”

Rather than guess why this is, I emailed a hundred Orthodox men, most of whom joined the Church as adults. What do they think makes this church particularly attractive to men? Their responses, below, may spark some ideas for leaders in other churches, who are looking for ways to keep guys in the church.

(Excerpt) Read more at journeytoorthodoxy.com ...


TOPICS: General Discusssion; Ministry/Outreach; Orthodox Christian; Worship
KEYWORDS:
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I almost never like what this author writes, but I find the comments she cites in the body of this piece fascinating. So far as I can tell they are virtually all, if not completely, from converts to Orthodoxy. What they see in Orthodoxy is pretty much what we "cradle" see and experience but through a different, if not distorting, worldview/mindset/phronema. In any event, it's worth a read.
1 posted on 06/13/2015 5:42:16 AM PDT by Kolokotronis
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To: Kolokotronis
I think this quote summarizes it:
“American Christianity in the last two hundred years has been feminized. It presents Jesus as a friend, a lover, someone who ‘walks with me and talks with me.’ This is fine rapturous imagery for women who need a social life. Or it depicts Jesus whipped, dead on the cross. Neither is the type of Christ the typical male wants much to do with.”
Men are turned off by feminized, "Jesus is my boyfriend" churches.
2 posted on 06/13/2015 5:50:31 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: Kolokotronis

I can understand hoe Frederica’s writing style might not click with everyone. But, she is quite prolific and obviously has an audience.

I assume you are aware that her husband was an Episcopal priest with young children who converted and left a secure position to establish a mission parish?

One of their sons is now a priest. I my be misremembering, but I think a daughter is married to a priest.


3 posted on 06/13/2015 6:02:02 AM PDT by don-o (He will not share His glory and He will NOT be mocked! Blessed be the name of the Lord forever!)
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To: don-o

hoe = how


4 posted on 06/13/2015 6:02:31 AM PDT by don-o (He will not share His glory and He will NOT be mocked! Blessed be the name of the Lord forever!)
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To: don-o

“I assume you are aware that her husband was an Episcopal priest with young children who converted and left a secure position to establish a mission parish?

One of their sons is now a priest.”

I did know that. When I learned that, many, many years ago, I wasn’t surprised. Her son is the priest in the parish of koumbaroi of mine. He once announced that it was his intention to “de-mystify” Orthodoxy. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how many cradles reacted to that....


5 posted on 06/13/2015 6:11:36 AM PDT by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated)
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To: PapaBear3625

Jesus is not to be found in virtually all of protestantism. Women are the primary source of leadership and influence in most churches. Men are castrated. Lesbianism is increasingly influential especially in the United Methodist denomination. Manly Christianity is frowned upon and outright rejected by leadership. Wesley would throw the lot of them out into the cold.


6 posted on 06/13/2015 6:12:54 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (This is a wake up call. Join the Sultan Knish ping list.)
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To: Louis Foxwell

I don’t know what Protestant churches you may have been exposed to but you are very wrong and close to bearing false witness!


7 posted on 06/13/2015 6:16:55 AM PDT by mdmathis6 (No white, no black,no slave or free,just washed in the red that Messiah bled!)
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To: Louis Foxwell
Jesus is not to be found in virtually all of Protestantism

Protestantism is having its own schism, with every type splitting in two between the small-o orthodox and the large-P Progressives, who to put it bluntly are large-H Heretics. The orthodox Protestants are just as manly as they have always been, while most of the liberals might as well be worshipping the Goddess.

In my LCMS church the pastor is an ex-Marine who left the Corps to enter the ministry, but who didn't leave his manhood behind, and the pastor in the next town is a retired military chaplain (worked with Bush 41), who would almost certainly be court-martialed today for his tenacious Christianity.

8 posted on 06/13/2015 6:34:13 AM PDT by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
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To: mdmathis6
I do not know if he is bearing false witness but a friend of mine told me while at Divinity School that the place was infested with homosexuals and especially the lesbian variety.
9 posted on 06/13/2015 6:38:22 AM PDT by ABN 505
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To: ABN 505

Which place...Orthodox or the Methodists....

Of a truth many mainline “Protestant” churches are as heretic as he said. But there are a broad tapestry of Bible believing orthodox(true to Christ) protestant churches who are true to Christ and true to the faith.


10 posted on 06/13/2015 6:43:54 AM PDT by mdmathis6 (No white, no black,no slave or free,just washed in the red that Messiah bled!)
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To: Kolokotronis
My problem with the Orthodox Church is that this is where much of the anti-Semitism that lead to the Shoah came from- most Europeans believing "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"- a hoax written by Russian Orthodox Priests.

Being Manly is all good and well, but read Corinthians 13- if you don't have love, you have nothing. Pharisees were superb ritual-followers.

11 posted on 06/13/2015 7:25:33 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (Ob)
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To: Kolokotronis

My wife and I recently visited the Church of the Nativity on a Holy Land pilgrimage. While we were waiting in line to view the Grotto, a group of about 30 Orthodox priests (not sure where they were from) performed an impromptu a cappella recital. This Roman Catholic can attest to the “basso profundo” that filled the Basilica. Very beautiful and moving. Wish they had a CD for sale! :)


12 posted on 06/13/2015 7:34:56 AM PDT by Shark24
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To: MuttTheHoople
Where do you get your information? The Wikipedia article on the Protocols seems clear that it was plagiarized from a number of (mostly non-Russian) sources. The only person they mention as involved who comes close to meeting your "Russian Orthodox priests" description is Sergei Nilus, but he was a layman who presented himself as a starets (holy man). The other Russians known to have been involved were laymen, members of far-right anti-semitic parties and/or agents of the tsarist secret police.
13 posted on 06/13/2015 7:48:01 AM PDT by Campion
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To: Kolokotronis
This is an excellent and challenging article. Thank you for posting it.

I go to daily morning Mass, where the women outnumber the men 3-to-1 to 4-to-1 easily. And the KofC (Knights of Columbus) is noticeably less active and prominent than the CCW (Council of Catholic Women.)

I've got to agree with Mathewes-Green that we could do with a bracing adrenalin-testosterone shot of the Masculine Virtues: by which I mean,

not as against, but as complementing

Even though we have two priests and three deacons (we are blessed by these men), almost every ministry, devotional and activity group is woman-headed. The overwhelming sense-surround of the place is potted-plants, herb tea, estrogenic.

14 posted on 06/13/2015 7:53:21 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (He who sat on the White Horse is called Faithful and True: in righteousness He judges and wages war.)
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To: MuttTheHoople

You don’t have any evidence behind that smear do you.
It seems to share the same character as the protocols.
And in the same breath as talking about Christian love?

Modern scholarship with the benefit of opened archives has determined that Mathieu Golovinski was the most likely author. He was an exile from an aristocrat family and later joined — the atheist Bolsheviks who were fiercely against the church.


15 posted on 06/13/2015 8:08:20 AM PDT by Mount Athos (A Giant luxury mega-mansion for Gore, a Government Green EcoShack made of poo for you)
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To: Kolokotronis

I believe over all the comments probably cite the problem of why men don`t like to go to Church.

The so called portraits of Jesus are enough to keep men out of the Church but no one wants to call them what they are, and I better not say it.

But there are some protestant Churches that look at it in much the same way.

The difference being that we believe what the Bible teaches us is to be taken with us and practiced in real life rather than used as a ritual in Church.

2Peter 2
1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

2 And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

If we read what Jesus told us to do but then tell our selves we have to do nothing we are denying the lord that brought us.

John 8
11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Jesus was more inclined to tell us what we should do as we already know what we shouldn’t do as it had been preached for thousands of years.

It hardly takes a bible scholar to know about the destruction of the sodomite cities.

Jesus said to love thy neighbor, how many people in this age even know their neighbor? or wants to?

Jesus said love your enemy, he did not mean for a man to go around kissing other men, he just meant to help them if they need help.

Jesus said do unto others as you would have them do unto you which explains the prior verses.

But we have people who claim to be believers who will try to twist all of these verses around to mean anything except what they say.

It is not how high we can jump in Church which counts but how far we can walk with God in our real life after we come back down to earth.


16 posted on 06/13/2015 8:36:50 AM PDT by ravenwolf (s letters scripture.)
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To: Kolokotronis
From the article:

One contrasted this “robust” quality with “the feminized pictures of Jesus I grew up with. I’ve never had a male friend who would not have expended serious effort to avoid meeting someone who looked like that.” Though drawn to Jesus Christ as a teen, “I felt ashamed of this attraction, as if it were something a red-blooded American boy shouldn’t take that seriously, almost akin to playing with dolls.”

Awesome comment!

17 posted on 06/13/2015 8:37:39 AM PDT by Albion Wilde ("We've seen this before. There's a master race. Now there's a master faith." Benjamin Netanyahu)
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To: Kolokotronis
Continuity. Many intellectually-inclined Orthodox converts began by reading Church history and the early Christian writers, and found it increasingly compelling. Eventually they faced the question of which of the two most ancient churches, the Roman Catholic or the Orthodox, makes the most convincing claim of being the original Church of the Apostles.

This is quite relevant. After a decade of searching, I determined that of the churches available in my vicinity, the Lutheran-Missouri Synod church is closest to Luther's original intent to reform the Catholic church and return it to the Apostolic faith. Orthodox churches are not readily available where I live; but I salute this faithfulness.

18 posted on 06/13/2015 8:47:10 AM PDT by Albion Wilde ("We've seen this before. There's a master race. Now there's a master faith." Benjamin Netanyahu)
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To: MuttTheHoople

Being Manly is all good and well, but read Corinthians 13- if you don’t have love, you have nothing.


It some times takes masculinity to lift some one out of the ditch and that comes from the love Jesus was talking about.

Luke 10:25-37
The good Samaritan.

1 John 1
18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.


19 posted on 06/13/2015 8:51:50 AM PDT by ravenwolf (s letters scripture.)
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To: Kolokotronis

One of the reasons I love my church is that there is a real appreciation for males. They are very welcome in our congregation and are heavily represented in the volunteer corps.

I have been on the other side, the side which tries to get men to quietly play in the center of the room. It doesn’t work.

My church is Southern Baptist Convention.


20 posted on 06/13/2015 9:06:58 AM PDT by buffaloguy
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