(a talk for an Orthodox Christian Pro-Life Event; January 22, 2012)

Today is the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion—through all 50 states, for any reason whatsoever. When I was a college student, back in the 70’s, I was in favor of legalizing abortion. I wasn’t a Christian then, but I was a feminist, the first feminist in my dorm, and I was loudly in favor of social revolution and women’s rights. I took it for granted that abortion was necessary, if women were ever going to be equal to men.

Of course, I didn’t think the number of abortions would ever be very high. Most of us, at that time, assumed that women wouldn’t want to have abortions, and would do so only in the most extreme situations. Things didn’t turn out that way. As of last June, the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade was 53,600,000.     (NRLC estimate of 49,551,703 through 2007, and 1 million /yr since then)

A number like that is hard to grasp. There’s a quote often attributed to Josef Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” So people have tried to think of illustrations to make the numbers real. Many years ago, I heard a speaker say that, if the name of each child killed by abortion was inscribed on a monument like the Vietnam War memorial, the wall would stretch for 50 miles. That was a long time ago, and the wall by now would be several times longer; but of course no such wall could be built, because those children had no names.

Sometimes pro-lifers have tried to represent the statistics by setting up a temporary “cemetery of the innocents,” with one white wooden cross representing each child. A friend of mine worked in the Dept of Health and Human Services under George Bush Sr, and one day she and the director watched out the window as people set up one of these cemeteries; 4100 white wooden crosses stood in lines across the lawn. The director asked what was going on, and she replied that it was designed to make people realize the numbers of abortion; each cross represented an aborted child.

He looked at the multitude of crosses and said, “Imagine, that many in a single year.” She replied, “No, sir. That many in a single day.”

Why should we care about this? Why should Orthodox Christians, in particular, care? Isn’t the pro-life cause something that Catholics get involved in, and evangelical Protestants? What business is it of ours?

You may be surprised to learn that abortion was common in the ancient Roman Empire. The methods were more dangerous than today (I should say, more dangerous to the mother; every abortion is lethally dangerous to the child). But those methods were nevertheless used by women who wanted to conceal sexual activity, or who were forced to have abortions by their husbands and lovers.

The ancient, pagan world was a harsh one. Not only were children aborted before birth, but a newborn child was not officially received into a family until its father picked it up and held it. If the father didn’t want the child he simply refused to take it up, and the child was legally abandoned. This was called “exposing” an infant; it would be placed in some public place, and the social fiction was that someone else might pick it up and care for it. Sometimes people did take in these babies, and rear them to be sold as slaves or put on the street as prostitutes. But, often enough, no one took the child before it was found by dogs or other animals, or died of exposure and starvation.

And this was legal. It was a harsh world. Christians stood out as different, in that world. They were different in seeing every human being as worthy of dignity, whether free or slave, male or female, Jew or Gentile (as St. Paul said in Galatians 3:21). One of the big differences between Christians and pagans was that Christians did not have abortions. From the earliest years, the Church Fathers spoke against abortion. Let me read you some of their statements.

This is from the Didache, a work which was written about the same time as the Gospels: “You shall not murder a child by abortion.”

The Letter of Barnabas, written about the same time, repeats those words. “You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not murder a child by abortion.” Note the connection he makes there. This is not about sexual morality, it’s about loving your neighbor, who in this case is a helpless child.

The Letter to Diognetus, probably written around 125, describes to a nonbeliever what Christians are like. He writes, “They marry, as do all others; they beget children, but they do not abort fetuses.”

The Apocalypse of Peter says that, in heaven, aborted children are cared for by an angel named Temlakos. He writes, “The children shall be given over to the caretaking angel Temlakos, and those who slew the children will be punished forever, for this is God’s will.”

Let’s pause a moment and ask: who slew them? When a woman aborts her child, who is to blame? Most people would say that it is the woman’s choice, so she bears the responsibility. But I learned how complex it can be some years ago, when I was working on a book titled Real Choices. My goal in the book was to find out why women have abortions, and figure out what pro-lifers can do to help them have better alternatives.

In the process I went all over the country interviewing women who had had abortions, and I asked them to tell me what led up to their choice. What I found was that, in many tragic cases, the abortion hadn’t been her choice at all. Sometimes it was the choice of her boyfriend or husband, and sometimes it was her own parents pressuring her to have an abortion. Two women told me the same story, that even while they were lying on the table in the abortion clinic, they were praying the boyfriend would burst through the door and say, “Stop! I changed my mind!”

So it’s not up to us to decide who gets the blame. God alone reads the heart. Surely, we as an entire culture must shoulder some of the responsibility, for giving women the message that abortion can solve her problems, and she should be grateful to have a so-called “choice.” Yet it’s obvious that this “choice” is profoundly unnatural in biological terms; throughout history women would regard the premature end of pregnancy and death of an unborn child as a tragedy. But we’ve been through almost 40 years of brainwashing about how liberating abortion is, so we shouldn’t be too surprised that so many women end up in abortion clinics—and when it’s all over, are left to grieve alone. There is an enormous thundercloud of unspoken grief in America, due to the millions of women who bought the abortion lie, and now are haunted by that so-called choice.

So there’s no room for blame. God sees the heart, and God knows. And whatever the woman’s role in this tragedy might be, surely there’s nothing as cold-hearted as the person who decided to go into business doing abortions all day long.

Yet, even though the early Christians refused to participate in abortion, a terrible rumor circulated about them in those days. You know that, in the centuries when Christianity was illegal, some parts of our faith were kept secret and not shared outside the community of believers. For example, the Holy Mystery of the Eucharist was something only baptized Christians knew about, and it was never spoken about to nonbelievers. We still say, in the pre-communion prayer of St. John Chrysostom, “I will not speak of your mystery to your enemies.”

Yet rumors started to circulate that Christians were cannibals. There was a story going around that in Christian worship a baby was put inside a sack of flour and beaten to death, and then eaten. Well, if you thought people in your neighborhood were doing that as part of a religious ritual, you’d want to see them executed too. And you can see how the rumor is a mixed-up version of our belief that Christ came to earth as a child, and that he gives us his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. So, many of the early Christians were martyred because they were thought to be child-killers and cannibals, and some early writers protest it’s a lie, Christians do no such thing, while it’s pagans who commit abortion and expose newborns.

Minucius Felix wrote, around 200 AD, “I would like to meet the person who says …that we [Christians] are brought into the faith by means of the slaughter and blood of an infant. Do you think that it can be possible for such a tender little body to receive such fatal wounds? Is it possible for anyone to pour forth the new blood of a little child, scarcely come into existence? Nobody is capable of believing this—except the person who would do it. Yes, I see that you expose your newborn children to wild beasts and to birds, and at other times crush them to death. There are some women who drink medicines that extinguish the life of a child while it is still inside their body, and thus murder their own relative before they bring it forth.”

Tertullian says that for Christians, “Since murder has been once and for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb. …To interfere with a birth is merely an earlier way of killing a person. It doesn’t matter whether you take away a life that has been born, or destroy one that is coming to birth.” (Apology 9:8) Elsewhere he wrote, “We hold that life begins with conception, and that the soul also begins at conception; life has its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.” (Apology 27)

St. John Chrysostom wrote, “Do you condemn the gifts of God, and fight against His laws? Childlessness is seen as a curse, but you seek it as though it were a blessing. Do you make the chamber of birth a place of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is formed to give life to perpetuate killing instead?” (Homilies on Romans 24)

St. Basil puts medicines that cause abortion in the same category as other kinds of killing. He writes, “The man or woman is a murderer who gives a potion, if the person that takes it dies from it. So also are they who uses a medicine to procure abortion; and so are those robbers who kill on the highway.”

Our Orthodox Christian heritage is absolutely opposed to abortion and child-killing from its very beginnings. This stand against abortion and exposure of infants is, in fact, one of the things that attracted people to the Christian faith. Women were drawn to a religion that, for a change, would stop men from taking their children away.

Our faith’s affirmation of life from the moment of conception is evident in the passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, and Elizabeth says that her unborn son leaped for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice. She says, “Why do I deserve such honor, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.” (Luke 1:39-45) The unborn John the Forerunner recognized the presence of Christ and his mother, and Elizabeth, with prophetic insight, realized what was happening.

Our Lord Jesus Christ did not become a human being on Christmas Day, but 9 months earlier, on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, when the angel appeared to the Virgin Mary and told her that she would conceive a child. The Forerunner did not become a human being on the day he was born; he was already a prophet and a servant of the Most High, even in his mother’s womb.

I don’t see how people living in a scientific age can think a fetus in the womb is not a living human being.  People have understood this for centuries—every Christian who went to church on the feast of the Annunciation, for example. Now, we know much more than they did, in terms of prenatal science. We have sonograms and can actually look inside the womb. We know that, at the moment the sperm dissolves in the ovum, there is a living, growing human being.  There is actually no scientific debate about when life begins. From the moment of conception it is alive. From that moment is starts growing, fast. By 21 days, it has a heartbeat. It is definitely alive, and in fact if it was not alive she would not need an abortion, but would have a natural miscarriage. So “When life begins” is not something scientists, or even ordinary people, are confused about.

It is human, too.  If you looked at a cell from the growing unborn child under a microscope, you would say, “Yes, that’s human.  That’s not chimpanzee, it’s not watermelon.  It is human.”  This living being is 100% human.

What’s more, it is a unique living human.  If you took a cell from the mother, a cell from the father, and a cell from the unborn child, and analyzed the DNA, you would say, “There are three individuals here.”  The unborn child is dependent on its mother for sustenance, and after birth will continue to be dependent on both father and the mother for shelter and food. But it is not a part of the mother. It does not have her DNA.

So we know that from the very beginning this unborn being is alive.  It is human.  It is unique.  And that is the basis of the Orthodox Christian belief that abortion is wrong.

Of course, there are many women who’ve had abortions, but didn’t want to.  Or may have felt it was the only choice at the time, and in the years afterward regretted it. There is a lot of hidden grief about abortion, but very little talk about it.

When I was writing Real Choices, one woman told me that, at the time of her abortion, she was pro-choice. But afterward she felt terribly sad, and she told me, “I couldn’t tell anybody how I felt. If I’d told my pro-choice friends that I felt depressed, they would say, ‘Are you a traitor? You had your choice; you should be happy with it.’ But if I told my pro-life friends, I was afraid they might say, ‘You’re a murderer.  We won’t have anything to do with you.”’

So there are many, many women, and certainly some Orthodox Christian women, who have this in their past, and they grieve but don’t feel free to talk about it.  I would urge anyone in that position to talk with your priest.  Believe me, there’s nothing you can say to a priest that he hasn’t heard sometime before.  He’s never going to be shocked.  And priests often say that, when they hear a confession, it makes them admire the person more, who love God so much that they’re willing to speak of painful things. So please don’t keep this in.  If you hide this grief inside it feels even bigger and more overwhelming than needs to be. So schedule a talk or schedule a confession, and begin to be healed from this guilt. God forgives.

If you’ve been involved in an abortion, don’t let yourself be overtaken by despair, but remind yourself that that child is still alive, in heaven. Maybe it did not have a long earthly life, but its eternal life will go on forever, in the presence of God.  Psalm 27:10 says,

Though my mother and my father reject me, you will take me up.

God the Father has taken that child up, as one of his own.  And if you persevere on the path of holiness, one day you’ll be reunited with that child, in the place where all sorrow and sighing has fled away, and the tears have been wiped from every eye.

If you need to talk through you grief, look in look in the yellow pages for “abortion alternatives.”  You will find listed there a number of pregnancy care centers, and these center’s don’t help only pregnant women, but also women who have had abortions, and even the fathers of aborted babies.  Nearly all pregnancy centers offer abortion grief counseling, and they can help you work through this grief to resolution.

In conclusion, I’d like to give you three reasons for hope. Though abortion has been a fixture in America for 38 years, there is reason for hope.

The first is that people can change their minds about this issue. I can give myself as an example. As I said, I was very pro-abortion back in my college days. One day I was home on vacation, and was reading my dad’s copy of Esquire magazine. In it there was an article titled “What I Saw at the Abortion.”

As I read the description of a second-trimester abortion, I was horrified. Because I was anti-war, anti-death penalty, a vegetarian, anti-violence in every form. And I had to admit that abortion was the violent taking of a human life. It was completely incompatible with my other non-violent values.

So the first point of encouragement is—me. It is possible for people to change, even if they’ve been hardened defenders of abortion. If I can change, anyone can change.

The second reason for hope is that polls are just beginning to show a shift in America on this issue. It made the news in May 2009, when the Gallup organization released the surprising results of a poll. For the past 14 years, Gallup has been asking Americans, “With respect to the abortion issue, do you consider yourself to be pro-choice or prolife?”

In 2006, 51% said they were pro-choice and 41% pro-life. But in May 2009, those numbers exactly flipped. For the first time, a majority said they were pro-life; 51% pro-life and 42% pro-choice.

Now, it’s not like there were a lot of pro-life messages in the culture during those three years. If anything, it looked like the abortion debate was over. People weren’t talking about it as much as they used to. Yet maybe, in that moment of silence, some deep-seated ambivalence had a chance to come forward. For whatever reason, America was becoming a country where the majority of the people are now willing to claim the label “pro-life.”

One possible reason this has happened is that young people are more pro-life than older people, and as they come into adulthood the balance is beginning to shift. I think that, for my generation, abortion was framed as being all about the woman, and what struggles she faced, and her right to choose. But I think that for younger people it’s about the baby. Boomers identified with the woman, but they identify with the child who is at risk.

In October, 2010, a book was released titled “American Grace,” and it contained the results of the most comprehensive survey ever held in America on the topic of religion. One thing the authors found was that young people are more pro-life than their parents. Now, young people are not more conservative than their parents, and they’re not religious. They are less likely to attend church, more likely to favor of gay marriage and to call themselves liberals. But they are consistently more opposed to abortion than their parents.

The authors, Robert Putnam and David Campbell, say that this is showing up consistently in many polls, so there’s no longer any doubt about it. They don’t know why it is happening, but they suggest that maybe the prevalence of ultrasound images of unborn babies has made a difference. Also, that young people don’t think it’s likely abortion will be made illegal, so opposing it doesn’t seem likely to cause a drastic change in the law. And they think that young people feel that contraception is available to everyone, so if there’s a pregnancy, it’s due to irresponsibility. They don’t have sympathy with that.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Juno (2007), about a high school student who gets pregnant and places the baby for adoption rather than have an abortion. The authors of American Grace call it “a good illustration of young people’s increasing uneasiness with abortion.”

When Juno gets pregnant she calls up an abortion clinic and makes an appointment, in almost a flippant way. But as she’s walking in to keep her appointment she meets a classmate who is outside protesting. The classmate tells her that her baby already has fingernails, and Juno is surprised. As she sits in the clinic waiting room, she keeps noticing people’s fingernails, clearly thinking about it—and she gets up and walks out without the abortion. The authors ofAmerican Grace say “We mention the movie because the character of Juno neatly embodies young people’s unease with abortion. …At no point in the film does she offer a religious reason for choosing not to abort her pregnancy.”

And here’s a third reason for hope: we don’t have to wait for the laws to change on abortion to start reducing these high numbers. We can make a difference today by helping pregnant women choose life.

When I wrote Real Choices, I was trying to find out what were the main reasons pregnant women chose abortion rather than finishing the pregnancy and either raising the child or placing it for adoption. What do pregnant women need?

I thought the answer would be something like, more maternity homes, more college scholarships. But when I asked women who had had abortions what the reason was, I kept hearing the same thing. Over and over again, women told me, “I had my abortion was because of a relationship.” Most of the time it was the father of the child who was pressuring her to have an abortion; in other cases, it was her parents. In 88% of the cases, the woman had had the abortion because someone she loved told her she should.

When I asked, “What could anyone have done to help you have the baby,” Over and over women told me, “I would have had the baby if there had been somebody to stand by me.” They weren’t asking for a lot; they weren’t asking for housing and jobs and a handout. They were just asking for a friend.

All over this city there are pregnancy care resource centers that exist to give pregnant women that support. They give a lot more than that, but the most important thing is standing by the pregnant woman and helping her be strong. Again, look in the yellow pages under “alternatives to abortion.” These organizations always need help from people who believe in their mission. They need donations of diapers, baby formula, maternity clothes, and they need volunteers, too. Think about giving your time to one of them. That’s the third reason for hope: you can prevent abortion, one case at a time, right in your own neighborhood, just by being a friend.

Finally, I want to recognize you for your courage and dedication. After I’d been speaking and writing about the abortion issue for many years, appearing on TV shows and college campuses all over the country, I came to the conclusion that the biggest influence in the abortion debate is peer pressure. I saw over and over that my opponents in debate had no answer for the arguments I put forth. So they would just ignore them, and talk about how awful pro-lifers are. I would attack abortion, and they would attack me. They didn’t try to defend abortion.

If you stand up on this issue, you will be attacked. Pro-choice is still the socially-approved position, and it takes a lot of courage to publicly say that you stand for life. In every generation there’s an issue like this, that draws a line between those who will stand up for what is right, and those who just go along. Only the bravest people take a stand, and continue to bear witness even when others mock them and misrepresent them; only the bravest keep standing when, from a worldly perspective, the cause looks lost. Only the most dedicated people are willing to keep working for change, when the struggle is all uphill and they reap nothing but rejection.

You are those people. And you are not alone. The angels and saints see you persevering in this labor, just as champions of earlier generations did their part.  The struggle is not lost. Despite overwhelming pressure to favor abortion, the tide of public opinion is beginning to turn. Young people are leading the way.

Your efforts on behalf of this cause, to help pregnant women and preserve the lives of unborn children, are seen by God and the angels, and will stand for eternity. You are the heroes of this hour—and, even if the hour looks dark, it truly is darkest before the dawn. Truth cannot be suppressed forever. You may wonder if the pro-choice side has won the day—but sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the grave. The time to get on the right side of history is now.

Originally at frederica.com

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 pews.

Challenging. The term most commonly cited by these men was “challenging.” Orthodoxy is “active and not passive.” “It’s the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you.” “The longer you are in it, the more you realize it demands of you.”

The “sheer physicality of Orthodox worship” is part of the appeal. Regular days of fasting from meat and dairy, “standing for hours on end, performing prostrations, going without food and water [before communion]…When you get to the end you feel that you’ve faced down a challenge.” “Orthodoxy appeals to a man’s desire for self-mastery through discipline.”

“In Orthodoxy, the theme of spiritual warfare is ubiquitous; saints, including female saints, are warriors. Warfare requires courage, fortitude, and heroism. We are called to be ‘strugglers’ against sin, to be ‘athletes’ as St. Paul says. And the prize is given to the victor. The fact that you must ‘struggle’ during worship by standing up throughout long services is itself a challenge men are willing to take up.”

A recent convert summed up, “Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it’s also about overcoming oneself. I am challenged in a deep way, not to ‘feel good about myself’ but to become holy. It is rigorous, and in that rigor I find liberation. And you know, so does my wife.”

Just Tell Me What You Want. Several mentioned that they really appreciated having clarity about the content of these challenges and what they were supposed to do. “Most guys feel a lot more comfortable when they know what’s expected of them.” “Orthodoxy presents a reasonable set of boundaries.” “It’s easier for guys to express themselves in worship if there are guidelines about how it’s supposed to work-especially when those guidelines are so simple and down-to-earth that you can just set out and start doing something.”

“The prayers the Church provides for us-morning prayers, evening prayers, prayers before and after meals, and so on-give men a way to engage in spirituality without feeling put on the spot, or worrying about looking stupid because they don’t know what to say.”

They appreciate learning clear-cut physical actions that are expected to form character and understanding. “People begin learning immediately through ritual and symbolism, for example, by making the sign of the cross. This regimen of discipline makes one mindful of one’s relation to the Trinity, to the Church, and to everyone he meets.”

With a Purpose. Men also appreciate that this challenge has a goal: union with God. One said that in a previous church “I didn’t feel I was getting anywhere in my spiritual life (or that there was anywhere to get to—I was already there, right?) But something, who knew what, was missing. Isn’t there SOMETHING I should be doing, Lord?”

Orthodoxy preserves and transmits ancient Christian wisdom about how to progress toward this union, which is called “theosis.” Every sacrament or spiritual exercise is designed to bring the person, body and soul, further into continual awareness of the presence of Christ within, and also within every other human being. As a cloth becomes saturated with dye by osmosis, we are saturated with God by theosis. A favorite quote comes from the second-century bishop, St. Irenaeus: “God became man so that man might become god.” (By the way, it’s easy to find long-time church members who are unfamiliar with this, and may never have been taught it. The main instrument of teaching Orthodox faith has always been theologically-rich hymnography, and they may attend a church where worship is in a beautiful but archaic language they can’t understand.)

Challenges and spiritual disciplines increase self-knowledge and humility, and lead to strength over sins that block union with God. A catechumen wrote that he was finding icons helpful in resisting unwanted thoughts. “If you just close your eyes to some visual temptation, there are plenty of stored images to cause problems. But if you surround yourself with icons, you have a choice of whether to look at something tempting or something holy.”

A priest writes, “Men need a challenge, a goal, perhaps an adventure-in primitive terms, a hunt. Western Christianity has lost the ascetic, that is, the athletic, aspect of Christian life. This was the purpose of monasticism, which arose in the East largely as a men’s movement. Women entered monastic life as well, and our ancient hymns still speak of women martyrs as showing ‘manly courage.’”

“Orthodoxy emphasizes DOING. Grace is not just a static concept, as in the old acronym, ‘God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense.’ Grace is God’s activity in the world and within us, and we’re supposed to share in it and participate in it. The emphasis on action really appeals to a man’s desire for significance. Guys are ACTIVITY oriented.”

A New Dimension. One man expressed his “excitement at discovering a dimension I had somehow sensed [in previous Christian experience] but had been unable till now to identify, the noetic.” The Greek biblical word “nous” (adjective “noetic”) gets translated “mind” in English bibles, but it doesn’t mean the cogitating intellect. The nous is the aspect of “mind” that comprehends and understands; it is designed to perceive the voice and presence of God.

“Noetic reality,” the reality of God’s presence and of the entire spiritual realm, “had become completely distorted in the Christianity I knew. Either it was subsumed into the harsh rigidity of legalism, or confused with emotions and sentimentality, or diluted by religious concepts being used in a vacuous, platitudinous way. All three-uptight legalism, effusive sentimentality, and vapid empty talk-are repugnant to men.” The discovery of the ancient Christian concept of the nous means that he can now “encounter (really encounter, not just pick up as an emotional infection) the invisible realities that form the genuine substance of the Christian lexicon. It is not just empty talk after all!” This unpredictable, life-changing, immediate encounter with God is “inherently dangerous, a new adventure, and a consummate challenge.”

Challenges well-met bring a man closer to something else that attracts him: freedom. “Even if we have yet to experience complete freedom from the passions, we know that freedom will be paradise. To have self-control over carnal appetites, to have clarity for noetic insights, to be liberated from the permanence of death-that is the freedom we crave.”

So the challenges have a practical goal. “Participation in the Holy Mysteries [sacraments], observing the fasts, daily prayers, and confession with a spiritual director means making progress along a defined path that is going somewhere real and better.”

Jesus Christ. What draws men to Orthodoxy is not simply that it’s challenging or mysterious. What draws them is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the center of everything the Church does or says.

In contrast to some other churches, “Orthodoxy offers a robust Jesus” (and even a robust Virgin Mary, for that matter, hailed in one hymn as “our Captain, Queen of War”). Several used the term “martial” or referred to Orthodoxy as the “Marine Corps” of Christianity. (The warfare is against self-destructive sin and the unseen spiritual powers, not other people, of course.)

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.”

A priest writes: “Christ in Orthodoxy is a militant, butt-kicking Jesus who takes Hell captive. Orthodox Jesus came to cast fire on the earth. (Males can relate to butt-kicking and fire-casting.) In Holy Baptism we pray for the newly-enlisted warriors of Christ, male and female, that they may ‘be kept ever warriors invincible.’”

After several years in Orthodoxy, one man found a service of Christmas carols in a Protestant church “shocking, even appalling.” Compared to the Orthodox hymns of Christ’s Nativity, “‘the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay’ has almost nothing to do with the Eternal Logos entering irrevocably, inexorably, kenotically, silently yet heroically, into the fabric of created reality.”

Continuity. Many intellectually-inclined men 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.

A life-long Orthodox says that what men like is “stability: men find they can trust the Orthodox Church because of the consistent and continuous tradition of faith it has maintained over the centuries.” A convert says, “The Orthodox Church offers what others do not: continuity with the first followers of Christ.” This is continuity, not archeology; the early church still exists, and you can join it.

“What drew me was Christ’s promises to the Church about the gates of hell not prevailing, and the Holy Spirit leading into all truth—and then seeing in Orthodoxy a unity of faith, worship, and doctrine with continuity throughout history.”

Another word for continuity is “tradition.” A catechumen writes that he had tried to learn everything necessary to interpret Scripture correctly, including ancient languages. “I expected to dig my way down to the foundation and confirm everything I’d been taught. Instead, the further down I went, the weaker everything seemed. I realized I had only acquired the ability to manipulate the Bible to say pretty much anything I wanted it to. The only alternative to cynicism was tradition. If the Bible was meant to say anything, it was meant to say it within a community, with a tradition to guide the reading. In Orthodoxy I found what I was looking for.”

Continuity is what stands behind those opening “challenges” and gives them authority, and makes the Orthodox life an organic unity. Spiritual disciplines chosen piecemeal, according to taste, will lack that resonant authority, but if the goal is still union with Christ, they remain of value. But if such disciplines are valued merely as bait to attract men toward Christianity, they’re vain and empty (not to mention patronizing). One priest ridiculed the artificiality of “retreats where men beat drums, scream, and grunt for no apparent reason!”

Worship weirdness. Men who go from intellectual exploration to visiting an Orthodox church can be initially bewildered. “Orthodoxy is too startling to a Protestant who first encounters it.” “It’s amazingly different.” “The prostrations, the incense, the chanting, the icons—some of these things took getting used to, but they really filled a void in what I’d experienced till then.” “Some men initially can’t make heads or tails of what we do in worship, because it’s not purely intellectual, and employs poetic worship language.”

Perseverance pays: “Orthodoxy is startling at first, but the more I hung around, the more a sense of being home took hold.” “At first we were bowled over by the high liturgy and its intense reverence, but there was something else going on too. It’s that there is such a strong masculine feeling to Orthodox worship and spirituality.” Speaking as a girl, I initially disliked Orthodox worship, because I was used to an approach that aimed at inspiration and uplift—in short, aimed at me. The relentless focus on God alone seemed “hard.” After a few months, though, I discovered that I had a deep-seated hunger for that objective God-focus, though I’d never suspected it before. A female visitor to a Vespers service that was only occasionally in English told me that she didn’t understand much that went on, “But I know one thing: this is so not about me.”

A life-long Orthodox priest writes, “Orthodoxy is full of testosterone! We sing, we yell ‘Christ is Risen!’, we shove even adults under water in baptism, we smear them with oil. Two or three things are always going on at once. Unlike what I saw in a Western church, it doesn’t take a huddle of people several minutes of fussing to light a censer. You light it and off we go, swinging it with gusto and confidence!”

Not Sentimental. In The Church Impotent, cited above (and recommended by several of these men), Leon Podles offers a theory about how Western Christian piety became feminized. In the 12th- 13th century a particularly tender, even erotic, strain of devotion arose, one which invited the individual believer to picture him or herself (rather than the Church as a whole) as the Bride of Christ. “Bridal Mysticism” was enthusiastically adopted by devout women, and left an enduring stamp on Western Christianity. It understandably had less appeal for guys, and perhaps the rigor and objectivity of the Scholastic movement which arose about the same time was an equal-and-opposite reaction. “Head” and “heart” were split; men retired for brandy and cigars in the Systematic Theology Room, while praying and church-going were given over to women. For centuries in the West, men who chose the ministry have been stereotyped as effeminate. A life-long Orthodox layman says that, from the outside, Western Christianity strikes him as “a love story written for women by women.”

The Eastern Church escaped Bridal Mysticism because the great split between East and West had already taken place. Christians in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa continued to practice an earlier, non-dualistic form of Christianity, with an emphasis on acquiring continual awareness of Christ’s inner presence through spiritual disciplines and humility.

The men who wrote me expressed hearty dislike for what they perceive as a soft Western Jesus. “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.”

During worship, “men don’t want to pray in the Western fashion with hands clasped, lips pressed together, and a facial expression of forced serenity.” “It’s guys holding hands with other guys and singing campfire songs.” “Lines about ‘reaching out for His embrace,’ ‘wanting to touch His face,’ while being ‘overwhelmed by the power of His love’-those are difficult songs for one man to sing to another Man.”

“A friend of mine told me that the first thing he does when he walks into a church is to look at the curtains. That tells him who is making the decisions in that church, and the type of Christian they want to attract.”

“Guys either want to be challenged to fight for a glorious and honorable cause, and get filthy dirty in the process, or to loaf in our recliners with plenty of beer, pizza, and football. But most churches want us to behave like orderly gentlemen, keeping our hands and mouths nice and clean.”

One man said that worship at his Pentecostal church had been “largely an emotional experience. Feelings. Tears. Repeated rededication of one’s life to Christ, in large emotional group settings. Singing emotional songs, swaying hands aloft. Even Scripture reading was supposed to produce an emotional experience. I am basically a do-er, I want to do things, and not talk about or emote my way through them!” He was helped by Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, which introduced the idea that there are such things as “spiritual disciplines, other than passive Bible reading.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cheap Grace was also eye-opening. “As a business person I knew that nothing in business comes without effort, energy, and investment. Why would the spiritual life be any different?”

Another who visited Catholic churches says, “They were conventional, easy, and modern, when my wife and I were looking for something traditional, hard, and counter-cultural, something ancient and martial.” A catechumen says that at his non-denominational church “Worship was shallow, haphazard, cobbled together from whatever was most current; sometimes we’d stand, sometimes we’d sit, without much rhyme or reason to it. I got to thinking about how a stronger grounding in tradition would help.”

“It infuriated me on my last Ash Wednesday that the priest delivered a homily about how the real meaning of Lent is to learn to love ourselves more. It forced me to realize how completely sick I was of bourgeois, feel-good American Christianity.”

A convert priest says that men are drawn to the dangerous element of Orthodoxy, which involves “the self-denial of a warrior, the terrifying risk of loving one’s enemies, the unknown frontiers to which a commitment to humility might call us. Lose any of those dangerous qualities and we become the ‘JoAnn Fabric Store’ of churches: nice colors and a very subdued clientele.”

“Men get pretty cynical when they sense someone’s attempting to manipulate their emotions, especially when it’s in the name of religion. They appreciate the objectivity of Orthodox worship. It’s not aimed at prompting religious feelings but at performing an objective duty. Whether you’re in a good mood or bad, whether you’re feeling pious or friendly or whatever, is beside the point.”

Yet there is something in Orthodoxy that offers “a deep masculine romance. Do you understand what I mean by that? Most romance in our age is pink, but this is a romance of swords and gallantry.” This convert appreciates that in Orthodoxy he is in communion with King Arthur, who lived, “if he lived,” before the East-West schism, and carried an icon of the Virgin Mary.

From a deacon: “Evangelical churches call men to be passive and nice (think ‘Mr. Rogers’). Orthodox churches call men to be courageous and act (think ‘Braveheart’). Men love adventure, and our faith is a great story in which men find a role that gives meaning to their ordinary existence.” /p>

Men in Balance. Yet Orthodoxy invites men to something more subtle than “the standard stereotypes of masculinity.” The way of spiritual healing is adjusted to unique needs of each individual human person, rather than forcing them into two-sizes-fit-all alternatives of “action hero man and princess woman.” It’s an illusion that men and women have “different spiritual needs” mandated by their gender, because each person relates to Christ directly, from the deepest interior person. Those sorts of categories of “spirituality specialization” are unhelpful, except as a marketing tool.

A priest refers to something much prized among the saints, the “baptism of tears:” a spiritual gift of tranquil deep repentance and compassion, expressed in gentle (and sometimes continuous) tears. This would contradict Hollywood-style ideas of masculinity, but in a man or woman of prayer would be a sign of the Holy Spirit at work in a deep way. “Though it flies in the face of machismo, it does not negate any of the positives of Orthodox masculinity; in fact, it cements the relationship with Christ.” He adds that, at the evening service on the Friday before Pascha (Easter), when the flower-decked tomb of Christ is carried in procession and surrounded in song, “the most masculine of those in our parish are the ones you find in tears.”

A priest writes: “There are only two models for men: be ‘manly’ and strong, rude, crude, macho, and probably abusive; or be sensitive, kind, repressed and wimpy. But in Orthodoxy, masculine is held together with feminine; it’s real and down to earth, ‘neither male nor female,’ but Christ who ‘unites things in heaven and things on earth.’”

Far from reinforcing male bossiness, the gradual process of theosis is likely, in fact, to correct unbalanced relationships. Another priest comments that, if one spouse is originally more insistent about the family converting to Orthodoxy than the other, “when both spouses are making confessions, over time they both become deepened and neither one is as dominant in the spiritual relationship.”

Men in Leadership. Like it or not, men simply prefer to be led by men. In Orthodoxy, lay women do everything lay men do, including preach, teach, and chair the parish council. But behind the iconostasis, around the altar, it’s all guys. One respondent summarized what men like in Orthodoxy this way: “Beards!”

“It’s the last place in the world men aren’t told they’re evil simply for being men.” Instead of negativity, they are constantly surrounded by positive role models in the saints, in icons and in the daily round of hymns and stories about saints’ lives. This is another concrete element that men appreciate-there are other real human beings to look to, rather than a blur of ethereal terms. “The glory of God is a man fully alive” said St. Irenaeus. One writer adds that “The best way to attract a man to the Orthodox Church is to show him an Orthodox man.”

But no secondary thing, no matter how good, can supplant first place. “A dangerous life is not the goal. Christ is the goal. A free spirit is not the goal. Christ is the goal. He is the towering figure of history around whom all men and women will eventually gather, to whom every knee will bow, and whom every tongue will confess.”

Article originally appeared on Frederica.com.

I don’t like the category “spirituality.” It sounds so external. It sounds so optional. It isn’t a concept I find in the first millennium, or anywhere in Eastern Christianity. As far as I can tell, what people today mean by “spirituality” is what St. Paul meant by “life in Christ.”

This is a transformation that every Christian is supposed to be experiencing, because we are all “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). As we partake of the life of Christ and discipline ourselves, seeking to assimilate that life, it affects both our souls and bodies. His light spreads within us like fire spreading through a lump of coal, and so we become Christ-bearers to the world. This is such an essential, foundational element of life in Christ that to extract it and label it seems to deaden it.

Early Christians did not talk about “spirituality,” much less varieties of spirituality, appropriate to this or that kind of personality, or ethnic background, or gender. Not only is that unhelpful, I don’t think it’s even possible to set up such divisions. Each one of us is participating in the light of the One Christ, so in one sense “spirituality” is exactly the same for everyone, because Christ is one. But each one of us is the only human being God ever made who is exactly us, so we will radiate that light back out again just a bit differently than any other saint.

So although the unity of Christ means there is only one possible “spirituality,” in another sense there are as many different “spiritualities” as the billions of people who live and who have lived. But an in-between that imagines that there are different styles appropriate to this or that sub-group, speaks of nothing so much as our culture’s reflexive love of shopping.

The thing about contemporary “spirituality” that annoys me the most is its capacity for narcissism. Focusing on spirituality instead of on the Lord makes you stop halfway down the hallway and think about yourself. That obviously delays your progress. It can be a temptation to consumerism – “Gee, centering prayer didn’t work, I think I’ll try Ignatian meditation.” And it can be a temptation to self-adornment, by suggesting that being spiritual makes you superior to other people, makes you more “interesting” or “deep.” What appears to be very intentional involvement with spiritual things, can actually be simply the taking up a new beauty regimen.

We can say, as in Christ’s parable of the wheat and tares, “An enemy has done this.” It is a strategy of the Evil One to take a good impulse and twist it backward into self-regard.

The term “spirituality” is troublesome because it reifies something that ought to go unnoticed. When you start taking an exaggerated interest in your breathing is when your breathing starts going wrong. Our sole focus should be on the compelling beauty of our Lord, and what moves us forward is only our desire for him. So my advice is: don’t seek an improved spirituality, or even a better prayer life. Just seek the Lord Jesus Christ, and keep your eyes on him.

Originally published in “Gifted For Leadership,” January 2007.

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 e-mailed 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 or leaders in other churches who are looking for ways to keep guys in the pews.

Challenging

The term most commonly cited by these men was “challenging.” Orthodoxy is “active and not passive.” “It’s the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you.” “The longer you are in it, the more you realize it demands of you.”

The “sheer physicality of Orthodox worship” is part of the appeal. Regular days of fasting from meat and dairy, “standing for hours on end, performing prostrations, going without food and water [before communion] … When you get to the end you feel that you’ve faced down a challenge.” “Orthodoxy appeals to a man’s desire for self-mastery through discipline.”

“In Orthodoxy, the theme of spiritual warfare is ubiquitous; saints, including female saints, are warriors. Warfare requires courage, fortitude, and heroism. We are called to be ‘strugglers’ against sin, to be ‘athletes’ as St. Paul says. And the prize is given to the victor. The fact that you must ‘struggle’ during worship by standing up throughout long services is itself a challenge men are willing to take up.”

A recent convert summed up, “Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it’s also about overcoming oneself. I am challenged in a deep way, not to ‘feel good about myself’ but to become holy. It is rigorous, and in that rigor I find liberation. And you know, so does my wife.”

Just Tell Me What You Want.

Several mentioned that they really appreciated having clarity about the content of these challenges and what they were supposed to do. “Most guys feel a lot more comfortable when they know what’s expected of them.” “Orthodoxy presents a reasonable set of boundaries.” “It’s easier for guys to express themselves in worship if there are guidelines about how it’s supposed to work — especially when those guidelines are so simple and down-to-earth that you can just set out and start doing something.”

“The prayers the Church provides for us — morning prayers, evening prayers, prayers before and after meals, and so on — give men a way to engage in spirituality without feeling put on the spot, or worrying about looking stupid because they don’t know what to say.”

They appreciate learning clear-cut physical actions that are expected to form character and understanding. “People begin learning immediately through ritual and symbolism, for example, by making the sign of the cross. This regimen of discipline makes one mindful of one’s relation to the Trinity, to the Church, and to everyone he meets.”

With a Purpose

Men also appreciate that this challenge has a goal: union with God. One said that in a previous church, “I didn’t feel I was getting anywhere in my spiritual life (or that there was anywhere to get to — I was already there, right?) But something, who knew what, was missing. Isn’t there SOMETHING I should be doing, Lord?”

Orthodoxy preserves and transmits ancient Christian wisdom about how to progress toward this union, which is called “theosis.” Every sacrament or spiritual exercise is designed to bring the person, body and soul, further into continual awareness of the presence of Christ within, and also within every other human being. As a cloth becomes saturated with dye by osmosis, we are saturated with God by theosis. A favorite quotation comes from the second-century bishop, St. Irenaeus:

“God became man so that man might become god.”

(By the way, it’s easy to find long-time church members who are unfamiliar with this, and may never have been taught it. The main instrument of teaching Orthodox faith has always been theologically- rich hymnography, and they may attend a church where worship is in a beautiful but archaic language they can’t understand.)

Challenges and spiritual disciplines increase self-knowledge and humility, and lead to strength over sins that block union with God. A catechumen wrote that he was finding icons helpful in resisting unwanted thoughts. “If you just close your eyes to some visual temptation, there are plenty of stored images to cause problems. But if you surround yourself with icons, you have a choice of whether to look at something tempting or something holy.”

A priest writes, “Men need a challenge, a goal, perhaps an adventure — in primitive terms, a hunt. Western Christianity has lost the ascetic, that is, the athletic, aspect of Christian life. This was the purpose of monasticism, which arose in the East largely as a men’s movement. Women entered monastic life as well, and our ancient hymns still speak of women martyrs as showing ‘manly courage.’”

“Orthodoxy emphasizes DOING. Grace is not just a static concept, as in the old acronym, ‘God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense.’ Grace is God’s activity in the world and within us, and we’re supposed to share in it and participate in it. The emphasis on action really appeals to a man’s desire for significance. Guys are ACTIVITY oriented.”

A New Dimension

One man expressed his “excitement at discovering a dimension I had somehow sensed [in previous Christian experience] but had been unable until now to identify, the noetic.” The Greek biblical word “nous” (adjective “noetic”) gets translated “mind” in English bibles, but it doesn’t mean the cogitating intellect. The nous is the aspect of “mind” that comprehends and understands; it is designed to perceive the voice and presence of God.

“Noetic reality,” the reality of God’s presence and of the entire spiritual realm, “had become completely distorted in the Christianity I knew. Either it was submitted into the harsh rigidity of legalism, or confused with emotions and sentimentality, or diluted by religious concepts being used in a vacuous, platitudinous way. All three — uptight legalism, effusive sentimentality, and vapid empty talk — are repugnant to men.” The discovery of the ancient Christian concept of the nous means that he can now “encounter (really encounter, not just pick up as an emotional infection) the invisible realities that form the genuine substance of the Christian lexicon. It is not just empty talk after all!” This unpredictable, lifechanging, immediate encounter with God is “inherently dangerous, a new adventure, and a consummate challenge.”

Challenges well-met bring a man closer to something else that attracts him: freedom. “Even if we have yet to experience complete freedom from the passions, we know that freedom will be paradise. To have self-control over carnal appetites, to have clarity for noetic insights, to be liberated from the permanence of death — that is the freedom we crave.”

So the challenges have a practical goal. “Participation in the Holy Mysteries [sacraments], observing the fasts, daily prayers, and confession with a spiritual director means making progress along a defined path that is going somewhere real and better.”

Jesus Christ

What draws men to Orthodoxy is not simply that it’s challenging or mysterious. What draws them is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the center of everything the Church does or says.

In contrast to some other churches, “Orthodoxy offers a robust Jesus” (and even a robust Virgin Mary, for that matter, hailed in one hymn as “our Captain, Queen of War”). Several used the term “martial” or referred to Orthodoxy as the “Marine Corps” of Christianity. (The warfare is against self-destructive sin and the unseen spiritual powers, not other people, of course.)

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.”

A priest writes: “Christ in Orthodoxy is a militant, butt-kicking Jesus who takes Hell captive. Orthodox Jesus came to cast fire on the earth. (Males can relate to butt-kicking and fire-casting.) In Holy Baptism we pray for the newly-enlisted warriors of Christ, male and female, that they may “be kept ever warriors invincible.’”

After several years in Orthodoxy, one man found a service of Christmas carols in a Protestant church “shocking, even appalling.” Compared to the Orthodox hymns of Christ’s Nativity, “the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay” has almost nothing to do with the Eternal Logos entering irrevocably, inexorably, kenotically, silently, yet heroically, into the fabric of created reality.”

Continuity

Many intellectually-inclined men 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.

A life-long Orthodox says that what men like is “stability: men find they can trust the Orthodox Church because of the consistent and continuous tradition of faith it has maintained over the centuries.” A convert says, “The Orthodox Church offers what others do not: continuity with the first followers of Christ.” This is continuity, not archeology; the early Church still exists, and you can join it.

“What drew me was Christ’s promises to the Church about the gates of hell not prevailing, and the Holy Spirit leading into all truth — and then seeing in Orthodoxy a unity of faith, worship, and doctrine with continuity throughout history.”

Another word for continuity is “tradition.” A catechumen writes that he had tried to learn everything necessary to interpret Scripture correctly, including ancient languages. “I expected to dig my way down to the foundation and confirm everything I’d been taught. Instead, the further down I went, the weaker everything seemed. I realized I had only acquired the ability to manipulate the Bible to say pretty much anything I wanted it to. The only alternative to cynicism was tradition. If the Bible was meant to say anything, it was meant to say it within a community, with a tradition to guide the reading. In Orthodoxy I found what I was looking for.”

Continuity is what stands behind those opening “challenges” and gives them authority, and makes the Orthodox life an organic unity. Spiritual disciplines chosen piecemeal, according to taste, will lack that resonant authority, but if the goal is still union with Christ, they remain of value. But if such disciplines are valued merely as bait to attract men toward Christianity, they’re vain and empty (not to mention patronizing). One priest ridiculed the artificiality of “retreats where men beat drums, scream, and grunt for no apparent reason!”

Worship weirdness

Men who go from intellectual exploration to visiting an Orthodox church can be initially bewildered. “Orthodoxy is too startling to a Protestant who first encounters it.” “It’s amazingly different.” “The prostrations, the incense, the chanting, the icons — some of these things took getting used to, but they really filled a void in what I’d experienced until then.” “Some men initially can’t make heads or tails of what we do in worship, because it’s not purely intellectual, and employs poetic worship language.”

Perseverance pays: “Orthodoxy is startling at first, but the more I hung around, the more a sense of being home took hold.” “At first, we were bowled over by the high liturgy and its intense reverence, but there was something else going on, too. It’s that there is such a strong masculine feeling to Orthodox worship and spirituality.” Speaking as a girl, I initially disliked Orthodox worship, because I was used to an approach that aimed at inspiration and uplift — in short, aimed at me. The relentless focus on God alone seemed “hard.” After a few months, though, I discovered that I had a deep-seated hunger for that objective God-focus, though I’d never suspected it before. A female visitor to a Vespers service that was only occasionally in English told me that she didn’t understand much that went on, “But I know one thing: this is so not about me.”

A life-long Orthodox priest writes, “Orthodoxy is full of testosterone! We sing, we yell ‘Christ is Risen!’, we shove even adults under water in baptism, we smear them with oil. Two or three things are always going on at once. Unlike what I saw in a Western church, it doesn’t take a huddle of people several minutes of fussing to light a censer. You light it and off we go, swinging it with gusto and confidence!”

Not Sentimental

In The Church Impotent, cited above (and recommended by several of these men), Leon Podles offers a theory about how Western Christian piety became feminized. In the 12th- 13th century, a particularly tender, even erotic, strain of devotion arose, one which invited the individual believer to picture him or herself (rather than the Church as a whole) as the Bride of Christ. “Bridal Mysticism” was enthusiastically adopted by devout women, and left an enduring stamp on Western Christianity. It understandably had less appeal for guys, and perhaps the rigor and objectivity of the Scholastic movement which arose about the same time was an equal-and-opposite reaction. “Head” and “heart” were split; men retired for brandy and cigars in the Systematic Theology Room, while praying and church-going were given over to women. For centuries in the West, men who chose the ministry have been stereotyped as effeminate. A life-long Orthodox layman says that, from the outside, Western Christianity strikes him as “a love story written for women by women.”

The Eastern Church escaped Bridal Mysticism because the great split between East and West had already taken place. Christians in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa continued to practice an earlier, non-dualistic form of Christianity, with an emphasis on acquiring continual awareness of Christ’s inner presence through spiritual disciplines and humility.

The men who wrote me expressed hearty dislike for what they perceive as a soft Western Jesus. “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.”

During worship, “men don’t want to pray in the Western fashion with hands clasped, lips pressed together, and a facial expression of forced serenity.” “It’s guys holding hands with other guys and singing campfire songs.” “Lines about ‘reaching out for His embrace,’ ‘wanting to touch His Face,’ while being ‘overwhelmed by the power of His love’ — those are difficult songs for one man to sing to another Man.”

“A friend of mine told me that the first thing he does when he walks into a church is to look at the curtains. That tells him who is making the decisions in that church, and the type of Christian they want to attract.”

“Guys either want to be challenged to fight for a glorious and honorable cause, and get filthy dirty in the process, or to loaf in our recliners with plenty of beer, pizza, and football. But most churches want us to behave like orderly gentlemen, keeping our hands and mouths nice and clean.”

One man said that worship at his Pentecostal church had been “largely an emotional experience. Feelings. Tears. Repeated rededication of one’s life to Christ, in large emotional group settings. Singing emotional songs, swaying hands aloft. Even Scripture reading was supposed to produce an emotional experience. I am basically a do-er, I want to do things, and not talk about or emote my way through them!” He was helped by Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, which introduced the idea that there are such things as “spiritual disciplines, other than passive Bible reading.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cheap Grace was also eyeopening. “As a business person I knew that nothing in business comes without effort, energy, and investment. Why would the spiritual life be any different?”

Another, who visited Catholic churches, says, “They were conventional, easy, and modern, when my wife and I were looking for something traditional, hard, and counter-cultural, something ancient and martial.” A catechumen says that at his non-denominational church, “Worship was shallow, haphazard, cobbled together from whatever was most current; sometimes we’d stand, sometimes we’d sit, without much rhyme or reason to it. I got to thinking about how a stronger grounding in tradition would help.”

“It infuriated me on my last Ash Wednesday that the priest delivered a homily about how the real meaning of Lent is to learn to love ourselves more. It forced me to realize how completely sick I was of bourgeois, feel-good American Christianity.”

A convert priest says that men are drawn to the dangerous element of Orthodoxy, which involves “the self-denial of a warrior, the terrifying risk of loving one’s enemies, the unknown frontiers to which a commitment to humility might call us. Lose any of those dangerous qualities and we become the ‘JoAnn Fabric Store’ of churches: nice colors and a very subdued clientele.”

“Men get pretty cynical when they sense someone’s attempting to manipulate their emotions, especially when it’s in the name of religion. They appreciate the objectivity of Orthodox worship. It’s not aimed at prompting religious feelings but at performing an objective duty. Whether you’re in a good mood or bad, whether you’re feeling pious or friendly or whatever, is beside the point.”

Yet there is something in Orthodoxy that offers “a deep masculine romance. Do you understand what I mean by that? Most romance in our age is pink, but this is a romance of swords and gallantry.” This convert appreciates that in Orthodoxy he is in communion with King Arthur, who lived, “if he lived,” before the East-West schism, and carried an icon of the Virgin Mary.

From a deacon: “Evangelical churches call men to be passive and nice (think ‘Mr. Rogers’). Orthodox churches call men to be courageous and act (think ‘Braveheart’). Men love adventure, and our faith is a great story in which men find a role that gives meaning to their ordinary existence.”

Men in Balance

A priest writes: “There are only two models for men: be ‘manly’ and strong, rude, crude, macho, and probably abusive; or be sensitive, kind, repressed and wimpy. But in Orthodoxy, masculine is held together with feminine; it’s real and down to earth, ‘neither male nor female,’ but Christ who ‘unites things in heaven and things on earth.’”

Another priest commends that, if one spouse is originally more insistent about the family converting to Orthodoxy than the other, “when both spouses are making confessions, over time they both become deepened and neither one is s dominant in the spiritual relationship.”

Men in Leadership

Like it or not, men simply prefer to be led by men. In Orthodoxy, lay women do everything lay men do, including preach, teach, and chair the parish council. But behind the iconostasis, around the altar, it’s all guys. One respondent summarized what men like in Orthodoxy this way: “Beards!”

“It’s the last place in the world men aren’t told they’re evil simply for being men.” Instead of negativity, they are constantly surrounded by positive role models in the saints, in icons and in the daily round of hymns and stories about saints’ lives. This is another concrete element that men appreciate — there are other real human beings to look to, rather than a blur of ethereal terms. “The glory of God is a man fully alive,” said St. Irenaeus. One writer adds that, “The best way to attract a man to the Orthodox Church is to show him an Orthodox man.”

But no secondary thing, no matter how good, can supplant first place. “A dangerous life is not the goal. Christ is the goal. A free spirit is not the goal. Christ is the goal. He is the towering figure of history around whom all men and women will eventually gather, to whom every knee will bow, and whom every tongue will confess.”

Originally published at Beliefnet, September 30, 2007.