This article was originally posted on The Associated Press by Krysta Fauria.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Often when a potential convert walks through the doors of his church, one of the first things the Very Rev. Andreas Blom encourages them to do is give up the thing that brought them there.
“You discovered Orthodoxy online. You learned about it online. Now you’re here, the internet is done,” he tells inquirers at Holy Theophany Orthodox Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Now you have a priest. Now you have people. Now you need to wean yourself off that stuff and enter into this real community of faith.”
Blom is not a Luddite advising congregants to go off the grid, but is instead responding to the explosion of Eastern Orthodox content online that is, at least in part, driving a surge of converts across the United States. Christian Orthodoxy is an embodied tradition that requires in-person participation, but the internet has given their message a reach not seen in centuries.
Continue reading on The Associated Press.
