The orthobro phenomenon is real and is creating a huge crisis in catechesis in America. My friend Light On Ascent recently raised concerns about this in her article “Elmer Fudd Orthodoxy”

lightonascent.substack.…, offering the following observation:

“There are men who kiss icons reverently on Sunday morning while ignoring their wives’ exhaustion by Sunday afternoon. Men who debate theology and doomscroll online while their families quietly ache for tenderness, accountability, attention, and love. Men obsessed with ‘truth’ in the abstract while carefully avoiding the truth about themselves….Orthodoxy is not meant to function as a hiding place for fractured egos or unresolved suffering. It is meant to be a hospital in which those wounds are brought into the light. And if the Church is to remain faithful to its purpose in an age of online performance, ideological tribalism, and spiritual vanity, then both clergy and laity must develop the courage to confront not only doctrinal error, but emotional immaturity, coercive behavior, untreated psychological injury, and the subtle seduction of performative holiness masquerading as zeal.”

As a result of these and other observations, the proprietor of Light On Ascent has been subject to cyberbullying from “Fire Down the Mountain,” who labeled her as a feminist, and exclaimed “you can go to hell for what you're doing.” (lightonascent.substack.…) Her reaction was admirable and, rather than arguing or defending herself, she asked everyone to pray for her accuser.

I wish this orthobro bullying were purely an online phenomenon, but I have seen the orthobro phenomenon first-hand when I used to live in the Pacific Northwest. It was routine for new converts to mix Orthodoxy with radical political ideologies, including race-based hate, vigilantism, pro-Hitler historical revisionism, and strident calls for physical violence against Jews and Democrats—all in the name of Eastern Orthodoxy. Yes, it’s sickening. In one case, a church had to actually hire a security guard following threats from a new convert who decided the church was not sufficiently Orthodox and announced that everyone needed to be taught a lesson…a violent lesson.

Having talked to many of the converts who have come into Orthodoxy through the manosphere, it’s clear that they are usually hurting and struggling with addiction, often the products of broken homes. As such, they are not unlike the converts to Christianity through the ages. We shouldn’t despise this cohort of converts, because it’s those who are wounded and acting out their trauma who most need the hospital of the Church. Thank God they are coming to Jesus! In my experience it takes about two years participating in the life of the Church for orthobros to begin developing a proper phronema. But—and this is crucial—I’ve also observed some of these young men never make that transition. Instead, they come into parishes that merely subsidize their toxic ideas. This is often because they encounter teaching from the pulpit and in catechism class that merely layers pseudo-orthodox ideas on top of radical ideology.

Often, radical ideology is sanctified by celebrity priests who migrate ideology from the political to the religious realm. This takes the rough edges off radicalism, often repackaging ideology as rigorism. This results in young men who entered the Church from the manosphere ending up in a worse state than before, claiming the moral high ground, thinking they are healed when they have only burrowed deeper into brokenness.

To give an example, consider misogynist views of sex. One popular celebrity priest who has recently used the internet to achieve rock star status (let the reader understand!), has taught that marriage is situated in the beastly and animal-like tendencies of the postlapsarian state, and that sex in marriage is God’s concession to our lusts - a type of legalized prostitution. Men who come into Orthodoxy through the manosphere—saturated as it is in porn and misogynist videos—have no problem accepting the idea that sex is animalistic. The recent scandal that Rod Dreher covered when the orthobro community engaged in revenge porn (roddreher.substack.com/…) comes with no little irony. What these converts ought to be taught in catechesis is that for intimacy in marriage to be healthy, it must occur within the context of loving self-donation and emotional tenderness, not that it is God’s concession to our animalistic side!

Or consider another example. The worldview that many of these converts are coming out of is one that has divided the world along strictly binary lines, often based on race or political divisions. In many Orthodox parishes, these converts find this basic mindset merely repackaged in Orthodox terms. Often tradition will be treated as an end in itself, presenting what Fr. Emmanuel Lemelson calls “intellectual territory to be fiercely defended and publicly marketed.” Tradition then becomes a refuge from the “other,” often fueled by stereotypes and caricatures. Consider how many would-be Orthodox apologists caricature the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura without ever bothering to truly understand the shape of the classic Protestant doctrine.

Or again, consider that many of these converts have often grown up in an online subculture that perpetuates the vices of the mind, including caricatures, epistemic bubbles, ideological echo chambers, gang-like behaviors. These subcultures routinely diss competing traditions, promoting intellectual grandiosity and lack of intellectual humility. A true Orthodox catechesis would invite these converts into a world that is more complex and ambiguous, and which offers healing from the trauma that compels us to rigidly divide the world between us vs. them. It would also instruct us in the epistemic virtues we read about in Proverbs, including fair-mindedness, intellectual humility, even-handedness, tolerance for ambiguity, cognitive empathy, non-dismissive consideration of arguments, intellectual honesty, attentiveness, etc. But instead many parishes encourage orthodox podcasts that merely reinforce these epistemic vices. Then the last state of the convert is worse than the first, because he can claim the moral high ground in Orthodoxy while only burrowing deeper into pseudo-spiritual epistemic bubbles and echo chambers.

Orthodoxy isn’t the only communion that has this problem, though it is particularly vulnerable since it is attractive to people who want to be hyper traditional, a tendency that is often adjacent (at least in the United States) with elements of the far-right. People who want to be maximally right, to identify with the most traditional expressions, are often attracted to Orthodoxy but for all the wrong reasons (Latin-rite Catholicism also suffers from the same problem).

The only reason to join the Orthodox Church—or any church, for that matter—is because that is where you will meet Jesus. And that brings me back to the excellent article written by Light On Ascent (the article because of which she was targeted for cyberbullying): “Eventually, every soul must choose between becoming truly transformed or merely appearing sacred before others. Christ did not come to curate an image. He came to crucify the false self so that something living, honest, and capable of love might finally emerge.”